During the Contra Costa Community College District’s (4CD) Nov. 13 Governing Board meeting, there was a discussion regarding an annual report that summarizes enrollment and success data for recent high school graduates from K-12 school districts in the area. This report also provides multi-year early college credit enrollment trends by 4CD colleges.
“Last year was the first time that we saw an increase in our capture rates at all 3 colleges coming out of the pandemic,” said Kelly Schelin, the Executive Vice Chancellor of Education and Technology for the Contra Costa Community College District (4CD). “This year there is an increase in that trajectory with all 3 colleges returning to the capture rates that we saw in 2021.”
Capture rates are the number of students in the 4CD Service Area who are coming from high schools and going into 4CD colleges. According to the annual report file provided by the Governing Board, capture rates in the 4CD Service Area throughout the academic years of 2021-2022 were marked at 18%, and in 2022-2023 the capture rates were only 19%. This is exceptionally low considering the capture rates in the years 2018-2019 were exceedingly strong at 34%. However, since then rates have gone up significantly. Despite the low capture rates throughout previous years, in 2023-2024 rates increased positively to a much stronger 26%.
According to Schelin, there has been talk amongst board members about the declining number of high school graduates within their Service Area. Compared to the same report they presented last year, the number of high school graduates in the cohort has decreased by 400 graduates.
“While the number of high school graduates in our service areas is declining, a greater percentage of them are coming to our colleges,” Schelin said. “There are a lot of reasons for that, related to the work of our outreach teams at our colleges, the way that we collect information from prospective students. And how we continue to reach out to them daily.”
Wrapping up the topic, Schelin states that this report is “overall very positive.” Although the graduation rates at high schools in the area seem to be low, there is a lot of success being shown at community colleges. Higher capture rates and higher success rates at our local community colleges could be a good sign.
During this meeting, it was also announced that there would be new course offerings at all three community colleges in the 4CD district, Contra Costa College (CCC), Diablo Valley College (DVC), and Los Medanos College (LMC).
These approved programs include a new Drama course being offered at CCC, DRAMA-119 (Commedia dell’arte). At DVC, a new interdisciplinary course is being offered, INTD-040 (Bridge to College Success). And lastly, at LMC a new Business class will be offered, BUS-118 (Nonprofit and Government Accounting).