Hartford Business Journal

www.HartfordBusiness.com November 23, 2015 • Hartford Business Journal 11 To get started today call: 800-260-3025 or visit voiceglance.com/hbj The VoiceGlance team has experience in helping Connec cut businesses recruit the very best. Contact us today for a free consulta on. Each company we work with has unique recrui ng goals, which is why we develop our hiring performance solu ons on a per-client basis to fit your business needs for today and tomorrow. You can outsource your en re recrui ng func on to us — or simply start by increasing the produc vity of your internal recrui ng func on by leveraging our hiring performance pla orm, which includes access to our professional team coordinators that work with you to facilitate a be er hiring process from the very beginning of our partnership. See beyond the p of the iceberg Be er quality employees – hired faster at a lower cost. Best job candidates seem out of reach? from page 1 That drop follows a 3.2 percent decline from 2013 to 2014. Enrollment this year is the lowest it's been since 2008. College administrators say they are doing their best to keep numbers up and retain the students they have. But they say there are a number of macroeconomic trends, as well as state policies, working against them. In recent history, rising U.S. unemploy- ment rates have correlated with higher enrollments, and vice versa, according to the American Association of Community Colleges. The same generally holds true for Connecticut community colleges, which saw their largest enrollment spikes during the high unemployment years of 2009 and 2010. If the economy continues its recovery, and if projections of declining numbers of high school graduates in the years ahead hold true, Connecticut community colleges may strug- gle to prevent further declines in their student bodies, undermining their financial viability. And as the state struggles to close a cur- rent-year deficit, and stares down the barrel of a projected $2.3 billion deficit over the next two fiscal years, community colleges won't be able to rest easy. In recent budget discussions, no one has publicly proposed cutting community college funding. But asked about the subject in an interview this month, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy said nothing is off the table. "I think that everyone who is part of state government has to share the wealth and has to share the pain," Malloy said. Last year, facing a budget deficit, Middle- sex Community College announced it intend- ed to close its Meriden satellite campus. The decision was reversed after lawmak- ers and others protested, but it could fore- shadow the types of struggles that lie ahead for community colleges. Capital grapples with two-year, 16 percent drop The biggest enrollment decline over the past two years has been at Capital Commu- nity College (CCC) in Hartford, which has lost 665 students, or 16 percent of its pupils since 2013, according to state data. CCC President Wilfredo Nieves said in an interview on the top floor of the college's 11-story downtown campus — housed in a former depart- ment store — that the improving economy is partly to blame for more students choosing to work rather than go to school. But he said legis- lative tweaks to a key state financial aid program and remedial education requirements have also taken a bite out of Capital's student headcount over the past several years. For example, changes to the Governor's Scholarship aid program have made some part- time students ineligible for aid, Nieves said. The legislature created the scholarship program in 2013 by merging several previ- ous aid programs. The scholarship, based on financial need and academic merit, provides as much as $3,500 for full-time attendance at a community college. But it no longer pro- vides aid to students enrolled for less than six semester credit hours. With one of the highest ratios of part-time students in the state — 76 percent — Capital has felt the impact, Nieves said. CCC received less than $400,000 from the state scholarship program this year, down from approximately $1.3 million three years ago, he said. In addition, the college has historically accepted a relatively high number of remedi- al-level students. Many are minorities, low- income, and first-generation pupils. But a 2012 state law forbade schools, start- ing in 2014, from requiring students to take pre-college remedial courses, instead mandat- ing that entry-level course instructors provide remedial support in those classes to students who need it. That law has also impacted Capital's num- bers, Nieves said. Overall, he said fewer students have meant less revenue for the school to fund its personnel and programs. Capital has reduced library hours and tutoring in some areas, as well as scheduling flexibility for certain programs. "We want to ensure we still provide the service," Nieves said. "It's just not at the same level or within the open time slots we'd like." CCC has more aggressively sought grants, created new non-credit programs and contin- ues to rely on its relationships with area high schools and nonprofits to partner on non- credit and workforce development programs. Whether or not it will be enough to overcome the recent enrollment decline is yet to be seen. Despite enrollment headwinds, Nieves said he thinks the need for community col- leges is as great as ever. A college education is correlated with higher lifetime earnings, he said. Capital's most robust program is nurs- ing, and in recent years it has launched cyber- security and biotech programs. "The need for the programs we have is great," he said. "Now, how do we make them sustainable with the resources we have?" State government has sought to help where it can. Last year, Malloy unveiled a buy-one-get-one deal on community college courses targeted at students who dropped out. Faced with a budget gap in the CSCU system, the legislature scaled down the original $20 million proposal to about $6 million, the Connecticut Mirror reported. Schools aim to keep what they have Tunxis Community College in Farming- ton, which saw a 3.3 percent enrollment drop between 2014 and 2015, recently began host- ing open houses for prospective students. It may sound simple, but David England, Declines blamed on economy, state policy Continued

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