Palomar enrollment spike

Palomar College has been plagued with declining enrollment over the past few years. However, this semester the college is experiencing an uptick in enrollment numbers.

Enrollment has gone up roughly one percent, which is equates to a few hundred students. This semester we have 24,870 students attending, in comparison to last fall semester, which saw 24,661 students in attendance.

Jack Kahn, the Vice President of Instructional Services explained that they have made it a point to provide more classes that students are struggling to get into, and providing more opportunity to get into those specific courses.

“One of the major factors that made this year different, is that we were very purposeful about making sure we were adding more classes that students are trying to get into…We’re going through data and looking to see what are those classes,” Kahn said.

Over the summer Palomar opened up both the Fallbrook and Rancho Bernardo Education Centers, which has contributed to the increasing enrollment.

“Since I’ve been here, this is the first time we’ve been up in enrollment in the fall” Kahn said. “It’s not just more classes, it’s what classes.”

Palomar Promise has also helped with the increased enrollment, bringing in 1,500 new students. The programs design allows for students to come full-time, making sure they get the core classes that they need, and help better prepare them for college life.

“As that number grows it’ll continue to be a significant factor, because those students are taking a full-time load, and of course getting support, and they’re taking classes, that will be what they need to transfer,” Kahn explained.

Palomar has also worked to develop new ways of advertising for the campus.

Director of Communications, Marketing and Public Affairs, Laura Gropen, explained how they have added new ways of marketing to their image campaign.

“One of the things we’ve done a little bit differently within the last, I would say from spring to now, is that we really diversified into digital media. So we strongly use digital media and gone out into the digital marketplace.” Gropen explained.

The new goals with enrollment are working together in order stay inline with the Palomar mission statement which says, “Our mission is to provide an engaging teaching and learning environment for students of diverse origins, experiences, needs, abilities, and goals.”