The Role of Academic Senates in
Enrollment Management
Fall 1999
1999 - 00 Educational Policies
Committee Hoke Simpson, Chair, Grossmont
College Lacy Barnes-Mileham, Reedley
College Elton Hall, Moorpark College Kate
Clark, Irvine Valley College Mary Rider,
Grossmont College Ian Walton, Mission
College Robert Porter, Saddleback College,
Student Representative
1998 - 99 Educational Policies
Committee Janis Perry, Chair,
Santiago Canyon College Linda Collins, Los
Medanos College Eva Conrad, Moorpark College,
CIO Representative Elton Hall, Moorpark
College Mary Rider, Grossmont College Hoke
Simpson, Grossmont College Kathy Sproles,
Hartnell College Ian Walton, Mission
College
Table of Contents
Abstract
Introduction Background and
Scope Current Regulation and
Statute Enrollment Management and Emerging
Themes in Higher Education Enrollment Trends in
California Enrollment Management
Considerations Enrollment Management
Strategies Role of the Local Academic
Senate Recommendations for Developing and
Evaluating Enrollment Management
Plans Summary Glossary of Enrollment
Management Key Terms Bibliography
ABSTRACT
This position paper
of the Academic Senate provides the background and
scope of enrollment management as it is defined
and practiced by educational institutions.
Emerging themes in higher education, and
enrollment trends in California, are used to frame
enrollment management considerations. A variety of
strategies for managing over- and under-enrollment
are presented. The paper concludes with the role
of the academic senate in developing and
evaluating enrollment management plans. A glossary
of enrollment management key terms is included at
the end.
INTRODUCTION
Whether in times of
scarcity or abundance of student demand for
courses, faculty must become involved in the
development of enrollment management decisions
that protect students’ access and nurture their
success in the learning environment. An expanding
student population that is increasingly diverse
must be assured access to college and
opportunities for success. This paper will focus
on academic implications of enrollment management.
The paper seeks to equip faculty with essential
terms and concepts and to clarify the role of
academic senates in enrollment management
decision-making.
The paper reviews
relevant regulation and statute, and provides the
background and scope of enrollment management as
it is portrayed and practiced by educational
institutions. Enrollment management considerations
are framed by discussions of emerging themes in
higher education and enrollment trends in
California. A variety of strategies for managing
over- and under-enrollment are presented. The
paper concludes with observations on the role of
the academic senate in developing and evaluating
enrollment management plans. A glossary of
enrollment management key terms is included at the
end that will assist local academic senates in
consulting collegially in enrollment management
issues at the campus and district levels.
Faculty have long
seen the need to shape the critical discussions
that inform enrollment management decisions. In
Spring 1998, the Academic Senate passed the
following resolution:
S98 17.02
Enrollment Management
Whereas there are many community
colleges that are currently unable to meet their
growth targets for enrollment, and
Whereas enrollment management and
establishment of floors for class sizes have a
serious impact on student success, and
Whereas the administration of many
community colleges are developing plans to control
enrollment by such activities as creating
contingency plans for using 4000 and 5000 accounts
to pay for enrollment shortfalls, creating
mega-divisions that temporarily generate increased
enrollments and freezing block grants and new
hires,
Therefore be it resolved that the
Academic Senate for California Community Colleges
direct the Executive Committee to write a position
paper that contains guidelines for local academic
senates to assure that they are thoroughly
involved in decision-making involving enrollment
management.
BACKGROUND AND SCOPE
Two papers recently
adopted by the Academic Senate for California
Community Colleges provide valuable information
and recommendations that can be applied to the
development of effective enrollment management
plans at the local level. In fact, Program Review: Developing a
Faculty Driven Process, adopted in April
1996, and Program
Discontinuance: A Faculty Perspective,
adopted in April 1998, are essential resources for
informing the discussion about enrollment
strategies. A central theme of both papers is the
need to develop a local academic senate position
regarding issues that are intrinsically
curricular, involving student access and success.
While some faculty may not always recognize it,
enrollment management is also such an issue.
In A Guide to Enrollment Growth
Management in the California Community
Colleges (1992),
the Community College League of California
(CCLC) defined enrollment growth management as
"strategies used to address the problems created
by the enrollment or potential enrollment of too
many students to be served by the available
resources." While CCLC focused on over enrollment,
currently enrollment management also is used to
address declining enrollment. For colleges that
are actively seeking additional students, the term
"enrollment management" is synonymous with
marketing, recruitment, and retention efforts.
Michael G. Dolence, in his book, A Primer for Campus
Administrators (1996), describes the term
as follows:
Strategic Enrollment
Management is a comprehensive process designed to
help an institution achieve and maintain the
optimum recruitment, retention and graduation
rates of students, where optimum is defined within
the academic context of the institution. As such,
SEM is an institution-wide process that embraces
virtually every aspect of an institution’s
function and culture.
The public
universities in California have historically
managed over- and under-enrollment by raising or
lowering the academic standards for admission.
