Kirkwood Community College cutting programs, faculty and staff

CEDAR RAPIDS — A month after disclosing plans to relocate and cut services in Iowa City, Kirkwood Community College on Monday announced plans to close two programs, downsize a third, and eliminate faculty and staff positions to “bring future budgets in line with expected revenue.”

Specifically, the Cedar Rapids-based Kirkwood is closing its Dental Technology program and its Energy Production and Distribution Technologies program “due to low enrollment.” The closures will become official once all current students complete their studies in those areas — with some on track to finish in May and others expected to graduate in 2024 or 2025, Kirkwood officials said.

The college also is changing its truck driving program within its Continuing Education and Training Services division, again, due to low enrollment numbers over the last five years. Those changes will end the “behind-the-wheel” portion of the school’s commercial driver’s license program after the current class finishes.

However, Kirkwood officials reported there are ongoing discussions with third-party providers capable of offering driver training for interested students to complement Kirkwood’s classroom instruction.

The change comes amid a nationwide shortage of truck drivers, and months after Cedar Rapids-based CRST closed its own driver training program after 10 years.

“The move has the support of area transportation companies,” according to a Kirkwood news release. “More details about the future of the CDL-A program will be announced in the coming weeks.”

The decision followed a long-term viability analysis and is being made in light of the “significant and ongoing cost of maintaining up-to-date technology and equipment.”

The internal review of its operations that compelled the closure of its for-credit programs and the long-term viability analysis of its truck driving program weren’t documented in report form, according to Kirkwood spokesman Justin Hoehn.

“The different heads of each division of the college took a look at their operations in terms of enrollment, cost, and future expectations.”

The “small reduction in the number of faculty and staff” came as a result of "program changes, facility closures and lower enrollment in some areas of the college.”

Kirkwood President Lori Sundberg, set to retire later this year, said the changes will allow the college to use its resources “where they are most needed.”

“Part of our mission is to identify community needs in order to provide exceptional education and training for the communities we serve across our seven counties,” Sundberg said in a statement, adding, “Those needs change over time.”

Kirkwood needs to change with them, she said.

“While that sometimes involves difficult decisions, we are making these changes in order to better serve our area,” according to Sundberg.

“Kirkwood has adjusted our approach and resources accordingly to increase student retention and completion,” she said. “The greater the number of our graduates, the greater the impact they will have on our region.”

Kirkwood’s six-year graduation rate for full-time, first-time undergraduates who started in 2017 was 33 percent, according to the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System. Its full-time retention rate for the fall 2019 cohort was 63 percent.

The Cedar Rapids-based community college — like its 14 community college peers across Iowa — has been losing enrollment since the Great Recession. And although the 15-college system collectively reported an enrollment uptick this year, Kirkwood was among a handful with fewer students in the fall.

After recovering some of the massive 2020 pandemic-compelled student losses in 2021, Kirkwood in fall 2022 reported 12,414 students — down about 1.5 percent from 12,607 and 12.5 percent below the pre-pandemic 14,182 in fall 2019.

Last summer, Kirkwood closed two of its eight regional and county centers due to sagging enrollment and a “significant decrease” in the use of those locations. The 28-year-old Tippie-Mansfield Center in Belle Plaine and the 31-year-old Cedar County Center in Tipton permanently closed June 30.

In January, officials said they were moving most of Kirkwood’s Iowa City operations to its regional center in Coralville and planned to sell the Iowa City campus on the southeast side of town. Those changes followed an assessment of Kirkwood’s assets that found — if nothing changed over the next 24 years — the college would spend nearly $40 million maintaining the 97,094-square-foot Iowa City campus. The campus, according to the assessment, has a classroom-use rate under 40 percent and saw a 75 percent enrollment slide from 2016 to 2021.

Based on those declines, Sundberg said, Kirkwood too will cut sections offered “to best meet the needs of current enrollment levels in Johnson County.”

“Based upon the number of face-to-face sections needed in Iowa City, we will be able to meet student demand by reducing sections and maximizing enrollment,” Sundberg wrote in a message to faculty and staff in January.

Vanessa Miller covers higher education for The Gazette.

Comments: (319) 339-3158; vanessa.miller@thegazette.com