Enrollment at Onondaga Community College is on the rise. For the first time since 2016, there has been a year-to-year increase in students on the Syracuse campus. Enrollment Management Vice President Sarah Gaffney says enrollment jumped almost 11% from the 22-23 academic year to the 23-24 academic year. She credits it in part to new programs offered by the two-year school.
"Throughout the COVID period, a lot of institutions were just, if they're treading water, they were just trying to survive and to get through. We were lucky enough to have faculty and staff that were engaged in doing things innovative and creative, so we came out with many new academic programs."
Those programs range from social media and digital communication to construction management, as well as the new Micron-related Electromechanical Technology program. These latest numbers also buck a long-time trend in the community college world, where enrollment goes up when unemployment is high.
"We've seen enrollment increases and unemployment is really low. So we are attributing it to people wanting to advance in their jobs or maybe not have to work two and three jobs to try to gain different types of employment or gain entry into the healthcare field or the technology field through one of those."
Gaffney says the comparatively low cost of a community college degree is also making OCC more attractive.