Since community colleges are committed to open
access, scheduling and course offerings have been
used as the principal mechanisms for controlling
or enhancing growth. It is clear that enrollment
management increasingly is being utilized to
address a broad range of college policy and
processes including matriculation, curriculum
development, instructional delivery and style, and
student services. All of these must be placed
within the proper institutional context.
Local academic
senates are in a position to frame and articulate
the philosophical context of enrollment management
from a faculty perspective. As such, this paper
defines the term as follows:
Enrollment management
is a process by which students enrolled and class
sections offered are coordinated to achieve
maximum access and success for students. All
enrollment management decisions must be made in
the context of the local college mission and
educational master plan in addition to fiscal and
physical considerations.
CURRENT REGULATION AND
STATUTE
When seeking to make
recommendations on or revise local policy, it is
important for local academic senates to refer to
established Education Code statutes and Title 5
Regulations. While there are no regulations that
address enrollment management per se, the following
statutes and regulations that govern
matriculation, admissions and priority
registration can be informative:
Education Code
§76000, §§78031-32, Admission
to College refers to who can be admitted to
community college in and outside of the
established district and how inter-district
recruitment can take place.
Title 5 §55520 ff:
Describes matriculation regulations which preclude
using "any assessment instrument, method or
procedure to exclude any person from admission to
a community college."
Title 5 §56232 ff:
Provides for priority registration for Extended
Opportunity Programs and Services (EOP&S)
students.
Title 5 §58106
identifies factors that justify limiting
enrollment. These include: prerequisites, health
and safety considerations, facility limitations,
faculty workload, availability of faculty, funding
limitations, constraints of regional planning and
statutory or contractual requirements.
Title 5 §58108
permits enrollment priorities based on "special
registration assistance" for disabled and
disadvantaged to provide equal educational
opportunity, and a priority system for student
enrollment that is established pursuant to legal
authority of the local board of trustees. Further,
the regulations identify that no registration
procedures shall be used that result in
restricting enrollment to a specialized clientele.
Enrollment priorities may be established pursuant
to legal authority by the local board.
Local academic
senates need to be mindful of the potential impact
of enrollment priorities on different segments of
the community and on students with differing
educational needs and priorities.
ENROLLMENT MANAGEMENT AND EMERGING
THEMES IN HIGHER EDUCATION
The appearance of
enrollment management as an administrative
technique in California community colleges
coincides with an extended period of educational
under-funding. The low level of per student
funding, which became characteristic of the
California community colleges in the last two
decades, negatively impacted the participation
rate of California adults in community colleges
and has set in motion difficult choices relative
to educational offerings. The removal of
requirements for district residency in the early
1980s created a free flow system in which
neighboring districts compete for enrollment.
State mandated caps on enrollment have functioned
to regulate the flow of students through the
institutions, while funding for growth and cost of
living increases have not kept pace with the
increasing needs being experienced at the local
level. Enrollment management should be placed in
this context: a set of strategies to address how
to apply often inadequate resources toward
realizing the multiple missions of California
community colleges.
While state funding
of California community colleges began to rise
again in the mid 1990’s, reflecting the improved
state economy, the chronic under-funding of the
California system has left a legacy of
institutional inadequacies. The techniques of
enrollment management have been honed as methods
not only to modulate enrollment but also to manage
institutional priorities.
Two themes emerge in
current California higher education literature:
(1) the continuing importance of student access
and success and (2) the newer mantra, productivity
and efficiency. Faculty must provide a definition
of these terms as they relate to enrollment
management. The mission of the community college
system is to provide an "open door" to anyone who
can benefit from a college education. To assure
that the door is open wide enough to accommodate
and support everyone, community colleges provide a
comprehensive curriculum of transfer, vocational,
general education and basic skills courses.
Recent demographic
projections of a coming "tidal wave" of new
students (estimated by the California
Postsecondary Education Commission at nearly
one-half a million in the next decade) have led to
predictions that California institutions will be
overwhelmed. According to this argument, the state
simply will not be able to accommodate all of
these students with the same traditional
approaches. Faculty (both in California and
nationally) have been encouraged to modify
programs and offerings in order to compete
effectively with private proprietary schools or
distance education consortia which are cited as
threats to the continued survival of community
colleges. Fears of a "market share war" are
sparked as a means to convince faculty that their
future is uncertain unless they are more "market
driven."
These contradictory
injunctions—we will be overwhelmed by demand as
the new tidal wave hits, versus we are losing
students and will be left in history’s dustbin—are
both cited in support of turning to increasingly
business-minded approaches for the management and
rationing of educational opportunities. The
concern for compressed calendars, year-round
schooling, increased reliance on technology
mediated instruction to reduce the need for
"bricks and mortar," are all examples. While these
can be critical and appropriate strategies for
ensuring that working students and their families
are accommodated, faculty must raise the essential
question of the educational needs of students and
communities and not be stampeded into hasty
reforms for the sake of productivity and market
share.
