After a decade of declining enrollment, Virginia Peninsula Community College had its second consecutive year of growth. J.J. Bonavita, director of Institutional Research at the College, pointed out two big reasons.
“I think for one thing, we are stabilizing after COVID, and I think we’ve done a lot of work to grow enrollment,” he said, noting the College has invested heavily in its marketing team as well as its enrollment management and student success team.
“Our (staff) is out recruiting. They’re in the high schools,” he continued. “We are leveraging our partnerships. A lot of the College’s strategies have been about intentionally growing our enrollment, and I think it’s working.”
The numbers prove it.
From summer 2024 through spring 2025, student headcount increased by 1% and full-time equivalents (FTEs) were up 3% from the previous year. It was the seventh largest increase in FTEs among the 23 institutions in the Virginia Community College System. VPCC had enrollment gains each semester, led by summer 2024, up 11% in headcount and 15% in FTEs. Fall 2024 was up 5% in headcount and 3% in FTEs.
Dual enrollment, where high school students can take VPCC classes at the same time, had a 6% increase in FTEs, despite a 3% decline in headcount. That means there were fewer students, but they were taking more classes, which is important to the College.
“We’re growing where it matters,” Bonavita said. “More of our students are taking more classes, which is actually really good. Strategically, that’s almost what we targeted.”
Bonavita said retention is the College’s next big push since its recruiting efforts have been paying off. This could ensure continued enrollment increases.
“We had leveraged a bunch of strategies to grow enrollment, and I think they worked,” he said. “Now, we need to put additional attention into retaining the ones that we have.”
He noted 80% of VPCC’s enrollment is returning students.
“If we can do a better job with our retention numbers, we’re going to have higher enrollment,” Bonavita said. “That’s what I hope happens.”
The College already is taking steps to improve retention, including better scheduling with fewer overlapping classes. Bonavita said the College is trying to avoid a situation where a student needs two classes to graduate but they are scheduled at the same time.
“We, as a college, are doing things better. I think that is why we are seeing the growth,” he said. “What we need to do now is focus even more on that, double down on retention, and we will grow that returning student number.”
The College’s three-year completion rate is another number that stands out. That figure has more than doubled in the past 10 years.
“We did a lot of things to make it better,” Bonavita said. “That’s evident with our quality getting better.”
Still, he would like to increase the three-year completion rate even more. He thinks VPCC has positioned itself to do just that.
“If you want to fix that number or make that number higher, you have to focus on retention,” he said. “If we take our retention from 47% to 60%, what’s that going to do to our completion rate? We have to put our work in there.”
The 2025-26 year is off to a good start for the College, with summer enrollment up 2.6% in full-time equivalents.
“It’s evidence of us doing good things and, hopefully, that focus on retention is going to continue to do good things,” Bonavita said.