The number of full-time students who arrived at the Community College of Rhode Island straight from high school who are on track to graduate in two years has increased by 240 percent compared with last year.
This, says the school, is directly due to the R.I. Promise program, which gives new R.I. high school graduates who meet certain conditions two free years of school.
The program, championed by Gov. Gina M. Raimondo, led to a 43 percent increase in first-time, full-time students – 1,577 individuals – who enrolled straight from high school at the beginning of the 2017-18 academic year.
School officials say they are better prepared to handle an additional influx of new students expected to take advantage of R.I. Promise.
Calling August 2017 “a comedy,” Sara Enright, CCRI chief outcomes officer, said the process of enrolling and situating 1,577 students was a beneficial – albeit “wild” – lesson learned.
Via high school and GED program outreach, recruitment for the second cohort of R.I. Promise students “picked up steam in January and February” – much earlier than last year – and will continue through the summer, she said.
Enright feels more prepared this year because of R.I. Promise’s simplicity. She said: “Boil[ing] it down to: ‘Hey seniors, we know you’re thinking about college, there’s a free program here’ ” is an easy sell.
And the school, she says, is in no danger of becoming overcrowded or too dependent on students receiving the state subsidy.
“We’ve got room to grow, we have the physical capacity and human capacity” to absorb the added students, said Enright.
She said peak CCRI enrollment reached 18,000 students a decade ago. Current enrollment is roughly 15,000.
R.I Promise students bring financial aid from two sources: the state and federal Pell Grants. Per the school’s count, of the 1,577 new students, more than 800 receive federal Pell Grants totaling $3.5 million to date. The state, on the other hand, has paid CCRI nearly $3 million in financial aid, according to CCRI President Meghan Hughes, since the current academic year started.
Because there are two funding sources – and state dollars are outpaced by federal money – Hughes believes the recent growth in new students will continue if a new administration were to abolish R.I. Promise or decrease the state funding.
To accommodate the new students, said Enright, five advisers have been hired, with four more new jobs available. No additional faculty have been hired.
Also, large-scale, previously planned program updates have been accelerated due to R.I. Promise. “A sense of urgency,” said Enright, has been applied to expansion of developmental education services, reworking the mathematics curriculum and the Guided Pathways program.
CCRI students are offered “nearly 100 [career pathway] programs,” said Enright, which will be culled to seven with the Guided Pathways initiative.
