State spending tweaks adopted as part of Michigan’s 2026-27 fiscal year budget could cause enrollment numbers at Northwestern Michigan College (NMC) to swell by hundreds.

The new $75.2 billion spending plan, approved by the legislature early last month, represents “a total investment of $496,663,500 for Michigan's public community colleges,” according to the Michigan Community College Association, and 0.7 percent increase over last year. The add-ons include an expansion of the state’s adult-learner-focused Michigan Reconnect program, as well as a new $40 million dual enrollment reimbursement fund to make it easier for high schoolers to pursue college credits.

The expansion of Michigan Reconnect is “the biggest initiative” in the budget for NMC, according to Director of Admissions Lisa vonReichbauer. That program offers tuition-free schooling to adult learners who enroll at an in-district community college. Since it was established in 2021, the program has mostly focused on students 25 years old or older, but the new budget expands the eligibility to ages 21 and up.

“I wasn’t expecting [that change] to come through in the budget, so it was a pleasant surprise,” vonReichbauer says. “A couple years ago, the state did a temporary expansion for that 21-24 age bracket, which was really about trying to get the students who were most impacted by the COVID shutdowns back on track. It was very successful. We enrolled quite a few students during that time, aged 21 to 24, and when that expansion ended, we definitely noticed an impact. A lot of the students in that age bracket that would have maybe gone to school had there been funding just didn't choose to enroll.”

NMC President Nick Nissley noted earlier this year that the college’s spring 2026 graduating class was 10 percent bigger than 2025’s, crediting the increase to both Michigan Reconnect and Michigan’s Community College Guarantee. The latter program allows graduating high school seniors to matriculate to their in-district community colleges on a tuition-free basis. Those programs helped support more than a third of NMC’s 2026 graduates.

According to vonReichbauer, NMC had 746 students during the past academic year who were 25 and older and using Michigan Reconnect, and 145 who had “enrolled during the previous 21-24 expansion” of the Reconnect program. VonReichbauer anticipates those numbers will only grow.

Statewide, 244,000 adult learners have applied for Michigan Reconnect since 2021, 1,700 of them in Grand Traverse County. Celebrating the five-year anniversary of Reconnect earlier this year, Governor Gretchen Whitmer touted the program as a crucial element of the state’s ongoing “Sixty by 30” goal, which “aims to raise the share of working‑age adults with a skill certificate or college degree” to 60 percent by 2030. 

NMC’s enrollment could also get a boost from the state’s new dual enrollment program. Dual enrollment allows students to take classes at their local community colleges, with their school districts footing the bill.

Utilization of dual enrollment is already robust in northern Michigan. As of this past spring, 613 of NMC’s enrolled students were high schoolers. Jessie Houghton, chief academic officer for Traverse City Area Public Schools (TCAPS), previously told The Ticker that approximately one-quarter of all TCAPS students were “engaging in some type of dual enrollment at NMC.”

The new $40 million fund, vonReichbauer says, exists to remove some of the burden of dual enrollment for public school districts.

“Typically, the high schools pay for dual enrollment tuition out of their per-pupil funding from the state – or out of their base funding, in the case of the out-of-formula schools,” vonReichbauer says. “The idea is that they're paying the tuition and we're providing the education, so they are saving on the cost to educate students. But it's a little bit of a challenge for some of the schools, because in order to see the savings from dual enrollment, they really need to know which classes students don't need at the high school. Otherwise, the cost of the dual enrollment tuition can be a little bit of a stressor.”

The new reimbursement fund is intended “to provide additional funding above and beyond the per pupil funding, to help cover the cost of that tuition,” vonReichbauer says. To start, the state has organized school districts into different tiers “based on how at risk the students are in terms of socioeconomic status, or of not completing high school or not continuing on to higher education.” Schools in the “three most at-risk tiers” will get first dibs on funds.

“In our particular service area, there are four schools that hit the criteria, and those would be Bellaire, Northport, Suttons Bay, and Mancelona,” vonReichbauer says. “Those schools will now have a little bit more funding to work with to encourage students to do dual enrollment."