MEDFORD, Ore. — Local colleges and universities are continuing to adapt to this ’new normal.’
Rogue Community College says there have been some struggles financially.
It says enrollment was down about 14 percent for spring term, the majority of that decline was in RCC’s career and technical courses.
Many of those courses have face-to-face and hands-on components and the college has worked to convert as many classes as it could to an online format.
“But not everything could be moved over to distance learning and also our students who were taking 6 or fewer credits. We seemed to take a larger decrease there,” said Dr. Cathy Kemper-Pelle, president of RCC.
Kemper-Pelle says RCC made the decision to keep almost all of its coursework online for the summer term.
That lead to furloughing 34 employees for the summer because, she says, the type of work they did didn’t translate well into an online environment.
At this time, Kemper-Pelle says it’s looking like online classes will continue into the fall term with some in-person labs.
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