MWCC President Feeling ‘Optimistic’ After Uptick in Enrollment
By Elysian Alder | Editor-in-Chief
After a decade of precipitous declines in enrollment, Massachusetts community colleges are now poised to experience an enrollment resurgence, signaling the potential for positive developments in higher education institutions across the state. Mount Wachusett Community College, in particular, has already begun to see the results of this shift. “We put a budget together to be perhaps down 6%, and we’re up 12%,” explained MWCC President James Vander Hooven. “So it’s an 18% swing in our budget and 12% increase in students.”read more
Enrollment numbers at community colleges across Massachusetts have plummeted, with many factors — including the COVID-19 pandemic — contributing to the decline. The Mount is no exception. “We are down, like every community college,” said James Vander Hooven, President of Mount Wachusett Community College. “I know we are in a challenging time.”
According to The Boston Globe, from the fall semester of 2019 to the beginning of the fall in 2022, 13,000 dropped out of community college, and it is feared most of those students will not return. The article also states that most of those students were parents who are unable to attend school while also caring for their family. The largest drop in all community colleges came between the fall of 2019 to 2020, when 8,600 dropped out to work or take care of family. The number of students who enrolled from 2012 to 2022 fell 37%, which has left roughly 6,000 students in the state left attending community college. Data from the Massachusetts Department of Higher Education indicates that MWCC is smaller than most other community colleges, so even as all other community college enrollment numbers decline, the impact on the Mount is especially noteworthy.read more
