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Maine Community Colleges Expected to Grow

Posted on: Friday, 5 May 2006, 09:00 CDT

By Ruth-Ellen Cohen, Bangor Daily News, Maine

May 5--AUGUSTA -- High school graduates becoming adults is good news for the Maine Community College System, an official said Thursday.

"Sooner or later they're going to be our students," said Scott Knapp, president of Central Maine Community College in Auburn.

Even if someone doesn't enroll in the community college system right after high school, he still will be a potential student for the next 30 years because MCCS enrollment draws from students of all ages, he said.

In fact, the average age of the MCCS student is 27, Knapp told the Governor's Community College Advisory Council, which met at the Community College System office in Augusta.

The 12-member advisory group of top business, labor and economic development leaders has been charged by Gov. John Baldacci with examining and recommending how Maine's community colleges may be developed to meet the state's current and foreseeable education and work force needs. A report is expected this fall.

Even if there is a decline in the number of high school students -- a prediction that some demographic experts have made -- it doesn't portend a crisis for the community college system "because we're not an institution that gets all our students right out of high school," said Knapp, who also is interim president of York County Community College.

Maine has 12,473 community college students enrolled statewide, compared to the national average of 30,273 per state, Knapp said. But with more state funding for facilities and staff, Maine could easily add 18,000 to its enrollment.

"There's incredible potential for growth in the system if we have the resources to do it," he said.

Using data from the Maine Department of Education, Knapp said that in the fall of 2008, there is expected to be a "bulge" of 19-year-olds who are the children of the baby boomers.

"Any time there's a bulge in the population, it's good news for us for a long time because we appeal to students from 18 into their 50s," he said. Those people will be potential students for the next 30 years as they continue to move through the population, he added.

That said, the community colleges would still like to see more students enroll right out of high school, according to Knapp. He pointed out that the number of students coming to MCCS directly from high school has increased 50 percent over the last three years largely because of the conversion from the technical college system to the community college system, but also because of college readiness programs. In addition, because of the push by the state to increase the number of residents with bachelor's degrees, students are more aware of the benefits of college.

Currently, 10 percent of high school graduates enroll immediately into MCCS, compared with the national average of 17 percent.

High school students are a great population to bring in because they have parental support and they typically attend full time and then are off to get jobs, MCCS President John Fitzsimmons said.

Once students reach 27 they often have family obligations and "lots to juggle," he said.

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Copyright (c) 2006, Bangor Daily News, Maine

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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Source: Bangor Daily News (Bangor, Maine)

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