Aiken Tech students back on campus, enrollment spikes

AIKEN, S.C. (WRDW/WAGT) – Aiken Technical College students were back on campus Monday for the first day of the fall semester.

Numbers show they saw a rise in enrollment.

“Aiken Technical College is experiencing a 10 percent increase in growth over last year,” said Associate Vice President, Enrollment Management and Student Affairs Melinda Rodgers.

The growth put enrolment over 2,000.

“We are super thrilled to have 2,000 students back on campus for the fall. It’s a really exciting time,” she said.

The school wants to help keep students coming in with state-backed grants.

“We’re very lucky this year to be offering no-cost tuition through several state-aided programs, and we’re doing our best to get as many of those students enrolled in those as available,” said Rodgers.

One of those state grant programs is the South Carolina Workforce Scholarships for the Future.

This covers tuition and fees for students from South Carolina enrolled in high-demand fields like manufacturing, healthcare, computer science, and others.

Rodgers says that she hopes that this and education programs to back this up, it will keep the workforce strong in the local community.

“Definitely want to continue to offer programs that are high need for our community. We want to be the number one resource for the workforce for Aiken,” she said.

For the future, Aiken Tech is also adapting start times to keep enrollment up.

“We have additional classes we’re offering starting Sept. 6, so we want to expand our program availability. We’re also hoping to offer more evening opportunities for our students as well,” said Rodgers.

For more information, visit ATC.

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