PCC beats national average for retention of students

Retention and success rates at Pratt Community College are above both the state and national benchmark comparison rates.

The rates were presented to the PCC Board of Trustees during their regular monthly meeting Monday night.

In the fall of 2009 course retention rates were 95.2 percent, enrollee success rate was 83.0 percent and course completer success rate was 87.2 percent.

“This tells a good story of retention and success in the classroom,” said Jim Stratford, vice president for instruction. “Those are exceptional numbers.”

Course retention is the percentage of students who were still enrolled in class on the official certification day 20 days from the start of classes.

Course enrollee success rate is the percentage of students that passed the class from all students that were originally enrolled including all students that dropped the class during the semester.

Course completer success rate is the percentage of students that took the entire class and passed. 

Using a three year PCC comparison rate from fall 2007, fall 2008 and fall 2009 against the 2007 National Community College Benchmarking Project, the PCC retention rate is 95 percent and three percent higher than the NCCBP state and national participators; the enrollee success rate is 84 percent and four percent higher than the state participants and six percent higher than the national range; the completer success rate is 88 percent and one percent higher than the state rate and three percent higher than the national rate.

In core academic classes: PCC English Comp I is slightly above the NCCBP state average and the national comparison group; PCC English Comp II has a higher retention percent rate then national but lower in enrollee success and completer success rates; College Algebra is a point lower in retention, enrollee and completer rates: PCC Speech retention rate is higher then the national and state comparison but lower then the national and state comparison enrollee and completer success rates.

Enrollment numbers continue to be above the same time in 2009. Total credit hours for 2010 so far are at 14,098 and 1,276 hours ahead of 2009. Summer school credit hours are three percent above a year ago and fall credit hours are up 12 percent from 2009. Headcount for fall 2010 is up 14 percent over 2009.

“We’ve been very successful,” said Lisa Miller, vice president of student/enrollment management.

A key to the jump is over 700 concurrent hours already enrolled and that is about three percent ahead of last year.

Residence hall occupancy is expected to be full or just a little bit over, Miller said.

Kent Adams, vice president of finance and operations, said that the college revenues continue to be favorable with a year-end positive cash flow from $100,000 to $150,000. That is double the expected positive cash flow of $50,000, Adams said.

Two of the PCC wind turbines have been shut down due to cracks in the bottom third of the support tower. The cracks are caused when the turbines shut down. That creates a lot of pressure on the towers, Adams said.

After consulting with the company the purchased Integrity Wind Solutions, the company the made the towers, they will provide the bottom section at no charge to the school. The suggested solution is thicker metal on the base.

The turbines continue to save the college money in energy expenses. After debt service, the college saves about $5,000 to $10,000 a year.

The Trustees also approved the purchase of 45 Dell desktop computers and 10 Dell laptop computers in a sole source bid. The college has a contract with Dell and they replace one third of the computers every year so all computers are always under warranty, said PCC President William Wojciechowski.