Mission Is Leader : Enrollment at 3 Valley Colleges Up

Happier days--and fuller classrooms--are here again for the three San Fernando Valley campuses of the Los Angeles Community College District, administrators said Wednesday.

Tiny Mission College, the northeast Valley school that is still awaiting a permanent campus in Sylmar, led the district in enrollment growth with a 48.9% increase over last fall. Mission now has 5,028 students, contrasted with 3,419 last year, according to the district report.

Less dramatic gains were made at Valley College in Van Nuys and Los Angeles Pierce College in Woodland Hills. Valley’s enrollment increased by 11%, to 18,509. Last fall, 16,284 enrolled at the school. At Pierce, the number of students rose 5.1%, from 17,393 last year to 18,799.

Enrollment figures showed increases at all nine campuses in the district, ending a four-year attendance slide. But, although enrollment is up, this year’s figure of 104,588 students districtwide is still far below 1982’s peak enrollment of 136,000.

Improved enrollment will translate into more state money for the community college system because state allocations to the two-year schools are tied to the district’s average daily attendance. However, the additional money will not be enough to bring the district completely out of the woods financially, officials said.

Adult Program Credited

At Mission, district officials credit expansion of the college’s Project for Adult College Education for a large part of the enrollment jump. In the PACE program, aimed at making college courses more accessible to single parents and to those who work full time, students can earn 12 units of college credit by taking classes on a single weekday evening and on weekends. Most of the evening courses are offered in offices, hospitals or other business settings.

Pierce administrators had expected some new students but were pleasantly surprised at the size of the enrollment increase.

The growth at Pierce did not occur without some problems, however. At least 15 classes had to be added to the schedule after the start of the fall semester, campus administrators said. Some students who had wanted to enroll in the PACE program, new this year at Pierce, had to be turned away because classes filled faster than anticipated, according to a district spokesman. At Valley, educators credited aggressive recruiting in high schools for part of the enrollment increase.

‘Valley Connection’ Program

According to Sam Mayo, Valley’s director of high school relations, the school has launched what it calls the “Valley Connection” program, which encourages students to follow a “high school, Valley College, California State University, Northridge” progression.

To boost recruitment even further, Mayo said, Valley College administrators and faculty will hold lunches for administrators, counselors and teachers from neighboring high schools such as Grant in Van Nuys, Polytechnic in Sun Valley and Van Nuys and Birmingham, both in Van Nuys.

“The enrollment increase is the best news we could have gotten,” Mayo said. “It helped to create a whole new attitude among the faculty, the administrators and the district people.”