Faculty have been
increasingly told they must become more concerned
with expanding the capacity of their colleges and
the number of students "produced." This is most
evident in the output approach utilized by the
Partnership for Excellence originated by the
Chancellor of California Community Colleges. The
Partnership measures are largely capacity measures
(numbers of students completing degrees and
certificates, or the number or rate of students
successfully completing courses and persisting
term-to-term). These speak to the numbers of
students moving through our institutions, rather
than the quality of the education they experience
while there.
Similarly, we are
told that private proprietary institutions are
more "flexible" and able to "deliver" education
more efficiently. They cater to student "demand"
to get through faster and with a minimum of
"extra" requirements. Here the pressure to move
students through—as contrasted with making the
most of their opportunities while there—is based
on a posited competitive shortage rather than an
overabundance of students.
Faculty should be
cautious in responding to such generalized
injunctions toward increased productivity and
capacity in the name of enrollment. While access
must be safeguarded, indeed enlarged, for it to be
meaningful, faculty must insist that it be access
to quality educational experiences.
Curricular decisions
need to be made on the basis of the best
educational interests of the students and
communities we serve. While economics of
enrollment and productivity are central to access,
without a grounding in a core commitment to
excellence, promises of access are potentially
bankrupt.
ENROLLMENT TRENDS IN
CALIFORNIA
Enrollment in
California community colleges is affected by the
state’s economic cycles. During good economic
times (such as 1979-82, 1987-1992, and 1995-98),
the colleges received additional funding and were
able to increase enrollments. However, during the
most recent recession (1992-95) the community
colleges’ systemwide cut over 9,000 course
sections and reduced enrollments by about 160,000
students. As Thomas J. Nussbaum, Chancellor of
California Community Colleges, stated in Important Historical Data, Trends,
and Analysis Relevant to Full-time/Part-time
Issues—A Working Paper (1999), "…The
overall historical context depicts a significantly
underfunded system that has been forced to reduce
access during times of economic downturn." In
Chapter One of The Challenge
of the Century (CPEC 1998), Recommendation
1.8 indicates that the Governor, Legislature, and
respective governing boards should prioritize
access if rationing is required in the future
because "…the State does not provide sufficient
resources to support access for all who could
benefit from postsecondary education."
According to The Higher Education Update
(98-5) the California Postsecondary Education
Commission (CPEC) "estimates that demand for
higher education is expected to increase by nearly
one-half million students by the year 2005—a
figure that appears to be beyond the capacity of
our higher education institutions to accommodate
through traditional means."
There is no
argument that the centrality of
education—particularly beyond high school—is the
essential component that will guarantee
California’s future success. There is also no
question that faculty have played the key role in
the delivery of the skills and knowledge that are
required. What faculty do in the classroom has
always had a powerful impact on the making or
breaking of students’ college experience. In the
future, what faculty decide outside the classroom
may be as important for students who otherwise
would be denied access. Community college faculty,
like members of other professions, must take on
expanded decision-making roles and
responsibilities to ensure enrollment
opportunities are available to all of California’s
citizens. It will be the decisions made at the
local community college level that will determine
whether the unsettling recommendations made by
CPEC are ever necessary.
ENROLLMENT MANAGEMENT
CONSIDERATIONS
Other enrollment
management considerations include, but are not
necessarily limited to, the following items:
Enrollment
Cap, Growth and FTES Goals
Enrollment is also
influenced by the state establishment of an
enrollment cap and the funding mechanisms affected
by the cap. An annual cap for community college
growth is set during the state budget development
process. When enrollment caps limit funded
enrollment, enrollment management is practiced
whether or not an enrollment management policy is
in place.
Each college locally
sets a growth target, or FTES goal, usually on an
annual basis. This target (and actual local growth
from previous years) is often used in
multi-college districts to allocate annual funds
from the district to each college. Within the
college, the desired FTES for a given year will
form the backdrop or parameter for expected course
and section offerings. While faculty have
generally not participated in discussions of
growth or FTES goals, these goals are critical to
the level of access at the college. These agreed
upon goals are integral to curriculum and program
planning, as well as tied to budget decisions. As
such, local academic senates should work with
local administrations to establish the process and
criteria by which these larger parameters for
enrollment management are set. This can occur both
at the district and the college level.
Full-time and
Part-time Faculty
Local academic
senates and collective bargaining agents should
note that enrollment management generally has
profound implications for faculty employment. The
reform bill AB1725 noted that the use of part-time
faculty in the community colleges should not be
primarily to effect cost savings, but rather
should be for programmatic reasons, to enhance or
bring special and current expertise to programs
which might otherwise not be available. This tends
to be particularly important in occupational
programs which need to incorporate current
business techniques or technologies on a regular
basis.
