(Radio Iowa) – The Iowa Department of Education’s Community College Bureau Chief, Amy Gieseke says there were 119-thousand-310 students enrolled in the 15 schools in 2024. “This is a slight uptick, one-point-eight percent (1.8%) over the previous year, but we know that credit enrollment has annually declined an average of one-point-six percent (1.6%) over the past five years,” Gieseke says. She says enrollment has started to turn around after the drop during the pandemic. “Prior to the pandemic in 2019, our community colleges were enrolling over 128-thousand students. So peak COVID, we saw that number drop as low as 116-thousand, and then slowly start to recover. So while we’ve seen a slight uptick, we are still not yet to pre-pandemic levels,” she says.

Gieseke says the number of credit hours has increased. “We do appear to have turned a corner, we’re starting to uptick, with credit hours up two-point-seven hours (2.7%) this year over last year,” Gieseke says. Joint enrollment of students in high school and community college makes up nearly 46 percent of the students, and almost 31 percent of the credit hours. Gieseke says the makeup of the student body is 56-and-a-half percent female and 43-and-a-half percent male. “That’s very consistent with ratios over the past 20 years. And I think that’s important to watch because we know that nationally, post-secondary education numbers among males is declining. But at least in Iowa’s community colleges, that number is holding mostly steady,” Gieseke says. She says enrollment has gone down in general study programs.

“Data shows us that our top three programs on the credit side are Health Sciences, with over 95-hundred credits enrolled, Business Management and Administration, with nearly 47-hundred students enrolled, and then Law, Public Safety, and Security, this number three, with over 32-hundred students enrolled,” she says.

Nine of the schools saw enrollment increases, with the largest uptick at Des Moines Area Community College with one-thousand-257 more students. Eastern Iowa Community College lost the most students at 276. Gieseke released the annual community college report last week.