MUNCIE -- Ivy Tech Community College is launching a campaign to help lawmakers and the Indiana Commission for Higher Education (ICHE) understand who its students really are — part-timers.
The college has been on the defensive since state Sen. Luke Kenley (R-Noblesville), chairman of the Appropriations Committee, pointed out that Ivy Tech’s graduation rates are the lowest among all community colleges in the U.S.
As a result, the Legislature eliminated $25 million in funding to modernize Ivy Tech’s outdated Cowan Road campus. Kenley told The Star Press it was “time to call timeout” on Ivy Tech capital projects “to see if we can’t find our path here” before moving forward in the next budget cycle with a plan that is “successful,” because “right now it’s not happening.”
“Sixty-two percent of our students in the East Central Region and 69 percent of our students in the Richmond Region are taking fewer than 12 credits per semester,” the region’s chancellor, Andy Bowne, said during a speech on Friday to hundreds of faculty and staff from Anderson, Muncie, Marion, Richmond and New Castle.
So there is no way those students can graduate on time (within two years), which would require that they take 15 hours a semester to earn a 60-hour associate degree.
Only 4 percent of Ivy Tech students in the Richmond Region are enrolled full time and fewer than 11 percent of Ivy Tech students in the East Central Region are enrolled full time.
“We all know that,” Bowne said. “And now our challenge statewide is to engage our Legislature and certainly CHE. I’m excited to say that we have a team that’s started to interact with and work with CHE ... so we can help those who set targets for us and metrics and performance-based funding to understand who the Ivy Tech student population is.”