However,
despite AB1725’s legislative intent that 75% of
course offerings should be taught by full-time
faculty, California community colleges have come
to rely on increasing numbers of part-time
faculty. Part-time faculty generally are the most
vulnerable to contraction and expansion of course
sections, as full-time faculty generally retain
rights to "bump" their part-time colleagues in
case of contraction. Part-time faculty lost due to
layoffs may not return to the college when
opportunities again appear due to expanded
enrollment. Retention of quality faculty cannot be
maintained when poor decision-making related to
enrollment creates continued unpredictability in
program offerings over time. Thus, poor enrollment
management undermines program quality and
adversely impacts part-time faculty in particular.
It is in the interest of all concerned—faculty,
administrators, staff, but most especially
students—to strive for the most accurate
projections and scheduling practices possible.
Administrative
Productivity
Efficient and
effective administrative structures are critical
to ensuring that taxpayer dollars are directed to
meet the educational needs of the community. While
enrollment management techniques historically have
focused on faculty productivity, local academic
senates also need to raise issues of management
and classified productivity. Containment of
administrative costs is a critical component of
enrollment management, as the relative funds
available for instruction, library and counseling
services for students are inversely related to
administrative costs. Faculty are encouraged to
work collegially with administrators to define and
effect appropriate measures of administrative
productivity and outcomes to parallel those for
faculty. Just as instructional cost considerations
must be weighed in educational planning and budget
processes, so must the allocation and
effectiveness of administrative and staff FTE.
Without such consideration, enrollment management
approaches lack the comprehensiveness that allows
for a sustainable college economy.
The state stipulates
that a minimum of 50% of apportionment funds in a
given district must be devoted to direct
instructional costs (including instructors’
salary, benefits, and instructional aides). While
this minimum acknowledges that indirect costs
(such as registration, administrative overhead,
and plant maintenance) are a necessary component
of college budgets, the Academic Senate has
consistently held that 50% is a low standard. A
well-functioning college would devote
proportionately more to instruction.
Alternative
Revenue Resources
It is also critical
to note that enrollment management techniques
historically have been focused on managing existing resources. Both
administrators and faculty need to consider
additional revenue sources, and academic senates
must assume their responsibility for developing
the processes by which such funds will be
allocated (Title 5, §53200.c.10). In addition to
expected general and categorical funds, colleges
increasingly need to seek bond measures, grants,
partnerships and endowments in order to expand
access and maintain institutional and educational
integrity. Administrators are most well positioned
to seek and provide institutional support to
pursue such outside funding. Given the workloads
of faculty, administrative support is essential if
grants and other funding sources are to be
available for faculty initiated projects to
improve student success.
Collective
Bargaining Issues
Enrollment management
plans should include the input of the two faculty
entities that best represent the interests of all
faculty—the local academic senate and the local
bargaining agent. While academic senates are to be
the keepers of the academic missions of their
colleges, unions can protect both the integrity of
the faculty governance system and protect working
conditions of faculty so that quality education
can occur. When unions negotiate working
conditions/due process rights, the welfare issues
of the faculty, they create protections for
academic freedom, curricular improvement, and a
quality learning environment.
To delineate the
functions of unions and academic senates as they
relate to enrollment management, it is useful to
think about the connection between process (union)
and standards/criteria (local academic senate).
For example, consider the arena of class
cancellation during times of financial exigency.
The process for
notifying affected faculty of the class
cancellation or for establishing bumping rights in
cases of faculty reassignment is often the purview
of the union, but developing criteria to determine which
classes will be cut is often the purview of the
local academic senate.
The following
subjects inherent in enrollment management are
generally considered within the scope of
collective bargaining and can have a significant
impact on working conditions:
Timelines for notification of
faculty that classes will be cancelled.
Class changes that affect
right of assignment.
Changes that involve seniority
in assignment and bumping rights in cases of
class cancellation.
Rights of refusal to faculty
reassignment.
Retraining of faculty in cases
of program discontinuance or reduction in
classes of a certain kind or in a certain area.
Class-loads/work-load.
Class size.
Hours of work during the
instructional day.
Clearly, any
enrollment management policy and its process for
implementation may have an impact on working
conditions. A close partnership between local
academic senates and bargaining agents as they
help to develop an enrollment management plan will
assure that faculty working conditions are neither
violated nor undermined, and unions can continue
to underpin the local academic senates’ efforts to
preserve quality instruction.
ENROLLMENT MANAGEMENT
STRATEGIES
Decision-making in
the area of enrollment management must involve an
agreed-upon process, with a clear set of
principles and criteria, and include regular
communication, to avoid unfair enrollment
management practices. The academic senate needs to
play a key role in defining the philosophy,
process, and criteria for enrollment management
decisions.
If faculty are to
participate effectively in enrollment management
decision-making, it is necessary that they
recognize the strategies employed in controlling
enrollments. These are manifold, as the following
discussion will indicate. Faculty want to be
particularly sensitive, of course, to those
strategies with curricular implications.
