While enrollment at Everett and Edmonds community colleges is booming, hundreds more could attend the campuses but are being turned away because of a lack of funds.
Everett Community College has already spent a fund set aside for the school year that helps pay for tuition to retrain people who have recently become jobless.
“If we had the funding, we probably would have had about 350 (more students) for winter quarter and we would probably have well over 400 for spring,” said Debra Lockard, work-force training program coordinator at EvCC. “Nearly everybody I talk to, if they don’t get tuition help, they can’t start, which is extremely heartbreaking.”
Edmonds Community College just ran out of the same tuition aid.
This is happening while both colleges experience possibly record enrollment for the winter quarter, which began this year. EvCC had 8,985 students enroll in this quarter; EdCC had 11,294 students enroll this quarter.
Lockard pulled a 1 1/2-inch stack of applications from a yellow folder the other day. Each application represents a would-be student on a waiting list for state tuition that goes to unemployed workers. That money has already been divvied up to others who have lost their jobs.
Lockard said she sees a wide spectrum of students, from laid-off blue collar workers without high school diplomas or GEDs to displaced professionals with master’s degrees. Roughly half are 35 to 60 years old.
“You want to just go home from work and cry because you have had to tell people, ‘No,’ all day,” she said.
EvCC ran out of this year’s allocation of state worker retraining funds in five months because of the increased demand, said Sharon Buck, EvCC Dean of Business and Workforce Education. The college’s allocation of state funds was based on the number of people served during the previous year, before the economy began to wobble.
It will receive its next state allocation of worker retraining funds July 1. In the meantime, it is referring students to traditional financial aid and colleges that still have worker-retraining money and encouraging students to tap other sources, such as the Workforce Development Council Workforce Investment Act funds.
Edmonds Community College is serving 300 students in its worker retraining program this winter, 61 percent more than a year ago.
“We are out of money at this point, but we are still meeting with students in finding other funding options,” said Stephanie Wiegand, EdCC’s director of communications.
Typically, the college is able to pay two quarters of full-time tuition. It costs about $910 a quarter in basic tuition costs.
Everett and Edmonds community colleges both saw sizable jumps in their overall enrollment from last winter. Everett is up nearly 450 students; Edmonds enrollment rose by 5 percent, or about 530 students. Both colleges predict enrollment numbers will be bigger when final tallies are made at the end of winter quarter.
“We expect the demand from students to keep the pressure on our services this spring,” said Michele Graves, an EdCC spokeswoman.
Both colleges also have seen a spike in students seeking financial aid this year.
EvCC, for instance, has seen about 6,500 applications this academic year, compared with about 5,100 at the same time last year.
Everett officials say it is the highest winter enrollment in the past 14 years and is probably a record for winter. They could not retrieve enrollment records dating back further on Friday.
Christine Kerlin, EvCC vice president of enrollment management, said the college often sees an increase in students when the economy sputters.
In 2002 and 2003, 17,000 laid-off workers across the state turned to community and technical colleges for retraining during Washington’s last economic downturn. Forty-six percent of all students at two-year colleges enroll for job training, according to state statistics.
“For many people, it’s a job loss driving them here now,” she said. “Others can’t afford the tuition of the (four-year) university and sometimes it’s not just the tuition at the university, but it may be the combined financial burden of moving, the housing and other expenses.”
Jessica Ruhle, 34, a Marysville resident with a husband, two children and a mortgage, was laid off from a home building company’s finance department in November. She has enrolled at EvCC, where she is taking pre-nursing classes in hopes of finding a profession with job security.
She has looked for work but has found few nibbles.
“There just isn’t a lot out there and there are just a ton of people looking,” she said. “If I hadn’t lost my job, I don’t think I would be returning to school.”
Reporter Eric Stevick: 425-339-3446, stevick@heraldnet.com.
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