Coleman: Bay College shows healthy winter enrollment
ESCANABA — Bay College’s Winter 2017 semester began last month, and Bay College President Laura Coleman said it looks to be a healthy one for the school in terms of enrollment. While student head count is down slightly from the Winter 2016 semester, the college’s total contact hours and student retainment rates from fall to winter are up.
Last winter, 1,708 students were enrolled at Bay College. This winter, 1,689 are enrolled at the school — a decrease of 19 students, or about 1.1 percent.
Current enrollment numbers are also smaller than they were during the fall 2016 semester, but Coleman said it is normal for enrollment to decrease from fall to winter at Bay. The percentage of students enrolled in the winter semester that were retained from the fall semester is also higher for the 2016-17 school year than it was in 2015-16.
“We actually have a higher retainment rate from fall to winter this year,” Coleman said.
About 85.2 percent of the students enrolled in the winter 2017 semester returned to Bay from the fall 2016 semester. In contrast, 81.3 percent of the students enrolled in Bay’s winter 2016 semester had returned from the fall 2015 semester.
According to Coleman, the efforts of Bay’s employees played a key role in boosting the student retainment rate for this school year.
“We worked really, really hard on the retention,” Coleman said.
Coleman also noted the recent completion of Bay’s Hub, which offers a central location for the college’s tutoring and support services, may have helped students stay engaged with their classes — and, as a result, more likely to return to Bay — during the Fall 2016 semester.
“The centralization of support services makes it easier for students,” she said.
Contact hours are up in 2017 compared to Bay’s last winter semester, as well. During the winter 2016 semester, Bay’s students were enrolled for 17,025 contact hours; in the current semester, students are enrolled for 17,836 contact hours.
“Our contact hours are actually up from last year,” Coleman said.
This increase in contact hours is particularly important because Bay’s tuition and fees are charged by contact hours, not student head counts. Coleman said as the college’s administration has just begun the process of developing its budget for the 2017-18 school year, she is not yet sure what effect this increase will have on that budget.