Running head: FINAL ASSIGNMENT: PROMOTING COLLEGE ATTENDANCE

Final Assignment: Promoting College Attendance

COUN 7132: Contemporary College Student
Dr. Fayth M. Parks
Jeff Patty
Georgia Southern University

FINAL ASSIGNMENT: PROMOTING COLLEGE ATTENDANCE

2
Abstract
Dealing with college attendance or enrollment issues has always been a challenge for most
institutions of higher learning. In the last five to ten years, and particularly with the downturn in
the economy, finding creative ways to manage the entire attendance/enrollment issue has become
a topic of increased focus around college administrators planning tables. Colleges are
constantly trying to find the next best method to attract new students and keep the ones they
have. Georgia Highlands College has also faced these same challenges. All units and
departments across the campus have been impacted and challenged to implement new strategies.
Here I will outline a couple of units and changes that have been enacted at GHC for the purpose
of increasing enrollments and retaining current student levels. The two units highlighted here are
Student Success and Athletics.

FINAL ASSIGNMENT: PROMOTING COLLEGE ATTENDANCE

3
Final Assignment: Promoting College Attendance
Georgia Highlands College (GHC) became a limited-mission, four-year state college in
2011. GHC, originally founded in 1970 as Floyd Junior College, has grown over the years into a
multi-campus environment serving the Northwest Georgia and Northeast Alabama surrounding
communities. The college now enrolls over 5,700 students on campuses in the following
locations: Rome, Cartersville, Marietta, Paulding, and Douglasville (Georgia Highlands College,
2013).
Like other institutions of higher learning, GHC has struggled in recent history to maintain
enrollment numbers sufficient to support growth, maintain appropriate funding levels, and
effectively manage RPG (retention, progression, and graduation) levels that satisfy increasing
accountability pressures. Complicating these struggles, todays students tend to attend college in
a more stop and start manner. Particularly, a community college such as GHC, non-traditional
students frequently skip semesters, skip a year or more, or only attend for a short period of time.
This occurs due to a variety of factors ranging from job issues, family matters, employment
constraints, monetary demands, lack of being college ready, and a number of other issues. So,
community colleges really have to stay on their toes in how they deal with this population and
make necessary operational and academic adjustments in order to best serve students in the
complex environment. In addition, since GHC maintains campus locations in several locations
spread out across a wide geographic region and in different communities, this presents even more
challenges in not only meeting the demands and needs of students, but also effectively managing
the accompanying administrative elements. Several studies indicated that there were no
significant differences in learning outcomes and proficiency such as reading comprehension,
mathematics, writing skills, and scientific reasoning between students attending a two-year or

FINAL ASSIGNMENT: PROMOTING COLLEGE ATTENDANCE

4
four-year college or university (Pascarella & Terenzini, 2005). Since the college has six different
campuses in these different counties, as well as a teaching site at an additional location, there is
also the difficulty in providing services for a multicultural student body. We serve students from
varied backgrounds, such as different ethnicities, socio-economic status, ages, genders, and
nationalities. Therefore, the college must actively be engaged in managing this issue of college
attendance. The institution must create special mechanisms and programs within the operational
units of the college to effectively manage this moving target.
Student Success
The University System of Georgia is desperately trying to close the gap between the
number of Georgians who currently attend some form of higher education and the numbers of
citizens that will need to be workforce ready by 2020, as is evidenced by one of their major
initiatives, the Complete College Georgia Initiative. GHC spends a good portion of their state
allocation on just that, student success (Georgia Highlands College, 2012). The institution feels
student success leads to many positive results for students, not the least of which is retention and
graduation. The college has several efforts directed towards increasing and maintaining
enrollment, as well as increasing student success. The college has an academic unit, the Student
Success Center, which is responsible for providing student support services and preparing
students for either graduation or transfer to a four-year institution. The Student Success Center
also houses the Assessment Center, the Tutorial Center, and the Advising Center (Georgia
Highlands College, 2010).
Another component of properly managing enrollment through student success is found in
a couple of fairly new components over the last several years, eLearning and the First Year
Experience Program. With the creation of the eLearning Unit, GHC has focused their efforts on

FINAL ASSIGNMENT: PROMOTING COLLEGE ATTENDANCE

5
offering students online, DVD, and hybrid offerings to accommodate students busy lifestyles
and offer flexible scheduling. GHC committed to a substantial cash outlay to procure and
maintain Collaborate, an online tool that provides video sharing between multiple sites. Faculty
on alternate campuses now can teach students on one of the other GHC campuses remotely
(Georgia Highlands College, 2012). Previously, some of these classes simply would not have
made due to lower enrollments on each campus. Those are now possible with this
software/hardware investment.
Likewise, the creation of the First-Year Program (FYE) at GHC has provided new
students with some very valuable tools that will assist students in becoming successful and
productive in their chosen fields once graduating. The FYE Program is aimed at three particular
tasks: Developing Academic Skills, Adjusting to College Life, and Developing Academic &
Career Goals. The courses that make up this program are aimed at helping students achieve
academic excellence. The major program components are designed to provide information
surrounding the college experience, learning communities, academic advising, tutoring, peer
mentoring, career choices, decision making, and service learning opportunities (Georgia
Highlands College, 2013).
All of these programs are designed to improve student success, which in turn promotes
more stable enrollment through retention, and hopefully creates an environment where students
tell other students about the measures in place GHC provides on behalf of helping students
achieve success. This in turn can create greater interest from new student enrollment.
Athletics
The use of Athletics to attract more students and increase a more diverse enrollment base
is nothing new to higher education. Most of the early colonial colleges also had athletics

FINAL ASSIGNMENT: PROMOTING COLLEGE ATTENDANCE

6
programs, forming the popular group known as the Ivy League. In the last decade there seems
to be a renewed, growing trend for even the smaller schools to get into the game. Athletic
programs are designed in theory to be self-supporting, but in reality these programs can be very
expensive to get off the ground and sustain. If a particular program is lucky enough to provide
some early championships that certainly helps, but for most it is an expensive and long-term
investment. There are also lots of rules and regulations. Each sport requires a counter womens
sport to match the mens side of the equation; mens and womens basketball, mens baseball and
womens softball, etc. GHC is no exception to this recent phenomenon, starting their inaugural
athletics program a little over a year ago. Our first sport selected was basketball and this year
they have begun baseball and softball. This has been an expensive endeavor. Most of the
administrators who planned athletics are no longer with the college. The new Athletic Director is
left to get the program off the ground and gain continued support by the new administration.
Everyone hopes in the long run that Athletics will be the draw we all hope for. The idea is to
create a new atmosphere on campus, attract new and different students, increase athletic
participation in both student sports and intramurals, and finally to provide a variety of sporting
events around which students and the citizens of the community will come and watch. Those
programs that have accomplished creating successful programs have had significant gains in
student enrollment, diversifying their student population, and finding new financial sponsors.
There are countless studies, statistics, and preponderance of supporters that will demonstrate
beyond a shadow of a doubt that Athletics is a very valuable tool for the college. There is so
much potential in the form of not only the enrollment aspect, but also new gifts, marketing
efforts, prestige, television rights, gate and merchandising sales, fan attraction, and the list goes
on. There are simply too many possible positives for most schools to stay away forever. Only

FINAL ASSIGNMENT: PROMOTING COLLEGE ATTENDANCE

7
time will tell if this will pay off for GHC. The program is still in its infancy and has a great deal
of growing to do yet. Additional sports will need to be added. Sports will need to be introduced
at more of our campus locations. Finally, one of these sports programs will likely need to
produce a winning team, in order to generate an effective fan base that can fully get behind the
program.
Conclusion
As one can see from the efforts in just these two units of Georgia Highlands College,
increasing and maintaining effective enrollment numbers is of great importance. Enrollment has
been a driving force for formula funding for schools for years. Although new models based on
performance standards are beginning to emerge, I think it is safe to say that enrollment is still a
huge factor. After all, students are supposed to be why we are in the business to begin with.
There are many other factors that are also extremely important to the institution, but enrollment
often drives much of the decision-making that goes on for colleges. With recent down turns in
the economy, there is even more competition between colleges for these precious few students.
Often increased enrollment is one of the few ways colleges can increase their revenue in order to
sustain operations and programs. Other sources are hard to come by and increasing student
tuition is certainly not a popular choice.

FINAL ASSIGNMENT: PROMOTING COLLEGE ATTENDANCE

8
References
Georgia Highlands College. (2013, February 6). About us. Retrieved from
http://www.highlands.edu/site/about-ghc
Georgia Highlands College. (2013, May 14). First year experience. Retrieved from
https://www.highlands.edu/site/fye
Georgia Highlands College. (2012, June 5). GHC spends much of usg allocation on student
success. Retrieved from http://www.highlands.edu/site/ghc-spends-much-of-usgallocation-on-student-success
Georgia Highlands College. (2010, September 27). Mission and goals of the student success
center. Retrieved from http://www.highlands.edu/site/student-success-center-missionand-goals
Pascarella, E.T., & Terenzini, P.T. (2005). How college affects students: A third decade of
Research. (Vol. 2). [Kindle iPad version]. Retrieved from Amazon.com. San Francisco:
Jossey-Bass