Local News in Brief : Costa Mesa : OCC’s Opening-Day Enrollment Up 10%

Orange Coast College began fall classes on Monday with its highest first-day enrollment in 14 years--a 10% increase over opening day a year ago.

“We expected a big opening day, but not this kind of an increase,” said Jim Carnett, spokesman for the community college. “Last year, we had 18,877 students enrolled on the first day of fall semester, and today we had 20,769.”

Enrollment at Orange Coast continues through Sept. 2 for full-term fall semester classes. In addition, two enrollment periods for short-term classes will be held later in the fall. Carnett said the college expects a total fall enrollment of close to 26,000 by the time all students are logged in late October.

While a number of factors have contributed to Orange Coast’s increase in enrollment this year, Carnett said the cap on enrollment this fall at both UC Irvine and Cal State Fullerton contributed to a higher student demand for community colleges. Fullerton College, which experienced a 3.5% first-day enrollment growth last week, similarly cited the lids on the Orange County public four-year universities as diverting more students into the two-year community colleges.

Carnett said that Orange Coast, which has the highest transfer rate in the state of students to four-year universities, has benefited “from very good press coverage about our transfer rate.”