Summer enrollment on rise

INDIANAPOLIS -- Summer enrollment at some Indiana colleges is on the rise as summer school students try to get ahead or turn to college because of a slow job market.\n\"When the economy isn't good, schools do better," said Mark C. Grove, registrar at IU-Purdue University in Indianapolis. \nEither students cannot find summer jobs, they are not working as many hours, or they want to update their skills, he said.\nIn Indiana, first-session enrollment is up 4.9 percent, to 32,155, at all IU campuses, though Bloomington's is up just 0.4 percent, to 9,091.\nEnrollment is up at IUPUI for both summer sessions. Ball State University's three-session enrollment is down by 112 to 9,154. Purdue does not compile tallies until August.\nSummer enrollment at private Butler University is steady at about 2,000, but only because the number of courses is restricted. That might change in coming summers.\n"The demands are increasing, not just from our students but from those who are coming back from other schools and asking for more," Tom Snider, vice president of enrollment services at Butler, told The Indianapolis Star for a story published Wednesday.\nStudents who forgo a summer break say they find the five-to eight-week classes intense, yet the atmosphere is more relaxed, and classes are smaller. Regular semesters are usually 15 weeks long.\n"You can't afford to miss any class -- it's like missing a week," said IUPUI junior Margarita Santiago. For three years, she's attended summer, fall and spring semesters -- and worked full time as a restaurant hostess.\nUrban schools like IUPUI attract more summer students because many live nearby all year, and some who attend residential campuses elsewhere take courses while home for the summer.\nPreliminary IUPUI figures show 11,327 students took first-session courses, 6.1 percent more than last year. In the current six-week session, enrollment is 8,581, up nearly 700 students, or about ninepercent.\nNearly half the increase is in the master's of business administration program taught through distance-learning.\nColleges say summer classes usually have the same number of minutes as regular semester classes, so classes sometimes are three to four hours in length.\nSeveral IUPUI students said they learn just as much or more in the summer, though professors do not dwell on fine points.\n"You get rid of all the fluff," said biology major Emily Willard, who is taking chemistry at IUPUI this summer. "I like it."\nLecturer Robin Condon, who is teaching English composition this session at IUPUI, notices many students concentrate better when they have only one or two classes.\n"They're just much more engaged," she said. "They don't have time to get bored"