Enrollment at 2-Year Schools

For some strange and inexplicable reason, the obsession of educational reporting of enrollment figures continues. In this respect, things have gotten so bad that any enrollment increase is equated with a college’s growth.

Take The Times article (April 21) that trumpeted the news that “community colleges appear on their way back.” I never knew that they had gone away. Nor do I find that they have grown any more or less these past few years. These colleges are staffed by a superb faculty that continues to do its job regardless of any fluctuations in student enrollment. One official who stated “the (college) decline is at the bottom” does not do justice to the reputation which the two-year college has enjoyed as a great teaching institution.

I read some years back that “individual plants and organisms grow; organizations expand.” College enrollment, one way or another, has nothing to do with its growth, except, perhaps, when the leadership impedes or causes growth to suffer by spending dollars, time and energy in zealously pursuing the marketing of numbers.

LEFTERIS LAVRAKAS

Costa Mesa