Business Trends COMMUNITY COLLEGES


The enrollment struggle


Community colleges look for ways to attract and retain students


Paula Pando, president of J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College, says academic failure is not the primary reason students drop out.


by Gary Robertson K


eeping food pantries stocked at its three cam- puses is one of the ways


J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College helps its students stay in the classroom. And retention of students


has become an imperative. The Richmond-based schoo l


has experienced one of the steep- est drops in enrollment among the state’s 23 community colleges, which as a group has seen a huge decline in students during this decade.


Photo by Shandell Taylor In the 2011-2012 academic


year, for example, Reynolds had a headcount of 13,267 students. By the start of the current


academic year, enrollment had plummeted 34 percent, to 8,737 students, according to figures published by the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV).


Besides looking for ways to


increase enrollment, community colleges like Reynolds are explor- ing all options to retain current students.


Only about 20 percent of


full-time students at Reynolds complete an associate degree within three years, according to its president, Paula Pando. Nationally, she says, aca-


demic failure is not the primary reason community college students drop out. “It’s food; it’s housing; it’s trauma; it’s transpor- tation,” she says. And that’s where the food


pantries come in. More than a dozen of the system’s other col- leges also have programs to help


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