At college, enrollment transcends projections

HOT SPRINGS — National Park College surpassed its enrollment projections for the fall semester, the board of trustees learned during a virtual meeting Wednesday.

Jerry Thomas, vice president for student affairs and enrollment management, said it has been an unprecedented year for the college, noting that he was happy to announce the college’s enrollment numbers.

“On the 11th day of class, we had 1,914 students enrolled, as compared to 2,077 students enrolled last fall,” he said.

Thomas said that is a 7.8% enrollment decline, but the college had predicted a 12% decline.

“Our numbers position us to be ahead of our financial forecast,” he said.

Thomas said the college started recruiting last year, optimistic about 2020 enrollment.

“We had a lot of things to promote. Our recruiting and our marketing efforts were more robust than ever before. We knew it was going to be a tough recruiting season because of the shrinking numbers in the public schools — high schools and colleges, competing for fewer students now,” he said.

In January, the college started better than expected, Thomas said.

“Applications from our new students were up, and all of our initiative methods all pointed to a fall enrollment increase,” he said.

“Then the pandemic happened, and that stalled all of our efforts. We had to adapt very quickly to continue to recruit, to advise and to register students all at a distance,” Thomas said.

The college had to push all registration back by two weeks to put systems in place to enroll students, he said.

“We implemented a brandnew advising system. We had to implement a brand-new phone system. The team had to be trained on these systems so that we could function and operate.”

The student population continues to trend younger, with 63.3% between ages 18 and 24, an increase of more than 3% over last year, Thomas said.

The college’s minority-group population is now 27.8% of the total enrollment, a 2.3% increase over last year, he said.

National Park College has 70 students enrolled in the Southern Arkansas University degree program, noting that more than 20 students are on track to attend SAU classes on the National Park College campus next year, he said.

Online course enrollment increased by 25% compared with last year, and now total 45% of courses, Thomas said.

“We beat our projections, and that was not an easy task. We also greatly increased our online enrollment, which takes significant effort by our faculty and staff to adapt and implement new technology,” John Hogan, National Park College president, said in a news release.