Northwest College enrollment is climbing again after a tough stretch.

As of mid October, enrollment is up nearly 100 students from the fall of 2023.

At the Oct. 14 board meeting, Institutional Research Manager Lisa Smith delivered her annual update on fall enrollment numbers and the positive trend locally.

“In the last few years we’ve seen a smaller increase than most two years,” she said. “We are seeing a really good increase, almost 100 students this semester, so that's exciting.”

Preliminary fall enrollment numbers (they won’t be finalized until after the semester ends) count 1,488 students, with a full time equivalency (averaging 12 credits per students) of 1,232.

The fall enrollment count is the largest since 2018, when the college recorded 1,524 students.

Last year just 1,389 students were enrolled in the fall semester. Prior to that, the college had stabilized enrollment in the 1400-1500 range for four years, bucking the then still decreasing national trend.

The rise in enrollment halts a decrease that has continued many of the years since 2009, when a high of 2,198 students were enrolled at the college, in line with the national trend which saw a surge in college enrollment during the Great Recession.

Since that era, not only has enrollment decreased, but the makeup of students has changed, with a majority of students now part-time, and many of those high school students enrolled in dual or concurrent classes.

“We’ve seen a steady increase in concurrent/dual over the last decade,” Smith said.

This fall 469 students are enrolled in dual/concurrent. Concurrent students are enrolled in credit courses taught in high schools by college-approved high school teachers. Dual students are enrolled in credit courses taught by NWC faculty. Smith said concurrent classes have grown recently as more high school teachers achieve the necessary credentials to teach college courses.

Of the students enrolled, 697 (47%) are full time and 791 (53%) part time. In fall 2014, for instance, full-time students accounted for 59% of total headcount.

While the majority of the students enrolled at NWC this fall are from the region, the college has been better than the state average in international enrollment, which accounts for roughly 100 students this year. Smith credited the Welcome to Wyoming Scholarship, instituted in 2022 in response to the decline in enrollment statewide during Covid, with increasing that number as well as other out of state students.

More than 1,000 students (69%) are from the NWC service area (the Big Horn Basin minus Hot Springs County) and the second most, roughly 200 students (14%), are from other states in the Western Undergraduate Exchange region, which includes Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington and the U.S. Pacific Territories and Freely Associated States (Nebraska residents are also given the WUE rate at NWC).

The positive enrollment news was tempered, however, with a projection of smaller class sizes in future years at service area schools after the current senior class graduates in 2025. Smith said it’s due to smaller class sizes coming up through the area schools, and projects that will result in a slight decrease in enrollment at NWC coming from service area schools.

Over the past five years, 22% of service area high school graduates have enrolled at NWC within a year of graduation, with Powell and Lovell high schools tied for the highest proportion of grads enrolling over that period at 31%, followed by Rocky Mountain High School at 29%.