The Daily Orange

Media Credit: David Miller

Undergraduate enrollment at Syracuse University's University College nearly doubled from last semester, primarily due to recent layoffs and former students looking to get their degrees.

The statistics reflect a nationwide trend in higher education, said Bea Gonzalez, dean of University College.

"People are being recommended to attend college part-time so they can save money and keep working during bad economic times," Gonzalez said.

UC, the part-time college at SU, received a total of 80 undergraduate applications this semester, and admitted 46 of those students, Gonzalez said. It received 44 applications and admitted 28 of those students last semester.

Increased interest in continuing education has been part of a nationwide trend, according to a September survey by the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, a higher education research and policy organization.

Many of the colleges surveyed reported that their full-time students switched to part-time status because of the economy, according to a Chronicle of Higher Education report in November of last year.

Part-time education gives people an opportunity to save money because it is less expensive than attending a university full-time, Gonzalez said. It also frees up time for people to work a full-time job while taking classes.

"We're working hard to make people aware that attending SU on a part-time basis is an option," she said.

Another reason for the school's increased enrollment is a recent spike in the number of people who have recently lost their businesses or have been laid off, Gonzalez said.

"On many of the applications for admission, people would say they had just lost the business they had owned for 10 or 15 years," she said, "and they wanted to go back to school."

Emileen Butler, academic advisor at UC, said many of her new students are simply looking to complete school.

"I have a lot of students who went to school in the 1970's and are coming back now to finish their degrees," she said.

The increase of enrollees at UC has been primarily for undergraduates, Gonzalez said.

The number of graduate student applications at UC has declined in the past year, due mostly to the fact that graduate students are typically more directly tied to an employer, she said.

UC is planning to take a look at the average ages of their students to see if there is a downward trend in ages. There may be greater numbers of younger people choosing part-time education over full-time, Gonzalez said.

Continued...

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