Recruitment
Clearly, every
college has the option of actively recruiting
students, or of simply sitting back and letting
them come. In recent years, growth has been the
name of the game; however, this has not always
been the case, and the anticipated influx of Tidal
Wave II suggests that it may not be in the near
future. Strategies to note in particular here
are:
High school articulation: The
college is actively engaged with area high
schools, keeping counselors abreast of degree
and certificate requirements and seeking to
develop cohorts of students who will enter the
community college upon graduation.
High school matriculation: The
college provides on-site assessment and
orientation at feeder high school sites.
Feedback to high schools on
student performance: The college provides
feedback to the high schools on the college
performance of its graduates and work with the
high schools to develop programs in areas where
performance is weak.
Faculty in various disciplines
engage in outreach to the high schools.
The college sponsors campus
events for the community and feeder schools.
The college offers a
college-within-a-college, such as a middle
college, allowing juniors and seniors to
complete their last two years on the college
campus.
The college offers summer
bridge programs, financial aid, counseling and
other support services to enable a broader range
of students to attend the college.
Registration
Priorities
A college will
sometimes recognize cohorts of students in its
registration process and grant registration
priority on this basis. Such registration
incentives need to be carefully scrutinized to
ensure that they do not violate principles of
student equity. Some typically recognized cohorts
are:
Honors students.
Project for Adult College
Education (PACE) students.
Students meeting degree and
certificate prerequisites.
Students who are either new or
continuing.
Students who are either full-
or part-time.
Registration
Process
A college can be more
or less inclusive through its use, or lack
thereof, of a variety of registration
procedures:
Walk-in registration.
Telephone registration.
Online Web-based registration.
Class waiting lists: The
college can place students on wait lists for
closed classes and automatically enroll and
notify them as space becomes available during
the registration period. The wait lists can then
be used by instructors to determine priority for
crashers.
Bulleted courses: Offer key
courses in high-demand areas as bulleted in the
schedule, indicating to students that, when
enrollment exceeds a certain level, another
section of the course will be opened at the same
day and time.
Numbers of
Sections Offered
Points to be
considered here are:
The number of sections of a
course offered should conform to the Educational
Master Plan.
Sufficient sections are
offered at an appropriate frequency (especially
for sequenced courses) to facilitate program
completion.
There are enough sections to
meet demand in high-demand areas, such as ESL
and basic skills.
Uses of the
Budget
Faculty need to be
alert to spending patterns in the area of
enrollment and to attend to the following
points:
The marginal cost of adding
another section of a class needs to be regularly
recognized.
The college should maintain a
"Basic Skills Fund" from which to draw when
expanded offerings are called for.
Matriculation monies should be
used to facilitate enrollments. Local academic
senate presidents have sign-off authority on
matriculation plans, and should use this to
assure a full discussion of the college
matriculation plan to ensure that it supports
the Educational Master Plan and sound academic
policy.
Class
Size
One of the most
obvious enrollment management strategies is the
setting of class minimum and maximum enrollments,
where a low minimum and a high maximum reflect an
effort to increase enrollments, and a high
minimum/low maximum, an effort to decrease them.
Issues for faculty to consider here are:
The academic optimum versus
the facilities maximum: Since funding for
community colleges is based on FTES, it will
always be financially desirable to maximize the
use of facilities (within the enrollment cap).
This need, however, must be balanced against
considerations of educational soundness. Even
when the facilities permit, it is clearly folly,
for instance, to permit, much less insist on,
high per-section enrollments in classes such as
ESL, foreign languages, and basic skills, where
student learning depends on high levels of
student participation and individual attention
from the instructor. The standard should be that
class size is determined by discipline faculty
based on the academic needs of students in each
course.
Load factors: This is an area
in which local academic senates need to confer
with union representatives to ensure that loads
reflect an "academic optimum," and, in reference
to class size, that maximums and minimums
reflect the nature of the work being done from
discipline to discipline. For example, many
colleges acknowledge the work load for
composition courses by reducing faculty work
load factors for those courses.
Lecture/lab ratio: Another
area for senate/union collaboration is the
determination of appropriate areas for the
support of large lecture/small lab
configurations and the variations thereon.
Curriculum approval: Local
academic senates need to establish the principle
that large classes require instructional aides
and other instructional support strategies, and
to withhold curriculum approval where this has
not been accounted for in advance. Local
academic senates and unions can collaborate in
this area as well, to negotiate appropriate
enrollment triggers that will automatically
entail the use of support mechanisms.
Productivity goals: Almost all
colleges engage in the practice of setting
so-called "productivity goals," which are
measured in terms of Weekly Student Contact
Hours per Full Time Equivalent Faculty
(WSCH/FTEF). A productivity goal of 500, for
example, requires that an instructor teaching 15
hours per week have an average of 33.3 students
present for each hour of instruction on the
roster on census day. A goal of 600 requires
that 40 students be present for each of the 15
hours. In short, higher productivity goals
require larger class sizes and attention to
first-day-to-census-day retention strategies.
