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College administrators are trying to find creative ways to manage the entire attendance / enrollment issue. Student success and athletics have been enacted at GHC for the purpose of increasing enrollments and retaining current student levels.
College administrators are trying to find creative ways to manage the entire attendance / enrollment issue. Student success and athletics have been enacted at GHC for the purpose of increasing enrollments and retaining current student levels.
College administrators are trying to find creative ways to manage the entire attendance / enrollment issue. Student success and athletics have been enacted at GHC for the purpose of increasing enrollments and retaining current student levels.
Running head: FINAL ASSIGNMENT: PROMOTING COLLEGE ATTENDANCE
Final Assignment: Promoting College Attendance
COUN 7132: Contemporary College Student Dr. Fayth M. Parks Jeff Patty Georgia Southern University
FINAL ASSIGNMENT: PROMOTING COLLEGE ATTENDANCE
2 Abstract Dealing with college attendance or enrollment issues has always been a challenge for most institutions of higher learning. In the last five to ten years, and particularly with the downturn in the economy, finding creative ways to manage the entire attendance/enrollment issue has become a topic of increased focus around college administrators planning tables. Colleges are constantly trying to find the next best method to attract new students and keep the ones they have. Georgia Highlands College has also faced these same challenges. All units and departments across the campus have been impacted and challenged to implement new strategies. Here I will outline a couple of units and changes that have been enacted at GHC for the purpose of increasing enrollments and retaining current student levels. The two units highlighted here are Student Success and Athletics.
FINAL ASSIGNMENT: PROMOTING COLLEGE ATTENDANCE
3 Final Assignment: Promoting College Attendance Georgia Highlands College (GHC) became a limited-mission, four-year state college in 2011. GHC, originally founded in 1970 as Floyd Junior College, has grown over the years into a multi-campus environment serving the Northwest Georgia and Northeast Alabama surrounding communities. The college now enrolls over 5,700 students on campuses in the following locations: Rome, Cartersville, Marietta, Paulding, and Douglasville (Georgia Highlands College, 2013). Like other institutions of higher learning, GHC has struggled in recent history to maintain enrollment numbers sufficient to support growth, maintain appropriate funding levels, and effectively manage RPG (retention, progression, and graduation) levels that satisfy increasing accountability pressures. Complicating these struggles, todays students tend to attend college in a more stop and start manner. Particularly, a community college such as GHC, non-traditional students frequently skip semesters, skip a year or more, or only attend for a short period of time. This occurs due to a variety of factors ranging from job issues, family matters, employment constraints, monetary demands, lack of being college ready, and a number of other issues. So, community colleges really have to stay on their toes in how they deal with this population and make necessary operational and academic adjustments in order to best serve students in the complex environment. In addition, since GHC maintains campus locations in several locations spread out across a wide geographic region and in different communities, this presents even more challenges in not only meeting the demands and needs of students, but also effectively managing the accompanying administrative elements. Several studies indicated that there were no significant differences in learning outcomes and proficiency such as reading comprehension, mathematics, writing skills, and scientific reasoning between students attending a two-year or
FINAL ASSIGNMENT: PROMOTING COLLEGE ATTENDANCE
4 four-year college or university (Pascarella & Terenzini, 2005). Since the college has six different campuses in these different counties, as well as a teaching site at an additional location, there is also the difficulty in providing services for a multicultural student body. We serve students from varied backgrounds, such as different ethnicities, socio-economic status, ages, genders, and nationalities. Therefore, the college must actively be engaged in managing this issue of college attendance. The institution must create special mechanisms and programs within the operational units of the college to effectively manage this moving target. Student Success The University System of Georgia is desperately trying to close the gap between the number of Georgians who currently attend some form of higher education and the numbers of citizens that will need to be workforce ready by 2020, as is evidenced by one of their major initiatives, the Complete College Georgia Initiative. GHC spends a good portion of their state allocation on just that, student success (Georgia Highlands College, 2012). The institution feels student success leads to many positive results for students, not the least of which is retention and graduation. The college has several efforts directed towards increasing and maintaining enrollment, as well as increasing student success. The college has an academic unit, the Student Success Center, which is responsible for providing student support services and preparing students for either graduation or transfer to a four-year institution. The Student Success Center also houses the Assessment Center, the Tutorial Center, and the Advising Center (Georgia Highlands College, 2010). Another component of properly managing enrollment through student success is found in a couple of fairly new components over the last several years, eLearning and the First Year Experience Program. With the creation of the eLearning Unit, GHC has focused their efforts on
FINAL ASSIGNMENT: PROMOTING COLLEGE ATTENDANCE
