The Voice - Student Newspaper

Economic bust may lead to increased enrollments

Will the sinking economy result in rocketing enrollments at Glendale Community College (GCC), and elsewhere?

That's one of the questions being posed by college officials a year into a nationwide recession that began in December 2007. Conventional wisdom dictates that bad economies trigger higher enrollments as older workers seek to improve their education and job skills, said Tom Gariepy, a spokesman for the Maricopa County Community College District.

However, Gariepy said he's not prepared to conjecture that conventional wisdom will hold true in today's troubled economy.

"It's difficult to predict anything with any degree of accuracy, including whether enrollment will go up or down," Gariepy said last week, the day that the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, Mass., declared the current recession.

This is especially true for workers who not only have lost their jobs but may be on the verge of losing their homes, Gariepy said. They may not have the time or money to afford going back to college, he added.

"But it's clear that when people want to improve their education, community college is a popular place to be," Gariepy said.

Currently the college district, which oversees GCC and nine other campuses, has an enrollment of 120,096 students, as compared to 118,665 a year ago, an increase of 1.2 percent, according to figures reported on the district's Web site.

At GCC, the number is slightly down. The campus has a current enrollment of 18,228, as compared to 18,444 a year ago, a decrease of 1.2 percent.

Nearly 66 percent of GCC students are 24 or younger, according to figures reported in a district study. Another 22 percent are in the age group of 25 to 39.

Jack Becker, an academic advisor at GCC, said he deals with students with an average age of about 28.

"We're seeing a lot of older students who are coming back," Becker said. "They understand that their jobs are being phased out or being outsourced overseas, so they want to upgrade their education and improve their career prospects."

Jane Gill, 54, a pre-nursing student at GCC, said she wants to improve her education, although she is not necessarily motivated by today's faltering economy.

"I don't see myself as being ready to retire for a very long time," Gill said. "I would rather be working as a nurse than my current job in the legal field."

Arizona's economy, according to a college district study, began to retreat in summer 2007 as the state's collapsing housing market, combined with higher energy costs and tighter credit, began to impact the rest of the economy.

An "economic correction" may signal opportunities for the district, as displaced workers seeking new careers or upgrading skills enroll for classes, the study says. However, the district "faces increasingly strong competition from Arizona State University and other local private sector education providers," the study says.

In the meantime, Patricia Vogel, director of institutional advancement at GCC, said she's skeptical about enrollments going up during times of economic hardship.

"It's something that I've always heard, but I've never seen the economic indicators that would prove this is true," Vogel said.

For example, Vogel cited a GCC study showing that from 1990 through 2004, enrollments at GCC roughly kept pace with the average number of new jobs that were being created throughout Maricopa County.

Beginning in 2004, the enrollment at GCC began to dip although the number of new jobs continued to increase, Vogel said. That seems to defy the conventional wisdom that enrollments increase as the economy moves in the other direction, she said.

Vogel said the jury is still out on the enrollment impact of today's economy.