Changing from enrollment-challenged to resource-challenged: Results of a five year enrollment strategy

Many engineering technology programs across the country have been experiencing declining enrollments for the past decade. Although there are periodic increases at individual institutions, typically these are due to temporary external programs such as educational retraining for unemployed/displaced workers. These increases are generally short-lived and decreased enrollments continue. Our school, a small 4-year liberal arts institution with engineering and engineering technology programs, has shown a similar trend with the more dramatic decreases in the associate degree engineering technology programs. Faced with concerns for the viability of our technology programs and a clear understanding that our current methods of recruitment were not meeting our needs, we developed a multifaceted enrollment strategy. Our approach included programmatic review, alignment of advertising to student trends, and new sources of recruitment. This work will detail our enrollment strategy and the concomitant results over a five year time frame that led to an enrollment increase in our engineering technology program such that it is currently the largest program at our institution. This rapid increase has changed our focus from program viability to a resource challenged environment (classroom space and faculty) where we are now pressed to enact more stringent enrollment controls.