Enrollment Surge Eases at Colleges

Monday marked the last day of summer for Neal Schleimer, but he barely noticed.

Instead, the 42-year-old Ventura resident said he was more preoccupied with figuring out how he was going to juggle his job as an avionics technician with a computer engineering training program he was starting at Moorpark College.

“I’ve got to update my skills,” said Schleimer, who joined thousands of community college students across Ventura County as the fall semester began. They milled through campus bookstores, stocked up on school supplies and stood in long lines.

Still, Schleimer said he was surprised to find the Moorpark campus less crowded than he had expected, something community college officials are also discovering in the high-employment economy.

Officials at the Ventura County Community College District office and the three campuses say a booming economy often means enrollment growth slows.

“Our main competition is a high-growth and high-employment economy, where people almost have to sacrifice to be in school,” said Cathy Garnica, spokeswoman for Oxnard College, where figures released Monday show enrollment up only 2% from last year, compared with 5% growth in previous years.

At the Moorpark campus, where enrollment also has grown at a 5% annual rate, it had slowed this year to less than 4%.

At Ventura College, however, enrollment grew slightly more than 7% over last year, a jump officials attributed to a full load of job-training classes being offered to former welfare recipients at its satellite campus in Santa Paula.

The newly expanded campus offers machine technology and computerized drafting courses that officials say produce job-ready graduates. After an extensive promotional campaign on Spanish-language radio stations, enrollment at the Santa Paula campus increased 50% over last year.

“The students were not part of the mainstream economy, because of welfare,” said Patricia Kistler, director of public affairs for the college district. “Now they’ll be able to apply for the jobs they want and deserve.”

For years, enrollment at Ventura College increased slowly, mainly because of slow population growth in the communities served by the campus, said college registrar Susan Bricker.

But the programs in Santa Paula, along with a computer networking program sponsored by Cisco Systems Inc. and sheriff’s and paramedics training academies in Ventura, have fueled the growth, Kistler said.

More students means more money for the district next year, Kistler said.

“If I told my colleagues around the state that [the district was] at 4.77% growth, they’d be blown away,” she said.

Oxnard College officials are contemplating adding afternoon classes next year to boost enrollment.

“We’ll be marketing it as a test group to see if it works,” she said.

Moorpark officials reserved judgment on the preliminary enrollment statistics, which indicated a slight increase over last year. Students may still enroll two weeks into the semester, “so it’s still too early to tell,” said Eva Conrad, vice president of student learning.

At Ventura College, however, Bricker said she was smiling during the first-day chaos--even as the campus phone system crashed and computers shut down--because the college has more students.

“I had a line of students out the door, and we were writing things down by hand,” she said. “But it’s good to have them back. And I say that today, even though I think I parked closer to Santa Barbara than Ventura.”

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Fall Semester Head Counts

Enrollment at Ventura County’s community colleges

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1998 1999 2000* 98-99 99-2000 Students Students Students Change Change Moorpark 11,544 11,877 12,350 2.88% 3.98% Oxnard 5,552 5,847 5,967 5.31% 2.05% Ventura 9,943 9,731 10,448 -2.13% 7.37% District 27,039 27,455 28,765 1.54% 4.77%

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* Student enrollment as of Aug. 19, 2000

Source: Ventura County Community College District