Delta College enrollment officials just received some promising news

— Delta College experienced its second consecutive year of student enrollment increase, officials said.

This fall semester, 8,397 students enrolled at the community college, a 751-person increase compared to last year, college officials said. That represents a 9.8% bump from the 7,646-student enrollment figure of fall 2023 and a 19% leap since fall 2022, when 7,056 students attended classes there.

Before 2022, Delta student enrollment decreased annually during all but one of the prior five years.

"I'm very excited Delta College has realized increases in three key strategic goal areas — enrollment, retention and completion," said Shelly Raube, vice president of the college's student empowerment and success office. "Faculty and staff across the college have worked tremendously hard, through a variety of initiatives and streamlined processes, to help students start and stay in college."

The retention rate — which represents the percentage of students who remained in the college from one academic year to the next — was 61% for both this fall and last fall, college officials said. Those numbers reflect all students, excluding dual enrollment, early middle college, guest students and graduates.

More students completed credentials during the 2023-24 academic year than the previous year, with 1,322 students completing compared to 1,178 students in 2022-23, college officials said.

Delta wasn't the only mid-Michigan higher education institution to experience student growth this fall.

Last month, Central Michigan University officials reported the college's first enrollment increase in a decade .

Saginaw Valley State University officials have yet to release their institution's fall numbers. Located less than 5 miles from Delta, SVSU enrollment as of last year had decreased each year since 2011, when a record 10,790 students attended the university.

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