National Park College beats enrollment projections for fall semester

National Park College beat its enrollment projections for the fall semester, the Board of Trustees learned during a virtual meeting on Wednesday.

Jerry Thomas, vice president for student affairs and enrollment management, said that it had been an unprecedented year for the college, noting that he was happy to announce that the college beat its enrollment projections.

“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 percent decline in the head count, 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 the recruiting season off 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,”

Thomas said.

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

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

“This year’s class is 63.23 percent female, and that’s an increase of more than 3 percent over last year,” Thomas said.

NPC 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 NPC’s campus next year, he said.

Online course enrollment increased by 25 percent compared to last year, and now total 45 percent of courses this year, 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, NPC president, said in a news release.

“The commitment of our students to persist and complete their education during this time is remarkable. They continue to display Nighthawk Grit, and as an institution, we must answer their commitment with all the support we can provide,” he said in the release.

“More than a quarter of students taking face-to-face classes are taking advantage of virtual classes via Zoom. The Board invested in technology this summer to help provide flexible instruction methods. Since March, 15,232 participants have used Zoom, including

5,520 active users and 1,305 licensed users. NPC faculty and staff have hosted 1,859 meetings since March with a total of

691,167 meeting minutes,” the release said.