At Pueblo Community College (PCC) in Pueblo, Colorado, President Dr. Patricia Erjavec worried about student enrollment. She wanted to start thinking creatively about where to find new students.
Dr. Patricia Erjavec, president of Pueblo Community College in Pueblo, Colorado.
So Erjavec and her administration got to work, whittling down the list to make it more manageable to students with at least 30 completed credentials and an overall institutional debt of less than $500. Then, they reached out to these former students personally, inviting them to return. PCC offered these Some College, No Credential (SCNC) students a chance to attend one semester and have their institutional debt cleared, renewing their eligibility for financial aid.
It worked.
“Since 2016, we have served 532 students, and 92% of them passed that first semester and we were able to get them across the finish line. Our success rate is 87%,” said Erjavec, noting that SCNC students’ graduation rate is higher than that of the overall college.
Erjavec shared this success at a webinar hosted by National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, who released a report on Tuesday about SCNC students in America. Since last presenting data in 2019, the number of SCNC students increased by 8.6% to 39 million in July 2020. While some increase can be attributed to methodological changes from the Clearinghouse, like the inclusion of student populations at U.S. territories, the amount grew alongside net growth in 48 states.
Experts discussed the ways that institutions can and have brought these students back into their fold and helped them complete their education.
