With a strong economy and plentiful job opportunities, it can be difficult for today’s young people to see the value in attending college. Upon graduation, many high schoolers these days are directly entering the workforce, and some are turning to online classes on sites such as Udemy and Skillshare in lieu of attending college. While our enrollment during the last 20 years has generally followed economic trends, the college-going population has been steadily declining in Salt Lake County. If this continues, Utah’s challenges in filling high-demand jobs will only worsen and lead to slower economic growth and reduced prosperity.
In the SLCC Strategic Plan, one of our goals is to secure institutional sustainability and capacity, and the primary way we will achieve this goal is to continually grow enrollment. To support our enrollment efforts, SLCC formed a collaborative work team (CWT) last year to develop a framework to strengthen what’s known as the “P-20 pipeline.” P-20 refers to the collaborative work with our partners in Salt Lake County school districts. Together, we want to encourage K-12 students to think about college and to promote the idea of attending SLCC. One of the most effective strategies is to begin these efforts when a student enters middle school. Our goal is to reach students in 6th or 7th grade and plant the seed that they can succeed in college. By hearing that message early and often, middle schoolers will start to envision themselves as college students — and going to college becomes an attainable goal.
When we communicate with students who are thinking about attending SLCC, we usually rely on a software called Enrollment Rx. It is designed to collect information on individual students and help promote the college directly to them. However, due to their youth, there are concerns regarding the collection of individual data from 6th or 7th graders. In light of this, our P-20 CWT is recommending the college build a web app that will only track the number of middle schoolers participating in an activity and not individual student data. The tool will be completed this spring and will help the college monitor the effectiveness of college outreach activities to middle school students. This means we will be able to observe how well our current efforts help students make the decision to go to college and adjust them based on students’ needs.
The P-20 CWT is also in the process of developing a reporting structure and timeline to inform college leadership and others of P-20 efforts. More information on the process will be provided as a reporting approach is evaluated and finalized.
To learn more about the work of the P-20 CWT, check out the latest on SLCC’s SharePoint site.