11-20-2023, 01:02 PM
(This post was last modified: 11-20-2023, 01:05 PM by ReyMysterioso.)
The thing about COSC's model is that they made very little revenue off people coming in with 114+ credits needing to pay tuition only for the corner and cap. The bulk of their revenue is students who take 30-60 or more credits in residency. More conventional students.
The state kept facing educational funding shortfalls for the last several years and kept looking for ways to cut corners and costs - the most significant move was consolidating all the community colleges into one unit under one administration to cut overhead. Enrollment was down across the board and down 18.6% (to 1,618 students) at Charter Oak State College specifically.
So with all the turbulence, it's my personal speculation that they made a business decision to boost enrollment in the area that drives more revenue - which is those students taking more than 30 credits in residence. And as a byproduct, they narrowed the doorway on all the alt-credit students just so they could focus more of their "bandwidth" of education services on those kinds of students.
I don't really blame them, but at the same time, it's pretty obvious that with all these alt-credit, non-traditional students flooding UMPI and a couple other pathways - there is OBVIOUSLY an underserved need for fast, affordable, adult education. And it's certainly a missed opportunity for COSC to mostly abandon that kind of student rather than finding a way to tap into that underserved market in a way that can both help student and institution.
It does seem backward-facing that their original goal and mission was niche degree completion for adult learners, yet they've the steps they keep taking move them in the direction of being just another state college.
It pains me to say I regret choosing COSC as my undergrad over a different program.
The state kept facing educational funding shortfalls for the last several years and kept looking for ways to cut corners and costs - the most significant move was consolidating all the community colleges into one unit under one administration to cut overhead. Enrollment was down across the board and down 18.6% (to 1,618 students) at Charter Oak State College specifically.
So with all the turbulence, it's my personal speculation that they made a business decision to boost enrollment in the area that drives more revenue - which is those students taking more than 30 credits in residence. And as a byproduct, they narrowed the doorway on all the alt-credit students just so they could focus more of their "bandwidth" of education services on those kinds of students.
I don't really blame them, but at the same time, it's pretty obvious that with all these alt-credit, non-traditional students flooding UMPI and a couple other pathways - there is OBVIOUSLY an underserved need for fast, affordable, adult education. And it's certainly a missed opportunity for COSC to mostly abandon that kind of student rather than finding a way to tap into that underserved market in a way that can both help student and institution.
It does seem backward-facing that their original goal and mission was niche degree completion for adult learners, yet they've the steps they keep taking move them in the direction of being just another state college.
It pains me to say I regret choosing COSC as my undergrad over a different program.
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