If you haven’t seen them, you ought to go to the post titled “TSTC Waco’s Dropping Enrollment & Its Classroom/Lab Average Percent Fill Rates” and click on the comments link. Ol’ “Petey Pablo” made a couple of observations and then invited me to say whatever it is I do to help higher ed. Here’s an excerpt from my response:
Finally, Petey, you want to know what I’m doing to help higher ed? I just did it. By pointing out falling enrollment rather than whispering about it behind closed doors or burying it altogether, I hope to spur people into action to do something about it a little sooner, well before it gets so out of hand that people start losing their jobs and programs get shut down, denying students the chance to learn those technologies. I wish I had begun publishing about TSTC West Texas much, much earlier. That college’s first-time, full-time students fell from a high of 472 to a mere 26 at one point. Meanwhile, administrators pointed to cuts in continuing ed and such.
