San Jose City College has experienced a significant decrease in enrollment over the past five years.

Duncan Graham, vice president of academic affairs said classes are only 55 percent full, down from 90 percent in 2009.

“The economy has started to turn around, and it’s not just here,” Graham said. “We’re down about 8 percent from where we were last year; Evergreen (Valley College) is down 3 percent and other colleges in our region are also down.”

Dreanna Garcia, 20, nursing major said her friends are experiencing lower numbers in their classes due to financial issues.

“I haven’t noticed it in any of my classes, but it’s always a problem after the first couple weeks,” Garcia said. “People don’t have the money so they stop showing up.”

Graham said EVC has done some marketing, which might be why it is  only down 3 percent, and that is something the school has considered.

It is also looking at data from previous years to help inform their decisions for the future.

“We’ll take data from the last three years and look at the number of sections of a course that we offer,” Graham said. “Were there waitlists at certain times, and if so, then maybe we need to add a section there as opposed to a different class offered at the same time.”

Graham said the fill rate has been in the mid to high seventies since 2009.

“The fill rate takes the actual number of seats available and the number of students who enroll, and then we get a percentage on that,” Graham said. “It took a big decrease in the fall of 2013 and we were down to 60 percent.”

He said funding goes down when the economy is down, but that is when schools have the greatest demand for students. When the economy goes up and starts to improve, people are back to work and the demand falls.

“Unfortunately that’s when we tend to be getting more money from the state, and that’s why we’re in this big push of filling these classes,” Graham said.

Physical education instructor Linda Owens said lower enrollment numbers are affecting fitness classes because of California Title V Regulations.

“The state said students can’t take a class more than twice so we’re kind of scrambling with that,” Owens said. “In PE, people are just getting comfortable with their bodies so it’s helpful when a student does it a second time.”

Graham said looking at new programs and repackaging the ones already offered will help bring more students to SJCC.

“We also now have seven degrees for transfer and we’re going to be adding three more here pretty soon,” Graham said. “I think just making students aware of those programs will really help us.”

He said students are now being required to do an educational plan, and he is encouraging programs to look at doing a two-year schedule.

“You can look at the programs that will be offered for the next two years and decide what to take and when you need to take it,” Graham said. “Having that kind of plan will help faculty, counselors and students.”

Graham said it is all sort of a balancing act and that is why he is in the position he is in.

“Enrollment management is a moving target and there are a lot of variables and factors that we take into consideration when we put together a schedule,” Graham said. “I would much rather be in a position of needing to add classes rather than cancelling.”