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Kirkwood Marks Another Record Enrollment

By September 8, 2010January 11th, 2019No Comments

18,456 college credit student figure is highest in 45 years

For the fourth consecutive year Kirkwood Community College set a new record in fall enrollment. 18,456 students enrolled at the official tenth-day measurement point, which is more than a 3.5 percent increase over last year’s enrollment of 17,841.

Of the 18,456 students enrolled at Kirkwood, 10,673 in take classes at the main campus in Cedar Rapids, 3,497 in Iowa City and 3,469 are taking advantage of the Distance Learning courses. 538 students are working toward completing one of Kirkwood’s five online degrees. That’s up almost 300 percent from fall 2009.

Kirkwood Vice President of Enrollment Kristie Fisher noted several possible factors driving this year’s increase in credit student numbers.

“We saw a large increase in enrollment last fall and many of those students are here finishing their two-year degrees,” said Fisher. “We continued to see more students come to Kirkwood this year because of the economy, but also the prospect of a great education at an accessible price. More students than ever, traditional and non-traditional, are career minded and looking for educational experiences that will prepare them to compete in a tough job market; because of this we saw a continued large increase in our applied science areas. We also saw a large jump in our online programs.”

The fall of 2010 marks the 45th academic year at Kirkwood. In its founding year of 1966-67 the two-year college then known as “Area Ten” enrolled just 199 students in college credit programs.