Despite expectations of a slight increase in enrollment at Northwest College this fall, a report shows the number of students attending the college is actually down slightly from last year.

A recent report shows the preliminary, unofficial headcount of students attending Northwest on Sept. 27 stood at 1,720, down 2 percent from the headcount of 1,754 last year. Meanwhile, full-time equivalency was 1,597 in September, down 0.3 percent from last fall’s full-time equivalence of 1,609.

NWC institutional researcher Lisa Smith, who presented the report to the college’s board of trustees last month, cautioned that this fall’s enrollment figures won’t be final until February next year.

Full-time equivalence is the enrollment number the Wyoming Community College Commission uses in its formula to determine the annual funding for the seven college districts in the state. It is calculated by dividing the total number of credit hours taken by all students by 12 — the number of credit hours in a full-time class load. 

The fact that the full-time equivalence is lower than the headcount is due to part-time students who register for fewer than 12 credit hours.

According to the report, 59 percent of NWC students this fall have full-time class loads; the other 41 percent are attending part time.

“Students are taking more part-time loads than they did 10 years ago,” Smith wrote in the report.

Students are younger

The average age of all students is 25.3 years, Smith said. 

“The overall student population has become younger since fall 2006,” she wrote in the report. “This change is driven by part-time students, which are an increasing group in the total student body and are younger than they have been in the past.”

Some of that change has come from high school students attending Northwest through dual and concurrent enrollment, Smith said. 

(Dual enrollment is when high school students take classes at their schools and additional classes at Northwest College. Concurrent enrollment occurs when high school students take qualifying advanced classes at their schools to earn college credits at NWC.)

On average, male students at Northwest are younger than their female counterparts, the report says. The average age of male students is a little younger than 24 years; the average age for female students is about 26.3 years.

The data also shows that part-time students, on average, are nearly eight years older than full-time students. The average age of part-time students is a few months shy of 30 years; for full-time students, the average age is just over 22 years. 

Smith noted that enrollment for students between the ages of 25 and 39 follows the unemployment rate trend. “This indicates that these ages are the most likely to be affected by economic events,” she said.

Big Horn Basin enrollment

Nearly 1,200 of this year’s students came from the college’s service area, which encompasses the Big Horn Basin, the data says.

NWC President Stefani Hicswa noted enrollment dipped in 2013, and has remained fairly steady since then.

That was about the time that the LDS Church lowered the age for missionaries to go on their missions, she said. 

For men, the age was lowered from 19 to 18; for women, it was lowered from 21 to 20. 

“In some of the Big Horn Basin high schools that have large LDS populations ... what we’ve seen is that those students are not coming to Northwest College at the same rate as they were before,” she said. 

Some young men and women still return to this area and attend NWC after their missions, but that doesn’t happen as often as it did before the change, Hicswa said.

“They go on missions, and they get jobs and they really don’t come back home to go to college; they go to other places,” she said.

That trend is illustrated by reductions in the percentages of Burlington and Lovell graduates who went on to attend Northwest.

In 2013, 50 percent of Burlington-area graduates attended NWC; this year, that percentage is down to 25 percent. Similarly, 69 percent of Lovell graduates attended Northwest in 2012, while this year’s percentage stands at 48 percent.

Powell High School graduates’ percentage for attending NWC has remained fairly constant, from 42-44 percent, with the exceptions of 2012 when it was 40 percent, and 2014, when the percentage increased to 48 percent.

Enrollment at Northwest College’s outreach centers has decreased, both in Cody and in Worland, Smith said.  

In 2006, about 150 students took classes at the Cody center, and about 70 students attended the Worland center. This fall, face-to-face enrollment at the Cody center has decreased by 49 percent to about 84 students, while no students are attending face-to-face classes at Worland. 

“NWC has significantly redesigned course offerings in Worland over the past few years due to decreasing usage and budgetary constraints,” the report said. “The initial face-to-face course reductions occurred in 2009 as ... online courses became a viable option for students.”

It’s likely that more Cody students are taking classes online as well, Hicswa said.

Following are the five-year average percentages of graduates from high schools in the Big Horn Basin who attend Northwest College:

graduates from high schools in the Big Horn Basin

who attend Northwest College:

Lovell — 46%

Powell — 43%

Meeteetse — 40%

Burlington — 30%

Riverside (Basin) — 31%

Greybull — 29%

Rocky Mountain (Cowley) — 29%

Cody — 27%

Shoshone Learning Center — 18%

Worland — 14%

Ten Sleep — 13%