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FACT BOOK VIRGINIA WESTERN COMMUNITY COLLEGE |
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FREQUENTLY
ASKED QUESTIONS
DATA
TABLES AND GRAPHS
REPORTS
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Introduction and
Highlights
"There are lies, damned lies, and statistics." --Mark Twain The purpose of this Fact Book is to provide accurate and up-to-date information about institutional characteristics and trends in enrollment, student outcomes, and other areas. Making this information available online has three obvious advantages. First, it can be expanded and updated at any time. Second, it is accessible to anyone via the web (faculty and staff, students, peer institutions, and the general public). And third, bound hard copies--which become obsolete each year--are no longer necessary. Anyone can print the pages they need whenever they need them. Collecting institutional research information is like fishing in a vast sea of information that is wide, deep, always in motion, and often murky. What data we collect and display depends largely on both availability and our "market" (i.e., the needs of our customers). It is not practical to have all the information that everyone might want, at any given time, so we usually provide the most frequently requested and useful data. To follow the analogy a bit further, (quoting from historian E. H. Carr), "what the [researcher] catches will depend... mainly on what part of the ocean he chooses to fish and what tackle he chooses to use--these factors being, of course, determined by the kind of fish he wants to catch." So, limited partly by the availability of data but mostly by time, we have constructed dozens of data tables and graphs that we hope will answer most general inquiries as well as the specific needs of faculty and staff for program evaluation and institutional planning. Numerous graphs have been added to illustrate various trends. Additional information can be provided upon request. A good place to start is the Frequently Asked Questions page. For a look a recent enrollment trends and their implications, see Table 1.2 (Fall Enrollment Summary/ History). Over the past several years most characteristics of our student population have remained fairly stable, but there also have been some dramatic changes. The percentage of students enrolled part-time has increased from 73% to 76% since 1993--but this understates the magnitude of this change. That increase of represents a difference of over 1,500 students, while full-time student enrollment has remained fairly flat. Much of this surge has come from high school dual enrollment courses, so we need to say a little about that here. Since 1993, high school dual enrollment [Table 2.4] has grown from 2% to 12% of the college's full-time equivalent students (FTES). [FTES = students x credits hours divided by the average full-time load of 15 credits.] This large population of students (over 1,500 in the fall of 2002) impacts other data in this Fact Book in ways that might go unnoticed: more off-campus students, more non-curricular students, and a larger number of "nontraditional" transfer students [though they usually are not classified as community college transfers despite the fact that they may carry with them quite a lot of transfer credit when they matriculate to a four-year college after high school]. The average student age of 29 has not changed, but removing this large population of 16-18 year olds would surely raise the average age to well above 30 [see Table 1.10]. Another startling enrollment trend is the emergence of so-called "distance learning" students [Table 2.5]. Few of these students are truly far from Roanoke and most also take occasional classroom courses on campus. These are "e-generation" learners taking online courses from home, sandwiched between their job schedules and family demands, for convenience and efficiency. In the past six years distance learning has grown from less than 1% of the total enrollment to 18% (over 2,300 students in one or more of 60 different courses last year). How are these changes in enrollment impacting college facilities and services? How are they affecting course pass rates, retention, graduation, and other institutional performance measures? The answers to these and countless other important questions are somewhat beyond the scope of this Fact Book, but we have tried to provide some further assistance by clustering some data tables and graphs on related topics and introducing them with a bit of analytical narrative. They are attached as "Institutional Effectiveness Studies and Reports." The information disseminated here is intended to help faculty and staff address such concerns in their institutional planning, program development, and evaluation efforts. We want this information to be useful and welcome constructive feedback from members of the college who utilize institutional research services (see evaluation link below). David C. Hanson
04/03 |
See Online Fact Book