In every team and department at Northwest Vista College, there are always great stories to tell that show faculty and staff going above and beyond.While it’s hard to capture every story, we hope to periodically share in this space some of the major accomplishments or projects that are taking place. Members of the executive team will write about important topics that they feel NVC employees should be made aware of.
Let us know about the positive things your area is doing to help students or improve processes by contacting myself or NVC Marketing & Strategic Communications.
– Dr. Ric Baser, NVC President
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Dr. Daniel Powell
Vice President for Academic Success
As we begin our spring semester, we are seeing a drop in enrollment intensity. On average, students are registering for .5 credits less than in previous years. This trend is consistent from the fall semester. While our enrollment headcount remains a little behind relative to our budgeted projections, it is our number of semester credit hours that students enroll in that is lagging significantly. Unfortunately, this is also how we are funded with tuition revenue and contact hour reimbursement from the state.
This also has implications on our average class size which also has adverse budget implications. While it is still a little too early to analyze the spring semester average class size, you can see by the chart below how this has significantly impacted our fall semesters which have been steadily declining right before this steep drop. If enrollment thresholds aren’t met, classes may be canceled to save on instructional costs.
Enrollment intensity impacts much more than the budget. Our data analysis reveals that the more credit hours a student takes in their first year, the more likely they are to graduate. About half of students across Alamo College District completed 15 or more credit hours in their first year in 2016 and 30% of those students graduated in three years from the time they started. If a student actually makes it to 30 or more credit hours, they are 55% likely to graduate in 3 years. If students are taking less credit hours, this impacts their ability to persist to graduation.
To help build enrollment intensity and help students persist during this extraordinary time, the NVC and other colleges in the Alamo College District are offering an expanded summer momentum program that offers free (last dollar scholarship) summer tuition for eligible students. For more information about this and how a student may strategically adapt their spring schedule with our Flex II offerings to get free tuition, visit this website.
