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Community Colleges Experience Growing Pains

By Angela Hatton

Madisonville, KY – Many community colleges are straining from student enrollment growth. Enrollment at West Kentucky Community and Technical College increased 14 percent this year alone. Madisonville Community College Dean of Student Affairs Jay Parrent says many of their buildings are at classroom capacity, including the Murray State University extended campus and a satellite campus in Muhlenberg County.

"We've increased class sizes where we can, almost to the point of being uncomfortable with some of the class sizes, and we still don't have any mega 400-seat classes, but we still want to try to provide a very quality general education, so we've had to raise some caps, we've had to use more adjunct faculty, and we've looked at online options more for students."

Parrent says the college doesn't have the money right now to hire many more full-time faculty. MCC and WKCTC have hired faculty in two growing programs, Nursing and Information Technology.