Officials at Kirkwood Community College are welcoming another semester enrollment record, while they deal with providing services amid budgetary challenges. The college marked an official enrollment count of 16,233 students for the spring 2010 semester. This is an increase of 2,338 students (16.8 percent) from the same point in 2009.
College officials noted a strong rise in student counts in both part-and full-time student classifications, and a credit hour surge as well. Total credit hours were up just over 17 percent from January 2009, for a total of 163,936.
Kirkwood President Mick Starcevich said the student numbers were “welcome news” to the college and signaled continued economic challenges throughout Iowa.
“Our student enrollments reflect the growing recognition Kirkwood enjoys as a smart, economical and practical choice for our community. We see a strong increase in students pursuing Liberal Arts degrees and many pre-professional transfer programs. These students will be some of the ‘rising stars’ at our Regents universities and partner private colleges in the next year or two. Also, there continues to be a large growth in returning adults this semester, reflecting needs in our local economy. Many are with us this year for focused job training and their desire to build new work skills,” Starcevich said.
Those observations are borne out by college statistics showing close to 40 percent of the spring semester student body above the traditional college student ages of 18-22. Starcevich also pointed out a continued focus on “our students close to home” in the spring 2010 enrollment count.
“We welcome students from about 30 different states and more than 90 other countries to our campus this spring. But first and foremost, 95 percent of our students are Iowans. We know that in the last decade, more than 9 out of 10 of our graduates stayed and worked in Iowa. Kirkwood welcomes the world to our campus, but our overwhelming commitment is to our neighbors in our community,” he added.
The increase in students and credit hours will help offset recent declines in funding and support for Kirkwood and other Iowa colleges, brought about by mandatory budget reductions in the current year.