Faculty need to insist that the setting of such
goals occurs only in the larger context of an
enrollment management plan (a) that takes into
account the need to offer all classes necessary
for program completion, even when the more
advanced sections will be persistently
low-enrolled, and (b) which involves clear
strategies for teaching those classes whose
content and/or instructional methodology require
smaller class sizes than the average as mandated
by the "productivity goal."
Compressed
Scheduling
Faculty need to be
sensitive to the academic implications of various
approaches to compressed scheduling and to ensure
that practices in this area are academically
sound. Some typical "compression" techniques and
the issues they raise are:
Short-term classes: Do the
subject matter and the instructional methods fit
the term, such that there is adequate
opportunity for learning to occur?
Block scheduling: Is teaching
a class in a 3-hour block on one day a sound
alternative to one hour on each of three days,
given the subject and optimal instructional
methodology?
Weekend courses: This ultimate
form of "course truncation" requires special
vigilance to ensure that there is genuine
opportunity for learning given the subject and
instructional methodology.
Open entry/open exit classes
and labs: The critical issue here is whether
staffing is adequate to ensure that instruction
and learning take place. Is an open entry/open
exit Physical Education class, for example,
truly a "class," or simply an effort to build
FTES by offering a low-cost alternative to a
health club or fitness center?
Effective
institutional enrollment decisions must include
the faculty perspective on the factors that
influence students’ decision to enroll and stay in
college. The current preoccupation with scheduling
in accelerated, nontraditional course patterns
should not be allowed to short circuit essential
consideration of the quality or soundness of the
educational experience for students. While courses
may be offered in condensed formats, not all
subjects lend themselves to such "anytime,
anywhere" approaches. The opportunity to fully
cover material, to allow for student development
and content learning, as well as extended time on
task and student-faculty interaction are all keys
to student success. Faculty, through their local
academic senate and departments, have a
responsibility to raise and consider the
appropriateness of course delivery formats for
given disciplines and for differing student
clientele. Student needs and best interests should
be the determining factors—rather than efficiency
alone.
Scheduling of
Class Hours
Times when classes
are offered can make a significant difference in
student enrollment, as well as contribute to
student success and program completion. Important
considerations here are:
Courses should be scheduled so
as to avoid conflict with other courses in the
same pattern.
High-demand classes should be
scheduled in non-prime-time, or "off,"
hours.
The various aspects
of class scheduling are examples of enrollment
management decisions that can unduly influence the
curriculum, as preferences for highly productive
courses and short-term profitability can disfigure
a college’s offerings if such considerations
result in compromises to sound pedagogy. Faculty
must question and assert the right of students to
have time to learn and
synthesize knowledge. They must insist that the
Carnegie Unit be considered in the construction of
any college schedule.
Calendar
Issues
The changes to the
175-day rule (Title 5 §§55700-55732 and §58120)
have opened the door to the institution of
alternative academic calendars, which in turn has
raised issues of both access and academic
integrity:
Start date of the semester:
This should be established as part of a
matriculation plan that is coordinated (or
deliberately uncoordinated) with the schedules
of surrounding high schools and two- and
four-year colleges.
Late-start courses: The
college should schedule a percentage of
late-start basic skills classes to accommodate
students who find themselves in need of
developmental work in the first weeks of the
semester, both at the home college and/or in
surrounding insitutions.
Short semesters and
intersession courses: A calendar with shortened
semesters, which in turn allows for a longer
winter intersession, needs to strike an
appropriate academic balance, such that more
substantive classes can be offered in
intersession without damage to the content of
classes offered in the regular
semester.
Class
Cancellation
This, of course, is
the area which faculty most readily identify with
"enrollment management." Faculty need to seek to
influence their college’s class cancellation
policies to be sure that they are conducive to
both access and success. Among the issues:
Low enrollment classes are
often those needed for program completion and
should be protected from blanket cancellation
policies.
Budgeting should be
sufficiently flexible that money from cancelled
classes can be shifted to other areas where it
is needed. It might be used, for example, to
salvage a low-enrolled class in another division
that is needed for program completion.
When a section must be
cancelled, students should be helped to enroll
in other sections that fit within their
schedules.
There needs to be clearly
defined strategies to teach consistently
low-enrolled classes.
Class cancellation policies
should be written and clearly stated as part of
a comprehensive enrollment management plan that
comprises a rational scheduling plan, maximizing
student access and success as well as facility
use.
Course
Repetition Policy
Title 5 is very clear
on course repetition policy:
The attendance of students
repeating a course for substandard work may be
claimed only once for state apportionment. (See
§58161.b.3.)
The attendance of students
repeating a course for the development of skills
(such as art, music, or physical education) may
be claimed for state apportionment for not more
than three semesters or five quarters. (See
§58161.c.3.)
Faculty should work
with administration to see that the Title 5
Regulations are strictly applied and that, where
regulations allow for exceptions, the district has
clearly written policies identifying the
conditions under which these may be granted.
Retention
Strategies
Because state funding
for community colleges is based on FTES measured
at the first census, colleges and instructors will
engage in a variety of strategies to ensure that
students, once enrolled, remain so. These
include:
Imposition of course
prerequisites.
