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ACC enrollment up; budget healthy moving ahead

ALPENA — Alpena Community College is one of three community colleges in the state of Michigan to have higher enrollment numbers.

“Spring semester enrollment I want to report out,” ACC President Don MacMaster said at the board of trustees meeting Wednesday. “This is from Monday data. We’re up 0.38 percent in credit hours. And slightly more than 1 percent in head count.”

The ACC head count this semester is 1,463 students and they are enrolled for 14,075 credit hours.

The smaller colleges in a similar size as ACC are doing fairly well, MacMaster said. The Michigan Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers Community College Weekly Enrollment Report said Glen Oaks Community College in Centerville has 5.7 percent higher enrollment rate, Kirtland Community College in Grayling had a 1.86 percent rise in enrollment rates, and North Central Community College in Petoskey had a 2.25 percent rise.

Larger schools such as Lansing Community College had a drop of 12.37 percent in enrollment and Kalamazoo Valley had a decrease of 14.8 percent in enrollment.

MacMaster said enrollment numbers for students who are enrolled concurrently will be released in mid-February. The college has partnered with Alpena Public Schools on concurrent enrollment for career and technical education students, he said.

“The pilot project will provide a job search strategies ACC course to APS CTE students taught by APS instructors at no cost to the students and minimal cost to APS,” MacMaster said.

During the meeting MacMaster also discussed the current financials of the college.

Revenue for 2017 is $7,582,177, which is $526,965 more than 2016. Expenses for 2017 are $6,657,146 compared to 6,637,681 in 2016.

“The six month comparison between last year and now; that’s a good picture as well,” MacMaster said. “On the revenue side it’s up substantially. And the expense side is well managed.”

Board Treasurer Joseph Gentry asked Vice President for Administration and Finance Richard Sutherland if the enrollment will affect the budget.

Sutherland said it will and the college will “net out” very well.

“Based on the expense side that’s all under control at this point,” he said. “We should be in real good shape at the end of the year. Then we can have future discussions if we want to keep the bulk of that in the general fund.”

Or, he said, they can discuss moving some of the money to the maintenance replacement fund because it’s been somewhat depleted during the past few years.

He said it was the best problem to have in decades.

Chairman John Briggs said they’ve had to defer projects the past few years and now they have to work on some things.

One of the projects discussed was to replace the elevator in the Natural Resources Center.

Jordan Spence can be reached via email at jspence@thealpenanews.com or by phone at 358-5687.

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