American River College’s enrollment is up, gaining more than 2,000 students since last fall.
The Los Rios Community College District has seen a gain of over 6,000 students, a 9.31% increase from the year prior, according to the census data completed earlier this month.
Gabe Ross, the LRCCD chief strategy and communications officer, said that this is a huge step towards bringing enrollment up to how it was before the pandemic.
“We are very proud to have already nearly restored enrollments to pre-COVID levels,” Ross said in an email to the Current.
Ross said the focus is now on increasing access to LRCCD colleges.
“Historically underserved communities continue to be a top priority for our district,” Ross said. “We are constantly evaluating our mixture of instructional offerings, student retention strategies and outreach to ensure that those in our communities who need our colleges most can enroll, and they are successful when they get here.”
Kaitlyn Collignon, ARC’s public information officer, said the increase in enrollment may be due to what the school has to offer students.
“We have a lot of critical classes and things students are interested in taking on-ground and online as well,” Collignon said.
Collignon said that part of the reason is the opportunity to offer a mixture of both academics and exciting in-person experiences to students.
“If you’ve been on campus then you’ve seen student clubs coming back and activities,” Collignon said. “I was in the Student Center last week and they had music playing and people hanging out.”
Collignon said the increase in enrollment benefits the community by helping more students succeed.
“That’s what we’re here for as a community college, is to help students achieve whatever their personal goal is,” Collignon said. “The more students we see, the more students we hope we’re helping get on the path to their goal.”
Collignon says that she hopes the Davies Hall closure does not discourage students.
“We really want to encourage any student to stay enrolled this semester,” Collignon said. “And we want to let students know we’re working on additional spaces that need a little bit of work before they are classroom ready.”
