Fewer cars in the parking lot doesn’t necessarily mean fewer students in the classrooms.

Our 2005 summer enrollment — at 2,955 – was up compared to last year’s total of 2,871, but a significant percentage of students who signed up for summer classes this year took them at off-campus locations or commuted virtually in an online classroom format, eliminating the need for daily trips to campus.

“For summer 2005, 26 percent of the instructional activity was at off-campus sites, and 9 percent was in the Regents Online Degree Program,” says Glenn James, director of Institutional Research. “Therefore, approximately one-third of all TTU’s instructional activity in summer 2005 was in off-campus or online instruction."

That statistic didn’t come as a surprise to Susan Elkins, dean of Interdisciplinary Studies and Extended Education.

“The convenience and flexibility of taking a course online or at a satellite location makes it much easier to attend for people who otherwise wouldn’t be able,” she says.

Of the 2,955 enrolled at TTU this summer, 1,769 of them were undergraduate students and 1,186 were graduate students, compared to last year’s figures of 1,832 undergraduate students and 1,039 graduate students.