NMC's Enrollment Growth Streak Continues

Northwestern Michigan College (NMC) has posted its eighth straight semester of enrollment growth, the institution announced this week. Beyond its biggest spring semester enrollment number in years – 3,188 students enrolled, up 1.2 percent from spring 2025 – NMC is also seeing continued gains in dual enrollment and early college participation from local high school students.

As The Ticker reported last fall, the college has seen a big increase in recent years of high school students taking courses at NMC. In the fall, a record 544 local high schoolers were dual enrolled or in the Early College program at NMC, accounting for nearly 16 percent of the 3,460 students on campus, up 13 percent from fall 2024. Those numbers have jumped even more this spring, with 613 high school students enrolled in at least one NMC course.

“High school students now constitute 19.3%, or nearly one in five, of the 3,188 students enrolled,” NMC reported on its website. “The increase comes despite the fact that overall spring semester enrollment is lower than fall’s, as is typical.” For the purposes of determining enrollment growth, NMC compares numbers back to the same semester one year previous, rather than comparing spring to fall or summer to spring.

Last fall, Jessie Houghton, chief academic officer for Traverse City Area Public Schools (TCAPS), told The Ticker that approximately one-quarter of all TCAPS students were “engaging in some type of dual enrollment at NMC.”