NCCC student enrollment up 6% this semester

Niagara County Community College has experienced something this semester it has not seen in more than a decade — an increase in new students.

At the college’s monthly Board of Trustees meeting, President William Murabito announced the college exceeded its enrollment goal, with the college at 6.1% over where it needed to be.

“That is wonderful, especially after the declines that we’ve seen,” said Alissa Shugats-Cummings, the interim vice president of student services.

Enrollment this semester is at 3,394 students, of which 3,009 were regular students and 386 are high school students taking College Acceleration Program courses.

Of those regular students, 924 are part-time, 894 are first-year, 122 are enrolled in certificate programs, and 91 take at least one course starting after 4 p.m. SUNY enrollment statistics show that is a notable increase of first-year students from 2022, which has 806 students, and the highest since fall 2019, 1,060 students.

Along with incoming freshman, some students are either transfers or readmitted students. 431 of those first-year students reside outside of Niagara County, including 14 out-of-state and 14 international students.

While the total college enrollment during the fall 2022 semester was 3,909 students, 2,832 were regular students while 1,077 were CAP students. Enrollment for spring 2023 was 2,920, with 2,452 regular students and 468 CAP students.

Shugats-Cummings said the minimum goal the college had for enrolled credit hours for the semester was 36,270. It ended up in excess of 38,000 credit hours.

A full-time course load a semester is 12 or more credit hours, which is not always practical for students. The part-time students are sometimes parents, full-time workers or caregivers.

“The credit hours (per student) depends on what a student wants,” Shugats-Cummings explained.

She attributed the increase in enrollment to improved recruitment and retention efforts and making the application process easier.

“We’re looking at where students are coming from,” Shugats-Cummings added, “where we’ve seen an increase in not only applications but enrolled students, and focusing on those.”

According to SUNY statistics from fall 2012 to fall 2022, NCCC had experienced a decline of 2,897 students over the past decade, or 43%. Each year experienced a decline, from a 1.6% drop, or 105 students in fall 2013 to an 11.7% drop, or 578 students, in fall 2020.

Over that same timespan, SUNY campuses had experienced an overall decrease of 98,204 students, or 21%, with community colleges seeing a decline of 83,674 students, or 34%.

“Just like all community colleges in the state, we’ve seen continuous enrollment decline for a decade,” Shugats-Cummings said. “We are excited about this enrollment increase.”