Northwestern Michigan College is navigating several challenges pivotal to its future, including declining student enrollment, major capital investment, tightening budgets and continuing union negotiations. The Ticker looks at the key issues likely to dominate discussions at the college in the coming year.

Enrollment
NMC’s student population is declining in both age and overall numbers – demanding new strategies to maintain the institution’s sustainability.

Fall enrollment this year is at 4,167 students, or 43,956 contact hours – a 4.6 percent decline from last fall. According to a report from President Tim Nelson this week, the college has approximately 1,200 fewer students today than it did at the peak of the recession. With the improved economy, “older potential students choose employment over education,” says Nelson. “These trends require us to continue to seek students from outside the region to take advantage of our specialty programs.”

NMC will work to attract more international students in the coming years, beginning with an expanded partnership with China. A team of administrators led by Nelson is in China now through October 26 to explore educational collaboration. NMC is also close to finalizing joint degrees with the Yellow River Conservancy Technical Institute that will increase student exchanges between the two countries. “We could see more international students from this endeavor in about 12 months,” says Nelson.

Among its existing student population, NMC has seen the average student age decline to 23.7 years old – due in part to an almost doubling of dual-enrolled and early college enrollment students in three years, up from 282 in 2013 to 497 in 2016. That brings new challenges to ensure younger, inexperienced students make it to graduation – one of the regulatory yardsticks by which NMC is measured – as well as likely increased demand for student housing.

Traverse City’s housing shortage poses a “challenge where just over 50 percent of our students are in Grand Traverse County,” says Vice President for Student Services and Technologies Todd Neibauer. “We have so many students in our area who can’t find housing. It limits their options.”

Facilities
NMC is already taking steps to address student housing. The college broke ground this summer on a new $7 million, 140-bed residence hall and fitness center, which is expected to be complete by August 2017. “This project is critical as we work to expand enrollment,” says Nelson. It also reflects a larger theme at NMC of capital investment in the coming years – one that follows almost a decade of no major construction projects on campus.

Other capital projects either underway or on the docket for the near future include a nearly 15,000 square-foot, $5 million addition to the Dennos Museum Center, a $14 million renovation of West Hall, and another 150-bed housing development. NMC is also in the process of upgrading its campus security systems and selecting an architectural firm to improve the Okerstrom Fine Arts Building.

Budget
Despite investments in capital projects – funded through a combination of bonding, donor gifts, requested state funding and NMC housing and plant (construction) fund reserves – the college is tightening its belt in other areas. NMC is aiming to cut more than $1 million from this year’s budget, including $450,000 in salary expenses. “We have a long history of reviewing all vacant positions, asking whether positions can be combined, eliminated or revised to result in cost savings,” says Nelson. “Our hope was to achieve some savings through employee attrition and consolidations.”

With enrollment declining, NMC board members voted in June to increase tuition costs from $96.35 per credit hour to $103.70 per credit hour. So how will the college attract more students going forward in the face of rising tuition costs? “When we go out and talk to students, and you look at the tuition you’d pay here, it’s still drastically lower than a four-year institution,” says Neibauer. “Two years here is going to leave (transfer students) with a much lower price tag. It’s a good value.”

Union Negotiations
Two dozen bargaining meetings between NMC and faculty representatives following a 2015 faculty vote to unionize have still not produced a contract between the parties. Nelson says the college remains “strongly committed to reaching a fair agreement,” and that NMC recently requested a fact-finding analysis from the Michigan Employment Relations Commission (MERC) to help “identify items of possible compromise in order to reach a final agreement.”

But Michigan Education Association Attorney Ted Iorio, representing the faculty, says the college has “muzzled the trustees into believing they can’t talk to the faculty” and that NMC’s request for fact-finding is “symptomatic of their unwillingness to collaborate.”

“They’re not interested in finding a mutually agreeable contract,” Iorio says. “Their goal is to impose terms and conditions on the employees, regardless of their obligation to bargain in good faith.” The strained discussions mean negotiations could stretch out for several months yet to come.

In addition to the ongoing negotiations, the two parties will also square off over an unfair labor case before an administrative law judge next month. Unionized employees contend NMC wrongfully withheld raises from faculty in January that were awarded to non-unionized employees. Iorio says the case will proceed to a hearing November 30-December 1.