Lake Michigan College is seeing strong growth in the enrollment of recent Southwest Michigan high school graduates.
The college says information released by MI School Data in its annual College Enrollment Destination Report shows that 274 graduates from public high schools in the LMC district this year enrolled at LMC within six months of graduation, more than the next four institutions combined.
LMC Director of Admissions Eric Wignall tells us the college is the clear choice for the Class of 2025, and overall enrollment is up this fall.
“One of the things that we’ve kind of specialized in, we’ve aimed at going back to schools and putting our feet on the ground,” Wignall said. “The head count right now, we’re up about 4% over this time last year.”
LMC’s total enrollment as of Wednesday was2,767.
“Pretty happy. The first-time-in-college number, we did really, really well. We’re 16% above where we were last year, and last year was a very good year. So, 688 of those students, it’s the first time they’ve ever been to a college. Most of them are recent graduates of the last year, perhaps the last two years. So that’s a pretty substantial number for us and it kind of bodes well for the future.”
Wignall says recent changes at the state and local level are making it easier and more attractive to attend a community college before transferring to a four-year institution later. For example, there’s the Michigan Community College Guarantee, a state program that covers 100% of in-district tuition.
“So, students that are looking to start, earn credits, build up a transcript, maybe just get a associate degree and go directly into the workforce, the idea of free tuition is a huge draw.”
That’s attracting many recent high school graduates, as is LMC’s program that pays for text books.
“Money that we had set aside for scholarships because of the guarantee, we switched that over and we pay for books. So, students coming here as a full time student can get the guarantee as well as free books, textbooks for college. It’s really, really a huge draw.”
When looking beyond LMC’s immediate district to its broader four-county service area, which adds the other portions of Van Buren County along with Cass and Allegan counties, LMC enrolled 335 Class of 2025 graduates, again ranking first among all colleges and universities. Wignall says in addition to cost savings, many students have academic reasons for attending a community college before transferring later.
“Those kind of courses are the intro courses, they’re the same everywhere. We even use some of the same textbooks. I like to kid with people that we have the exact same economics textbook that they use at Yale. The intro courses are the intro courses everywhere, and it’s a huge win for our students. Even if they’re planning on Michigan State or Michigan or going out of state somewhere else, they can start with us, save a huge amount of money and time. And then with early college, it’s a giant leap forward. They get a big head start on other students. We’ve had people that go through the early college program and they walk onto Michigan State’s campus, for instance, and they’re already a sophomore or junior.”
The most popular programs for students at LMC are in the fields of business and healthcare.
“The one that we get the most traffic, the ones that are probably the highest in terms of when people in the community say Lake Michigan College, they think of our healthcare programs. It’s not the largest number of students, but it’s number two. And the students that graduate from our healthcare programs are — we like to kind of joke internally that they have about a 400% placement rate because they’re getting multiple job offers by the time, even before they’re graduating. So our nursing program, x-ray technicians, sonography, and cardiac sonography — that’s a new one for us, and this year we started our physical therapy assistant program as well.”
LMC has also stepped up recruitment the old fashioned way — by going to high schools and meeting with students. And it says new graduates directly out of high school are just one segment of a larger overall enrollment picture. Last year, the college served 4,169 students who included, alongside the new high school graduates, continuing students, Early College participants, and adult learners.
