BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Baton Rouge Community College has officially surpassed Southern University for the first time to become the city’s second-largest college in terms of enrollment size.
According to statistics reported by the schools on Wednesday, Southern’s fall enrollment stands at 7,631 students — a dip of nearly 40 students — while BRCC now has 8,104 students, which is up 500 more students than 2008.
“I’m excited,” said BRCC Chancellor Myrtle Dorsey of hitting the 8,000-student plateau.
“We’re being as creative as we can with our space,” she said, adding that average class sizes are now at about 27 or 28 students. “We’ve made some creative renovations.”
Southern’s enrollment has dipped nearly 20 percent the past five years while the 11-year old community college has grown more than 40 percent during the same time frame. BRCC’s enrollment increased 6.5 percent from last fall.
Southern Chancellor Kofi Lomotey said he is pleased that the historically black college’s trend of a rapidly declining student body has apparently bottomed out and could reverse course.
“We believe very likely this is an opportunity to turn the tide,” Lomotey said Wednesday.
While some university officials have whispered about competition from community colleges, Lomotey said he does not see things that way.
“I see it (BRCC) as being an untapped pipeline,” Lomotey said, noting that he wants more community college students to transfer to Southern.
Lomotey wants to work on more joint degree programs with BRCC. Also, BRCC can now attend Southern football games for free with their student ID cards.
“That’s just one symbolic gesture,” he said.
Dorsey agreed, noting that BRCC plans to send more students to Southern, LSU and Southeastern Louisiana University each year.
Dorsey said BRCC is giving opportunities to more students who would not go to college at all otherwise, not stealing away from universities.
The good enrollment news for Southern, Lomotey said, is that the school only lost a few students from last year, instead of the recent trend of losing about 500 a year.
The key is improving the student dropout rate, Lomotey said. Student recruiting is less of an issue.
 
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