Michigan Community Colleges Rank 48th In The Nation For Enrollment; What Does That Mean For NMC?

Are community colleges in Michigan lagging behind the rest of the country?

That’s the big question raised by a recent study that found Michigan’s community college system ranks near the bottom of all 50 states in several key areas. Specifically, the Mitten is performing badly in terms of both community college enrollment and community college degree completion, and has fewer state-level supports than almost every other community college system in the country. The Ticker took a closer look at the report and sat down with Nick Nissley, president of Northwestern Michigan College (NMC) to find out how Traverse City’s community college is doing and where there's room for improvement.

The report in question, titled “Compete to Win: Building a World Class Community College System,” was published last month by Business Leaders for Michigan (BLM), a Detroit-based nonprofit “dedicated to making Michigan a Top 10 state for jobs, education, widely shared prosperity, and a healthy economy.” Among other takeaways, the report notes that Michigan “ranks 49th for community college completion nationally and 48th for enrollment, and lacks sufficient state supports and focus to overcome barriers to success.” BLM, in turn, links these shortcomings to the hurdles many Michigan industries and employers are facing as they try to attract and retain talent.

“Michigan’s community colleges are designed to meet the needs of employers and provide pathways to prosperity for students from all walks of life,” said Jeff Donofrio, President and CEO of BLM. “If we hope to become a Top 10 state, we need to make sure they succeed… Failure to act will cost us exponentially more – through low state rankings, out migration, and employers choosing to grow elsewhere.”

Nissley says he was warned of the Business Leaders for Michigan report ahead of its publication – and immediately felt some anxiety about what it might show.

“We got a heads up [about the report] from the BLM folks through our state association, the Michigan Community Colleges Association, and it definitely caused heartburn for a few weeks,” he recalls. “We were told that it was a damning indictment of community colleges in Michigan. I think the good news is that, what I sensed from all of my peers from all 31 community colleges in the state of Michigan, is that the report did cause heartache. And that means people care. So, when we finally did get to see the report in its entirety, it gave us a chance to pause, reflect, and say ‘What’s in here that we can take away? What can we do better?’”

Talks of lagging enrollment are not new for NMC: Todd Neibauer, the college’s vice president for student services and technologies, told The Ticker in 2021 that NMC’s enrollment numbers have been steadily declining since 2008 – something he attributed to fewer school-aged kids and fewer high school graduates in the region. In responding to the low enrollment and graduation rankings, Nissley points to the same demographic trends, which he says are affecting Michigan as a whole.

“It's a headline when you say, 'We’re ranked 48th for enrollment and 49th for completion,'” Nissley says. “But particularly when you think about something like enrollment, it’s important to recognize that demographics are not in our favor. Michigan ranks something like 49th in population growth since 1990. And that's our pipeline for our students. If we're in a state that’s ranking low for population growth, of course we're going to have fewer students. And on top of that, college attendance in the state has fallen from 65 percent back in 2013 to 52 percent this last year. So, not only do we have that demographic challenge of declining population, but we also have fewer students who are attending college.”

While Nissley says the overall rankings for Michigan’s community colleges aren’t encouraging, he also tells The Ticker that much of the BLM report did give him assurance that NMC is on the right path. NMC ranks sixth among 31 Michigan community colleges in terms of completion rates, with 34 percent of students finishing their programs. (The Ironwood-based Gogebic Community College tops the list with a 42 percent student graduation rate, compared to the national median of 38 percent.) Furthermore, Nissley says NMC has already embraced many of the best practices that BLM recommended in its report as ways to elevate Michigan community colleges.

One section of the BLM report is a case study about Wayne State University, which in 2011 adopted an initiative to improve its then-dismal graduation rates. “Focus areas included expanding undergraduate academic advising, implementing high impact practices, increasing support for high need students, launching an Office of Diversity and Inclusion, and expanding non-academic support services,” the report notes. In the wake of those efforts, Wayne State “more than doubled its graduation rate from 26 percent in 2011 to 60.3 percent in 2022 and roughly tripled the graduation rates for Black, Latinx, first-generation and low-income students.”

“We’re already doing a lot of those things,” Nissley says. “In the BLM report, they identified that there’s a disparity between BIPOC student success and white student success. Well, we know that, and we're trying to address it. It’s why we've got a special advisor to the president for DEIB, and it's why we've got a specific success coach for Native American students. Now, is the needle moving? We're just over a year into our new strategic plan, so it's a little too early for us to say, but I do think we're seeing the needle move in the right direction.”

Nissley also points to other recent strategic-plan-backed initiatives – such as short-form credentialing programs and a deeper focus on adult learners – as areas where NMC is already aligned with BLM's recommendations.

Some recommendations in the report, meanwhile, focus not on the colleges themselves but on statewide support systems. Right now, per the report, Michigan is “the only state in the nation without a statewide agency focused on community college success.” When asked what kind of state-level supports NMC would like to see, Nissley says his first priority is making sure that community colleges retain the local-level control and decision-making that allows them to be “responsive to community needs.”

“But on the flip side, there are absolutely areas where we would invite greater support from the state,” Nissley continues. “Things like coordinating more efficient transfer between our institutions would be so helpful, or ensuring that high school students have access to dual enrollment. And probably the most obvious area where we’d invite more steep support is in the area of appropriations. Our costs continue to rise. With inflation, even if we did nothing differently in the last year, we’d still have 8 percent higher costs. If state appropriations are held flat or don't keep up with inflation, that becomes a challenge. So, we surely invite stronger funding from the state.”