PEORIA MAGAZINE August 2022

Sheila Quirk-Bailey is president of Illinois Central College

When the virus hit the U.S., conven tional wisdom held that community colleges might prosper, given relatively low tuition costs and more people at home with time on their hands. That didn’t happen. Community colleges nationally have lost 827,000students since thebeginning of the pandemic. That first year, ICC saw enrollment plummet 20 percent. The problem? In part, there has been a learning curve as teachers adapt to online delivery. “We might not have been very good at doing it,” said Bruce Budde, ICC’s senior vice president of administration and finance. Students also needed to adjust to online classes. But as interactions have grown more solid on each end of Zoom classrooms, ICC officials believe hybrid modalities – in-person, online, or a combination of both – are key to the school’s future. The flexible approaches will better allow the school to meet the different needs of a diverse student body, said Budde. “I think it’s going to be key in knocking down barriers.” That might be why last year, though ICC still saw enrollment drop 9 percent – to 11,132 students — the dip was less than half that of the previous year. Further, despite the enrollment challenges, ICC’s endowment has risen AT ICC, ‘WE CAN’T TRAIN WELDERS FAST ENOUGH’

become an issue, even more so for students who feel adrift and disconnected. For students plugged into campus resources, BU can often help with financial assistance. “It’s findable,” Standifird said. Meanwhile, a common higher-ed metric is the six-year graduation rate, which nationally is 57.6% — a figure that sparks a shake of Standifird’s head. “Find me another industry where you’re OK if you fail 40 percent of the time,” he said. “Would youwant a doctor who fails 40 percent of the time?” BU’s six-year rate is 76 percent, but the school is aiming for 90 percent. On the immediate upside, the school’s graduate programs are growing, with enrollment doubling since 2018. Right now, BU has 4,200 undergrads and 1,200 graduate students, with many of the latter taking courses online, especially in nursing. “I foresee the daywhen the undergrad uate and online numbers rival the un dergraduate numbers,” Standifird said. Meantime, the school’s endowment is solid, rising from $313 million in 2017 to $350 million today. “I’m expecting it to grow in the years to come,” Standifird said. ILLINOIS CENTRAL COLLEGE ICC administrators learned a lot from the pandemic, including how to better attract and teach students.

has dipped 3 percent since 2018. However, enrollment has leveled off over the past two years, including in the incoming freshman class, which totals 1,040. Beyond enrollment loss from the pandemic, students have become more finicky regarding college choice, said Standifird. Two newer considerations have emerged, he said: Students want a welcoming and inclusive environment, plus a post-college trajectory that includes a “life of impact.” Both concerns have promptedBradley to begin developing a new mentoring program to better guide students from freshman enrollment to graduation day. “It’s not career planning,” Standifird said. “It’s life planning.” For example, one step would involve more comprehensively helping students choose a major, not necessarily by academic discipline but according to their interests and abilities. The approach is less about what students want to be than what they’d like to do. And if an undergrad’s interests wander, Standifird wants degree paths to be more f lexible to accommodate change within a reasonable graduation time. Along the way, college costs can STUDENTS NOW WANT A POST-COLLEGE ‘LIFE OF IMPACT’

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