(Estherville)– While most community colleges in Iowa saw a decrease in enrollment this fall, that was NOT the case at Iowa Lakes Community College. President Val Newhouse says the numbers there held steady…
“A year ago we were down 10 percent right in the heart of covid. So when you look at fall of 2020 we were down 10 percent; fall of 2021 we are flat with fall of 2020, so we haven’t made the gains we were hoping to but certainly some of our community colleges are seeing two year declines and we did not have that, so we’re very grateful for that.”
Newhouse says there’s one factor in particular that can be tied to the numbers…
“Primarily community colleges compete with industry and with the economy. When there’s a strong economy more people are going to school, or going into jobs, right out of high school, and more non-traditional students are working rather than skilling up with new degrees or diplomas or new academic plans, so that’s where we see the biggest competition, is people going right into the workforce out of high school.”
Newhouse says they’ve been working closely with several ROTC programs to help offset the flat enrollment numbers…
“We had 18 students living in our dorms for eight weeks getting flight training, and we had about 200 students taking cyber security courses remotely, and then we had our, and that was through the Junior Marine Corps ROTC. And then in August we had the JROTC for the Navy on campus to take some drone classes. And so we’re just trying to be creative. And while all of this is a little bit different, our community college scope is very, very broad as to who we serve and what we do. We’re doing a lot more with our industry partners in workforce training and customized training. Our 260 NEF, new jobs and incumbent worker training opportunities and all of that is really, really rapidly growing and outpacing some of the other declines that we have seen.”
Newhouse says nursing, ag and energy programs continue to see the most students, with industrial tech, engineering, automotive, small engine, electrical and aviation programs also being very popular.