Assessment and placement.
Counseling.
Maintaining a supportive class
climate.
Offering resources such as
reading and writing centers to which students
can be referred for course-specific assistance
when they encounter "sticking points" in their
progress.
Persistence
Strategies
Colleges and
instructors may also engage in a number of
strategies aimed at increasing term-to-term
enrollment. These include:
Schedule alignment, wherein
sequenced courses are taught at the same times
in successive semesters.
Informing students in an
earlier class in a series of sequenced courses
about the next class in the sequence.
Organizing students into
cohorts based on similar academic goals (such as
UC transfer) so that they might advise and
support one another as they progress.
Offering a full complement of
support services—tutoring, mentoring, sports and
career counseling, etc.—designed to encourage
and facilitate student success.
In stressing the need
for faculty vigilance regarding the employment of
enrollment management strategies, the Academic
Senate by no means intends to suggest that faculty
will necessarily be locked in a perpetual struggle
with administration. To the contrary, the ideal
envisioned by the Academic Senate is one in which
administration and faculty work as a team to
produce a plan that meets both the fiscal needs of
the institution as well as the academic needs of
the students. For this to occur, faculty need to
become more aware of the need for enrollment
management and of the techniques available to
achieve it. Department chairs scheduling for the
coming year often find themselves under pressure
from members of the department wanting to teach
their "pet schedules." For faculty to become aware
of and vigilant regarding matters of enrollment
management is for them to become aware of the
larger institutional issues involved in things
like scheduling, and is thus for them to become
more effective contributors to a plan that
promotes both fiscal and academic integrity, and
student access and success.
Colleges must be
solvent and wisely utilize the public dollar.
Enrollment management done well can be a
partnership in effective college operations and
vibrant educational offerings. Faculty must work
closely with administration to ensure that the
rationale for making decisions is indeed informed
by a commitment to the best education possible
within the limits of funding. An effective
enrollment plan is akin to a set of sustainable
practices in a given ecological community—able to
sustain operations without exhausting resources or
compromising the basic tenets of sound
education.
ROLE OF THE LOCAL ACADEMIC
SENATE
It is essential that
local academic senates determine the rationale,
principles and processes for enrollment management
at their colleges. They must be included in the
research, planning, and decision-making process.
Often enrollment management is referred to as
merely an "operational" task, but as defined
above, enrollment management encompasses many of
the academic and professional areas listed in
Title 5 Regulation §53200. Indeed, policies and
processes for student success, educational program
development and program review, and curriculum are
integral components of enrollment management, and
hence are inherently academic matters for
collegial consultation. Similarly, enrollment
management is inextricably connected to
educational planning and budget development
processes, and as such must be subject for
consultation with local academic senates.
The same rationale
given for involving local academic senates in the
program discontinuance process necessarily applies
to the development of an effective enrollment
management plan. The Academic Senate paper, Program Discontinuance: A Faculty
Perspective (April 1998), stated:
Through an organized
resolution process or the development of a
position paper, the local academic senate needs to
lead in developing a well-defined, educationally
sound program discontinuance policy that can
affect one of the most important processes for
defining the balance of a college curriculum and
the future of students’ educational pursuits.
Since enrollment
management decisions have the potential to impact
an even greater number of students than program
discontinuance, it is imperative that local
academic senates take a leading role in clarifying
the philosophy and guidelines behind the
enrollment management policies of their campuses,
as well as systemwide.
RECOMMENDATIONS FOR DEVELOPING AND
EVALUATING ENROLLMENT MANAGEMENT PLANS
The criteria for the
development and implementation of an enrollment
management process should be at the local level,
determined by the unique needs and characteristics
of a college campus and its surrounding community.
They should:
Ensure that student access and
success are of first priority.
Utilize qualitative
data—faculty’s commitment to a comprehensive and
balanced curriculum must be acknowledged.
Innovative courses are created when faculty
recognize the need to address their subject in a
new way and when they are supported in their
efforts to improve their programs. Student
experiences and outcomes are also important
factors to consider.
Be dedicated to ensuring the
best educational experiences possible within the
context of available resources.
Relate to the college’s
mission and goals.
Be based upon uniform
measures.
Be based upon consistent
principles and policies applied across the
curriculum.
Be based upon trends over
time, typically three to five years.
Utilize quantitative data–in
making enrollment management decisions, the
following quantitative factors need to be
considered: consistently weak or high
enrollments, course retention rates that are
typically below expectations, term-to-term
persistence rates for student achievement,
over-enrollment and long waiting lists, limited
scheduling options, averaging student enrollment
by sections offered, and the variety of ways to
provide instruction (on-line, telecourse,
accelerated, weekend, semester length), the
match or fit between pedagogical design and
delivery modes and student profiles and learning
styles.