5 offering students online, DVD, and hybrid offerings to accommodate students busy lifestyles and offer flexible scheduling. GHC committed to a substantial cash outlay to procure and maintain Collaborate, an online tool that provides video sharing between multiple sites. Faculty on alternate campuses now can teach students on one of the other GHC campuses remotely (Georgia Highlands College, 2012). Previously, some of these classes simply would not have made due to lower enrollments on each campus. Those are now possible with this software/hardware investment. Likewise, the creation of the First-Year Program (FYE) at GHC has provided new students with some very valuable tools that will assist students in becoming successful and productive in their chosen fields once graduating. The FYE Program is aimed at three particular tasks: Developing Academic Skills, Adjusting to College Life, and Developing Academic & Career Goals. The courses that make up this program are aimed at helping students achieve academic excellence. The major program components are designed to provide information surrounding the college experience, learning communities, academic advising, tutoring, peer mentoring, career choices, decision making, and service learning opportunities (Georgia Highlands College, 2013). All of these programs are designed to improve student success, which in turn promotes more stable enrollment through retention, and hopefully creates an environment where students tell other students about the measures in place GHC provides on behalf of helping students achieve success. This in turn can create greater interest from new student enrollment. Athletics The use of Athletics to attract more students and increase a more diverse enrollment base is nothing new to higher education. Most of the early colonial colleges also had athletics
FINAL ASSIGNMENT: PROMOTING COLLEGE ATTENDANCE
6 programs, forming the popular group known as the Ivy League. In the last decade there seems to be a renewed, growing trend for even the smaller schools to get into the game. Athletic programs are designed in theory to be self-supporting, but in reality these programs can be very expensive to get off the ground and sustain. If a particular program is lucky enough to provide some early championships that certainly helps, but for most it is an expensive and long-term investment. There are also lots of rules and regulations. Each sport requires a counter womens sport to match the mens side of the equation; mens and womens basketball, mens baseball and womens softball, etc. GHC is no exception to this recent phenomenon, starting their inaugural athletics program a little over a year ago. Our first sport selected was basketball and this year they have begun baseball and softball. This has been an expensive endeavor. Most of the administrators who planned athletics are no longer with the college. The new Athletic Director is left to get the program off the ground and gain continued support by the new administration. Everyone hopes in the long run that Athletics will be the draw we all hope for. The idea is to create a new atmosphere on campus, attract new and different students, increase athletic participation in both student sports and intramurals, and finally to provide a variety of sporting events around which students and the citizens of the community will come and watch. Those programs that have accomplished creating successful programs have had significant gains in student enrollment, diversifying their student population, and finding new financial sponsors. There are countless studies, statistics, and preponderance of supporters that will demonstrate beyond a shadow of a doubt that Athletics is a very valuable tool for the college. There is so much potential in the form of not only the enrollment aspect, but also new gifts, marketing efforts, prestige, television rights, gate and merchandising sales, fan attraction, and the list goes on. There are simply too many possible positives for most schools to stay away forever. Only
FINAL ASSIGNMENT: PROMOTING COLLEGE ATTENDANCE
7 time will tell if this will pay off for GHC. The program is still in its infancy and has a great deal of growing to do yet. Additional sports will need to be added. Sports will need to be introduced at more of our campus locations. Finally, one of these sports programs will likely need to produce a winning team, in order to generate an effective fan base that can fully get behind the program. Conclusion As one can see from the efforts in just these two units of Georgia Highlands College, increasing and maintaining effective enrollment numbers is of great importance. Enrollment has been a driving force for formula funding for schools for years. Although new models based on performance standards are beginning to emerge, I think it is safe to say that enrollment is still a huge factor. After all, students are supposed to be why we are in the business to begin with. There are many other factors that are also extremely important to the institution, but enrollment often drives much of the decision-making that goes on for colleges. With recent down turns in the economy, there is even more competition between colleges for these precious few students. Often increased enrollment is one of the few ways colleges can increase their revenue in order to sustain operations and programs. Other sources are hard to come by and increasing student tuition is certainly not a popular choice.
FINAL ASSIGNMENT: PROMOTING COLLEGE ATTENDANCE
8 References Georgia Highlands College. (2013, February 6). About us. Retrieved from http://www.highlands.edu/site/about-ghc Georgia Highlands College. (2013, May 14). First year experience. Retrieved from https://www.highlands.edu/site/fye Georgia Highlands College. (2012, June 5). GHC spends much of usg allocation on student success. Retrieved from http://www.highlands.edu/site/ghc-spends-much-of-usgallocation-on-student-success Georgia Highlands College. (2010, September 27). Mission and goals of the student success center. Retrieved from http://www.highlands.edu/site/student-success-center-missionand-goals Pascarella, E.T., & Terenzini, P.T. (2005). How college affects students: A third decade of Research. (Vol. 2). [Kindle iPad version]. Retrieved from Amazon.com. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass