Founding President, Erie County Community College of Pennsylvania
540 students enrolled! Wow! Yet another extraordinary moment to commemorate here!
Who could have imagined, just twenty-eight months ago, that this experiment would work? EC3 was born of the audacious idea that all Erie County residents deserve access to affordable education, and we have certainly grown. Our first class of twenty-eight students graduated in June 2023; we now have four campus locations, including the newest and biggest at Erie West; and we have expanded our courses and program offerings to include information technology, manufacturing, and healthcare. We are also gearing up for future expansion of our Erie West campus to include health labs. While that is amazing as well, the big point of pride is that we are serving over 500 students!!!
Of course, there is way more to celebrate than just the number of students served. Let’s talk for a bit about our deliverables. EC3 has five Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). These are the metrics by which we determine how well we are meeting our mission. Our 540 students speak to enrollment, our first KPI; we also look at course success, retention rates, graduation rates, and transfer and job placement rates. Last month, Executive Vice-President Guy Goodman presented to our Board of Trustees our results from the Fall 2023 semester, and they are nothing short of impressive. I am so proud of the work this staff and faculty have done to build a different and better model of higher education. And these data support that claim. Let me briefly highlight some of the key findings, and then forgive me as I brag shamelessly about the good work happening here at EC3.
The 540 students (unduplicated headcount, for you academic nerds) exceeds our enrollment projections by over 30%; we’re growing faster than anticipated. Typically, Spring semester enrollment is 20% lower than enrollment from the previous Fall semester. That’s not true here at EC3. Our Spring headcount is actually up16.3% this semester. As VP Goodman shared, there are some additional findings in those enrollment data. EC3 students are getting younger. When we first started, the average age of our students was in the upper thirties; however, that number has come down to the upper twenties, which is similar to most community colleges nationwide.
Students from all over Erie County are enrolling, and we are gaining more enrollment from rural portions of the county. Our enrollment by zip code pattern correlates to population density from the county, showing that we are, indeed, serving all residents. And, as the model has promised, our community college continues to provide access to higher education to our diverse county’s population; 37% of all EC3 students identify as non-white, including 18% who are black or African-American (for context, Erie County’s population is 8% black and 14% non-white).
If you are like me, maybe you’re being skeptical and saying, sure, you have students, but how are they doing? Bring it; I love a challenge! In short, EC3 students are killing it! Our overall course success rate (i.e., students earning an A, B, or C as a final grade) is 81.2%. This puts us in the upper quartile nationwide among community colleges. As we dig into our success data, we see that the gap in success between white and non-white students is minimal. This is important as course success is one critical factor to graduation, and as Ed Trust reports, the actual racial gap in college success is 28% between blacks and whites and 20% between whites and Latinos. Our students are more successful!
Earlier, I said that course success is one factor influencing graduation. If your nose wrinkled, let me explain. In addition to passing courses, students have to keep moving forward, semester by semester. And that’s where retention data comes in. Retention of our first-time, full-time (a technical descriptor meaning a student who hopes to complete a full degree as a full-time student) is at 60% for our cohort of students who joined us in Fall 2022. This falls in line with the retention rate for other community colleges (60.7%) and outperforms other start-up colleges.
Many of you helped us celebrate our inaugural commencement in June, where those twenty-eight students graduated and changed our county’s history. We expect over sixty more to join their ranks and graduate this year! Our alumni (aside: wow – that sounds nice!) are moving on to other universities such as Penn State Behrend, Penn West Edinboro and Clarion, and Mercyhurst; others are filling our workforce needs at companies like Modular Engineering, Deane Portable Welding, Burns Manufacturing, Erie Insurance, the Warren Company, and Donjon Shipbuilding.
All signs are pointing to the dream, that EC3 is working and making a difference in our students’ lives, making Erie County a better place to live and work.
In a future blog, I’ll highlight how we’re building this differently, a strategy which, I believe, contributed mightily to these successes. Our community: your college.