SUMMARY
The mission and goals
of California community colleges are to ensure
that every student, regardless of financial and
academic constraints, has access to an education,
and has the opportunity to be successful in that
endeavor. At the beginning of the Industrial Age,
education was a luxury available primarily to the
privileged upper-class. Then, because of
institutions like the California Community College
System, higher education became an option
accessible to anyone who sought specific training
or a college degree. Education is now recognized
as both a right and a necessity for every citizen
who wants to understand, enjoy and participate in
a rapidly changing world. The challenges that
California faces in the next century include rapid
growth, population diversity, economic
instability, job market shifts, and an expanded
demand for higher education from an increasingly
under-prepared student population. In the 1998
paper, The Challenge of the
Century, The CPEC asserts that "we are not
prisoners of that context," as long as we make
choices about how to address those challenges, " …
including the relative importance (assigned) to
developing policies, programs, and practices that
promote equitable opportunities for all our
students in order that they can prepare, pursue,
and succeed in postsecondary education."
As the acknowledged
leaders in the academic environment, faculty have
the obligation to raise their collective voice
when enrollment management decisions are made
regarding the accessibility of a comprehensive
college program that serves all of California’s
citizens.
GLOSSARY OF ENROLLMENT MANAGEMENT
KEY TERMS
To be more proactive
and effective in consultation, faculty must learn
the vocabulary and understand the concepts that
drive enrollment management in times of scarcity
and abundance.
ADA ADA = Average Daily
Attendance This formula for calculating state
funding was replaced by FTES. ADA is no longer a
relevant term for community college funding.
Census Census = the date
enrollment is established in a class for funding
purposes. Census is the Monday closest to the
point at which 20% of the class has been completed
(Title 5 §58003.1.b). For the primary terms,
this date is typically the Monday of the fourth
week of a semester based on 20% of 17.5 weeks =
3.5 weeks rounded to four weeks); the number
of students enrolled in a class on that date is
the enrollment number used in the funding
formula. For short term classes, the census date
is calculated individually for each short term
pattern.
FTE FTE = full-time
equivalent
This is used to refer
to:
full-time
equivalent faculty, which should more clearly be
abbreviated as FTEF and/or to full-time faculty
load, e.g., a 3-hour lecture class is listed as
.20 FTE or 20% of a 100% load.
FTES FTES = full-time
equivalent students
For state
accounting purposes, a full-time student who
attends 15 hours per week for 35 weeks (two
primary terms). The rule is: 15 hours x 35 weeks
= 525 total WSCH = 1 FTES
Another common look
at FTES on a semester basis is the number of
students enrolled times the hours per week for
17.5 weeks divided by 525: 10 students x three
hours per week x 17.5 weeks = 525. 525 divided
by 525 = 1 FTES
There are four
specific formulas for FTES depending on the
characteristics of the course and scheduling
pattern: (1) weekly (semester length), (2) daily
(short term), (3) actual hours (also called
positive attendance), or (4) independent study,
work experience, distance learning methods. The
amount of money paid by the state for each FTES
will differ among Districts.
Primary Term The fall and
spring semesters are primary
terms.
The terms are between
16 to 18 weeks long including both instructional
and flex days. Courses within this average 17.5
week period may meet for the full 17.5 weeks
(semester length courses; FTES calculated by
weekly attendance accounting formula) or may meet
for fewer that the full 17.5 weeks (see short term
courses below). Summer is an intersession, not a
primary term.
Short Term Short term
courses meet for less than the 17.5 weeks of a
primary term. These courses may be scheduled
within the primary term period (e.g., 6-week or
12-week classes) or during an intersession (e.g.,
summer). Funding for short-term classes may be
calculated either by the daily attendance
accounting method or by actual hours attendance
accounting method.
WSCH WSCH = weekly student
contact hours
As a generalization,
the formulas for state funding are a function of
weekly student contact hours (the amount of time
faculty and students interact). This is simply a
count of the number of scheduled hours per week
students meet with faculty. This provides an
estimate of the funding to be allocated during the
coming year. However, if a college schedules a
significant number of non-traditional classes,
e.g., 12-week classes, one-day seminars, etc., an
estimate based on WSCH will be a less accurate
estimate.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Academic Senate for
California Community Colleges, "Program Discontinuance: A Faculty
Perspective," Position Paper, adopted April
1998.
Academic Senate for
California Community Colleges, "Program Review: Developing a
Faculty Driven Process," Position Paper,
adopted April 1996.
Academic Senate for
California Community Colleges, "The Future of the Community
College: A Faculty Perspective," Position
Paper, adopted November 1998.
California
Postsecondary Education Commission, "Toward a
Greater Understanding of the State’s Educational
Equity Policies, Programs, and Practices: The
College Experience," Higher
Education Update, February 1998.
California
Postsecondary Education Commission, "Toward a
Greater Understanding of the State’s Educational
Equity Policies, Programs, and Practices: The
Commission’s Recommendations," Higher Education Update,
June 1998.
California
Postsecondary Education Commission, "The Challenge
of the Century," March 1998.
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