Enrollment at AACC grew about 4% between spring 2022 and last semester, lagging behind national community college trends.
Community college enrollment rose about 8% nationally from last year, returning to pre-pandemic levels, according to spring-to-spring data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.
“There’s a lot of variation in the [data],” John Grabowski, the dean for enrollment services, said. “There’s probably some [community colleges] that are going down and some are coming up and so forth. … It all comes down to the local school, the state, … and Anne Arundel Community College’s enrollment [did] grow last academic year.”
National community college enrollment fell 10% during the pandemic, while four-year enrollment fell about 1%.
While community college enrollment continues to grow, four-year colleges remain 1% down, according to the Clearinghouse.
Grabowski said the end of the pandemic brought more students to community colleges.
Students are “now approaching what they’re going to do, and part of that is, you know, to get post-secondary education,” Grabowski said.
Grabowski said one of the main factors for increased AACC enrollment in particular is the Maryland law that gives dual-enrolled public high school students free college tuition.
The Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, which took effect in fall 2022, allows public high school students to take classes for free.