Published: September 29, 2008 06:44 pm      

Enrollment drops — 09/30/08

Kentucky need more students in higher education, not fewer

One hopes that both the decline in enrollment at Ashland Community and Technical College — and in the Kentucky Community and Technical College System as a whole — are just a temporary reversal in what had been an unbroken record of continual growth since the community and technical college system was created in 1998. As a state that already has a woefully low percentage of college graduates, Kentucky needs to be sending more students to college, not fewer.

While the causes of the enrollment decline may be varied, KCTCS officials — as well as local ACTC administrators — should be concerned about whether the drop in enrollment is an indication that more and more Kentucky students are finding college unaffordable. After all, tuition costs have soared at both the state’s universities and community and technical colleges in recent years, and while the two-year colleges still represent Kentucky’s best higher education bargain, the cost of attending one is still steep for families of modest means.

The community and technical colleges particularly appeal to “non-traditional students” — those who are older and often also have job and family obligations. With the cost of food, gasoline, utilities and just about everything else rapidly increasing, finding the money to attend college is getting more difficult. In addition to the tuition increases, it is costing community and technical college students more to make the daily commute to and from school, to purchase the outrageously priced textbooks and other classroom materials, to pay for child care and to meet many other school-related expenses.

While the final count is not official, enrollment for the fall semester at Ashland Community and Technical dropped by more than 200 from a year ago — 4,756 to 4,550. For the KCTC system, enrollment declined from 92,828 last September to 92,178 this year.

Enrollment has soared at the community and technical colleges since the approval of the higher education reform act that separated the community colleges from the University of Kentucky and merged them with the old vocational technical schools. Indeed, they enroll more than half the higher education students in the state.

That record of growth must continue. Kentucky lags well behind the rest of the nation in the percentage of college graduates, and this corner of Kentucky has fewer college educated adults than most of the rest of the state. If Kentucky fails to greatly increase its number of college graduates, it will not be able to compete with other states and countries for the good jobs of the future. A poorly educated adult workforce remains one of this state’s greatest obstacles to higher education.

That’s why we hope this fall’s decline in enrollment at its community and technical colleges is not the start of a new trend. This state must make it easier for more of its residents to attend college. Our future depends on it.