Enrollment declines

Freshmen enrollment declines slightly compared to Fall 2010. Decreased numbers indicate maintenance of small class sizes.

Georgia College prides itself on its ability to ensure a liberal arts university education by continuing to have stable enrollment for the Fall 2011 semester.

According to its mission statement, GC is the state’s designated Public Liberal Arts University. As such, they offer the education and environment of a liberal arts college.

Over the last few years Georgia College’s enrollment has been stable, at approximately 6,600 students, according to statistics from GC’s Office of Institutional Research.

The preliminary statistics for the Fall 2011 semester show 6,667 students are currently enrolled. This number results in a difference of 70 students enrolled in comparison to Fall 2010 enrollment, which was 6,737 students. According to Ed Hale, the director of the office of institutional research, this number is likely to change during the next few weeks.

“The numbers have to be certified by the Board of Regents and that doesn’t occur until October. These numbers will be close to the final enrollment numbers,” Hale said.

The enrollment management department continues to monitor the enrollment for the 2011-2012 academic year.

“We monitor it every day and we do a same-day comparison from the year before. Right now we’re probably less than 10 students ahead of where we were last year,” said Suzanne Pittman, assistant vice president for enrollment management. “We’re trying to have just a small amount of growth because we don’t want our class sizes to get larger or the feel of our to campus change from a liberal arts mission.”

GC is proud of its enrollment numbers because these numbers maintain the university’s class sizes and community feel. According to the GC website’s Quick Facts, most classes enroll between 15 and 35 students. This enrollment makes one-on-one time between a professor and a student very possible.

Most students, like Michelle Mercer, a junior mass communication major,  are grateful for this.

“I came here for the campus and the environment. I like the small atmosphere and the close-knit groups that I saw around campus,” Mercer said.

Georgia College strives to preserve the community feel of its campus.

“These are the things that we want to maintain so that the experiences students get are meaningful to them,” Pittman said.

For some students the community feel of GC is the reason they enrolled here.

“I came here because it was a pretty small institution, the class sizes are small and I liked the campus,” said Autumn Perry, junior criminal justice major.

According to Pittman, GC continues to target high school students who are interested in the liberal arts type of education and will continue to recruit students who have the academic preparation to be successful here.

Posted by Alyson Crosby on Aug 25 2011. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.