Students are filling up every available seat — and then some — as the fall semester kicks off at Cypress College. In fact, the college is technically over capacity, as were the preponderance of individual courses.
Cypress College’s unduplicated headcount at first census for the fall semester is 16,444. The figure represents a 1.4% drop from the 16,670 during fall 2009. However, the college cut the number of sections offered from 1,443 to 1,379, a 4.4% reduction. The enrollment is an indicator of both the strong demand for our classes and the college’s ability to do more with less.
The college-wide fill rate was also above 105%, or 5% greater than the number of seats available.
This is the first semester the college has used a waitlist, and a total of 6,219 students utilized the new MyGateway feature in an attempt to gain access to a course they desired.
Even with the cuts, Cypress College will continue to spend more offering classes than is received to pay for those courses. The cuts in the fall schedule are part of a two-year plan to bring the scheduled offerings into alignment with the budget.
Last year, the college recorded a $684,578 deficit offering courses that were not funded. For the District as a whole, this year’s deficit projects to be approximately $2,637,817.