Despite a slight growth in professional technical programs, overall spring enrollment at NIC has remained steady.
The total headcount for North Idaho College this semester is 6,422, which is four fewer students than the previous semester.
“What we have evidence of is that our retention numbers are good… we feel like our numbers are strong there,” said Vice President for Student Services Sheldon Nord. “I think that it is mostly in new students’ enrollment [there wasn’t growth]. We’re still trying to figure out what to attribute that to.”
Nord said in his opinion, part of the leveling off is what naturally happens when an institution experiences a fast rate of growth in a short amount of time. “You’re just going to, inevitably, not keep growing,” Nord said.
According to Public Information Coordinator Stacy Hudson, enrollment numbers for this year are not precise comparisons to previous years due to some of NIC’s new drop policies regarding payment and attendance.
Nord said that these new policies will help maintain accuracy in this and all future enrollment reports, and help establish consistency between NIC and other educational institutions.
Among individual programs, professional technical programs enrollment has gone up 2.7 percent, a 21-student boost.
“Our professional-technical programs continue to flourish as North Idaho College focuses efforts on ensuring that our technical programs are meeting the region’s workforce needs through high-quality, demand-driven programming,” NIC President Priscilla Bell said.
However, full-time enrollment in professional-technical programs has dropped 4.5 percent.
According to Nord, full-time general study majors also saw a drop, but due to a stabilized enrollment level, he attributed this to the possibility of a rebounding economy, allowing some students to return to work, and switch to a part-time student load.
Along with general studies, education majors have also seen a slight drop, with nursing, psychology and business administration picking up the slack.
Despite the decrease, general study majors remain the the most popular on campus, with 2,218 students enrolled, although it should be noted that due to financial aid regulations, pre-nursing majors are counted under general studies.
In terms of demographics, the percentage of women attending NIC has gained an extra point, bringing the numbers back to the 60 percent women, 40 percent men split seen in previous years.
The average student age remains at 28, and enrollment by those 60 years or older has seen a dip with a total of 148 students, the lowest number in two years.
The amount of students enrolled from different Idaho counties has remained the same as the previous semester, with only Bonner and Boundary counties losing 1 percent each, and Kootenai County gaining 2 percent.
NIC enrollment had been
rising steadily since 2007.
According to Complete College America, a national nonprofit organization, Idaho’s total public college enrollment was 56,172 in 2011.
Of that number, 37,173 are full-time students, and 18,999 are part-time students.
The graduation rate of NIC in 2011 was 23 percent.
