With enrollment up and state allocations down $1.6 million, EvCC officials look to self-support classes to save money without cutting classes.

Classes are funded in one of three ways; state-support, contract and self-support.

State-support classes are funded by money from state allocations and tuition.

Contract classes are paid for using specialized grants.

Self-support classes do not receive funding from any outside agency. They are financed only by the tuition that the class generates.

If there are not enough students enrolled in a self-support class by the time the quarter starts, it may be canceled.

Because of the $1.6 million reduction in state allocations, there is no longer enough funding to finance as many state-support classes.

"Faculty members are focusing on making sure we meet enrollment demand by offering more self-support classes," said Dottie Krzyzanoski, vice president of Student Services.

Rather than cutting classes, officials have been converting certain sections to self-support.
The biggest advantage of switching to self-support courses is "to be able to offer those classes at all," according to Fowler-Hill.

Students can be proactive in ensuring that the classes they need to graduate remain available.

It all starts at registration.
EvCC officials manage the schedule according to student demand.

Students can help to inform this process by registering early and signing up for waitlists if a class they need is already full. This will help officials get a clear idea of student demand and suit the needs of students.

Doing so will not only help to ensure that classes stay open, but could also create new ones all together.

"The management side is that if we know what classes are full early on, we can get a realistic picture of what the enrollment pattern is. We then try to respond to that demand," said Sandra Fowler-Hill, vice president of instruction.

A course is divided into different timeslots, called sections.

Officials will look at a waitlist to determine if there are enough sections of a particular class.

If the waitlist for a class has enough students to fill another, officials may create a new section to suit student demand.

This means that to enroll in a waitlisted class, a student may no longer have to wait for another to drop the class.

For students on a fall quarter English 101 waitlist, this became a reality. Officials created an additional section of the course to suit the students' needs. Other examples of this include English 98, English 102, History 148 online, and two additional sections of the Education 115 D online course.

Early registration will help officials get an idea of what changes need to be made in the schedule and do so promptly.

One of the foremost reasons student do not register early is because of the long wait in enrollment services line.

There is an alternative.

EvCC has offered online enrollment to students for over 10 years. It allows students to register for classes as effectively as enrollment services in a fraction of the time.

Get out of line; go online.