Burning the Midnight Oil...in CO?

Burning the Midnight Oil.

Taking classes at midnight…who would ever think that would be a great idea? Since 2009, and thankfully Matt Damon in the movie, Good Will Hunting, taking classes at midnight has opened the doors at a half a dozen community colleges on the east coast, and has ventured most recently through the Midwest and into Arizona. The trend started at Bunker Hill Community College in Boston, MA. and the idea has already spread down to Northern Virginia and out west to Ozarks Community College and even to Arizona. One of the professors at BHCC started seeing the growing number of students and how the enrollment rose nearly 25%, so all the sections were filled. The only other offer was to open section past 10pm. Once they did that, more and more students began entering through the doors. BHCC is supposed to only facilitate 2,500 students, but now has over a 13,000 person enrollment!

This is a fascinating story about people taking classes and trying to put themselves through school, but due to job overload and trying to make enough money to get by, the only time to go to school is late at night. NBC did a report from Ozarks Community College interviewing students and describing how the classes started at 1 and now has over 20 classes offered from midnight on. NBC also described how the nation’s poor economy right now has brought more people back to college, which has been many blog posts lately, but the costs are what are so alarming. OCC offers midnight classes at $260 where the private college down the street is offering tuition at over $2,000. This is linked to the growing number of students enrolled in CC’s across the nation due to the high increase of 4 year institution tuition. USATODAY reported on why students are attending the community colleges first and states that because of this growing interest in midnight classes, and because of the high costs of 4 year institutions, and the high demand for higher education, if the only time that students can go to school is when they get off their full time jobs, or after they put their kids to sleep, then they do. This USAtoday article states that over 2/3 of the midnight enrollees are employed full time as well.

I find this awesome that one of the professors at BHCC saw that there was a need to open an extra section of Social Behaviors class, but only late at night. Because he was willing to do that, it has turned into a new trend and has created a huge increase in student enrollment in the handful of students attending CC’s. I am eager to see if there is an interest in this in CO, or if there has been any talk about starting this up already? “How ‘bout them apples?!”