Effective enrollment management requires a delicate balance between the breadth of course offerings required to meet student needs and the cost of offering those courses. When managed well, enrollments in the majority of courses are strong enough to support a limited number of necessarily-small offerings. Contractually, the process requires attendance to multiple articles in the YFA/YCCD Contract, including Class Size Balancing (4.8), Class Capacity (4.10), Extra Student Stipends and Large Class Accommodations (4.11), and at times Annualized Load (4.6), Underload (4.7), and Banking (Article 10).
The purpose of this document is to establish guidelines as to the threshold of viability for an individual course. The numbers below are not across-the-board targets. Rather, they must represent occasional exceptions. If all classes were offered with only 20 students, the college would go bankrupt.
Deans shall schedule course offerings to minimize the number of low-enrolled classes and shall adjust offerings during registration as necessary to improve efficiencies. For example, two identical lecture sections with a standard capacity of 40, each with 20 students enrolled, may be combined into one section with 40 students even though each one would meet the “Standard” criterion for a single-section offering. Meanwhile, Deans are also responsible to maintain an appropriate spectrum of course offerings to ensure that students are able to complete their programs of study in a timely manner.
A decision to keep, conditionally keep, or cancel each section shall be made at least one week prior to the start of the section based on the enrollment guidelines below. Deans shall inform the faculty member of the reason for cancellation. Special consideration may be given to course sections with a documented slow fill history. Per Article 7.2(b) of the YFA/YCCD contract, a part-time faculty member shall be paid for one class meeting up to a maximum of three hours at their instructional hourly rate for any course kept beyond this date.
Courses conditionally kept will meet for the first class session. If enrollment has risen to satisfy the conditions below, then the class will continue. If not, the class will be cancelled or combined with another section. The Dean shall have discretion to conditionally extend the enrollment period to the end of the first week if additional enrollment can be reasonably expected. A part-time faculty member in such a class will be paid for the additional class sessions met during the first week. A final decision for each section shall be reached by the first class session of the second week at the latest. Deans shall inform each faculty member of the reason for any further class cancellations.
When the above decisions result in bumping a part-time faculty member from a class, the date of the bumping shall determine the payment per Article 7.2(b).
Sections falling short of the established minimum more than occasionally may indicate the need for revisions to courses, programs, and/or marketing. In such a case, the Dean and department faculty shall meet, develop, and submit to the VPI a plan to restore enrollment prior to the course section under scrutiny being offered again.
Minimum Size and Criteria – Each individual section shall meet one of these criteria. Stacked and cross-listed sections (same times, but with shared load) shall utilize their combined enrollment to meet these standards.
*Capstone or advanced courses with prerequisites experiencing low enrollments may or may not indicate a concern, to be determined by the Dean and VPI in consultation with department faculty. Single-digit enrollments in such offerings, however, provide strong evidence that the college may not be able to continue the program of study as currently designed and an Enrollment Restoration Plan will definitely be required. Somewhere between the 20-student standard and single digits lies the inflection point indicating the need for an Enrollment Restoration Plan.
This document was last updated by the YFA and Modesto Junior College administration in Summer 2023. It should be reviewed again in Spring 2025, in accordance with Article 4.10.1 of the YCCD/YFA Collective Bargaining Agreement.