City College has seen a spike in enrollment percentages for the fall 2024 semester compared to the past, with hopes of continuing to see a rise in enrollment numbers.
According to Assistant Superintendent and Vice President of Academic Affairs Maria Villagómez, City College has experienced a decrease in enrollment over the past few years. At the beginning of the fall 2024 semester, enrollment had increased by approximately 3.5%. This percentage was accumulated starting the first day of classes this semester.
The 3.5% increase is the number of students actively enrolled in City College classes compared to previous years.
“This doesn’t necessarily mean more students will take more classes to generate more enrollments,” Villagómez said.
Since 2014 and the COVID-19 pandemic, enrollment percentages have been different and faculty has been working on this by taking student feedback into consideration. Students recommended more in-person classes to faculty in the spring. The school did this by increasing students’ in-person classes this fall. City College is focusing on the Full-Time Equivalent Students (FTES) enrollment as well.
FTES are students who are registered in a minimum of 15 units per semester. The state is paying City College $12,000 for the amount of FTES they generate this school year. City College is being paid more than what is being generated in hopes of more full-time students enrolling.
Villagómez stated there’s no increase or decrease for FTES currently, but the rates have been flat compared to fall 2023. The number of FTES has been stagnant due to the fraudulent bots that were encountered in July 2024 during the summer session.
Fraudulent bots recently became a growing issue when students were enrolling in summer 2024 courses. Students were unable to register for the classes they needed when the bots began taking student’s spots in classes. Administration was unsure who was a real person and who wasn’t, but faculty have measures in place to help mitigate the infiltration of bots in order to make space for real students who need to enroll in certain courses.
In order to continue the increase in enrollment, the Office of Academic Affairs is currently focusing on building more efficient schedules for students with the help from faculty as well.
“We need to make sure we are meeting the needs of students in a productive and efficient way,” Villagómez said. “We need to make sure we use our budget judicially to support aspects of the student journey.”
The “student journey” includes student services, facilities, clubs, tutoring, and library services to help support students on campus.
According to Villagómez, to enhance and draw more students to City College there is hope to get student feedback from a survey in regards to why they return each semester. This is to give out information and attract future students to City College to increase enrollment.
“We need to know what the student’s perspectives are on returning because it’s important to know and we should ask that,” Villagómez said.
