Students and Enrollments in Workforce
Development and Continuing Education
A
substantial portion of the
WDCE
course offerings encompass a wide range of topics and purposes and are
generally shorter in length than the traditional three hours a week for 15
weeks credit-bearing courses. As a
result, courses are on a continuous pattern of start and stop, so capturing a
snapshot of WDCE enrollment at a point in time is difficult. The following reports offer a brief description
of the students and a summary of the volume, type, and location of course
offerings for the last three fiscal years (FY 2002- FY 2004).
In each of the last three fiscal years, WDCE has compiled more than 25,000 student enrollments in more than 2,500 individual course sections.
Nearly 5,000 of these students each year have taken more than one course. Counting each student only once, regardless of the number of courses he or she took, there were nearly 15,000 unduplicated students in fiscal years 2002 (14,535) and 2003 (14,980), and more than that number in 2004 (15,368).
WDCE students are older (with a median age of 35 for 2004) than the College’s typical credit students (median age 22 for 2004). Over the three year period, however, the median age of WDCE students has declined.
However, the diversity of Workforce Development and Continuing Education students is similar to that of the credit student body – some 42% are White, 16% are Black, 12% are Hispanic, and another 12% are Asian. About one-in-four are non-U.S. citizens (compared to 33% of credit students).
During a fiscal year, a large number of students take both traditional credit courses and Workforce Development and Continuing Education courses. Since 2002, that number has continued to increase. This past year, there was a 19% increase (to 1,370 students); in each of those years approximately one-half of these dual-enrolled students took a credit and WDCE class in the same academic term.