Northampton Community College’s president made a special trip to the Monroe County commissioners’ meeting last week to dispel rumors that the Pocono Campus could be closing.

“We’ve been confronted with some rumors that our NCC Pocono campus is in distress and is closing,” Dr. David A. Ruth, president of NCC, told the commissioners. “The answer is that’s not the case. It’s a complete rumor. We’re not closing.”

Ruth said in-class enrollment is down, and has been ever since the COVID pandemic, but online enrollment is up.

“Keep in mind the campus was built for 5,000 students. We never had 5,000 students. In its heyday, we had maybe 3,200, but we’ve been doing well,” Ruth said.

As a college administrator, Ruth said he and other administrators would like to see more students in the seats, and believe that being on campus is the best way to learn.

“You need to come on campus. You need to sit in a seat where all the services are here for you. This is how you learn best, and they’re like, ‘Yeah, thanks, no. We want online,’ ” Ruth said.

In an effort to provide their students the format of education they want, Ruth said the first they are doing is “to bolster, enhance or create in some case, support services that will help all of our students whether they take classes online or on ground, and on any of our three campuses.”

The second thing they plan to do is focus on the core programs they offer at the Pocono campus.

“Right now, there’s six majors that you can get a complete degree at NCC Pocono without going to Bethlehem or online, and we will enhance those, so maybe there’s a mixture of online and on campus,” he said.

Ruth also mentioned that NCC has an academic partnership with East Stroudsburg University. NCC students can get their “four-year degree with a four-year partner and actually finish your degree in Tannersville,” he said.

The third thing is to partner with major corporations and employers such as St. Luke’s University Health Network and Lehigh Valley Health Network to do short-term program training at NCC to bolster a person’s skills or provide an opportunity to learn new skills.

Ruth said he is also looking at ways to work with the Monroe Carbon Technical Institute to provide them space at the NCC Pocono Campus for more students.

“They have a 600-student waiting list right now and we have capacity, so let’s partner,” he said.

Ruth said MCTI could use a specific section of the campus for their classes and a school bus could provide transportation to the college for both the MCTI students and the high school students who are involved in dual enrollment at the college.

“We think there’s a lot of great opportunities,” Ruth said.

Precie Schroyer, the executive dean of NCC Pocono, added that there would be some “right sizing of staff” due to fewer students in the seats.

Ruth said he thinks a shifting of personnel and the low in-class enrollment may be what caused the rumor.

“We’re here to stay,” Ruth said. “We’re very proud of the work that we do at NCC.”

Commissioner Chairman John Christy said he has two family members who work in higher education and talk about the 2008 bubble.

“In other words, the fiscal crisis in 2008 and how we had a dramatic downturn in people having kids, and that’s what we’re facing right now,” Christy said. “It’s not only Northampton; it’s everywhere.

Ruth agreed and said its called the demographic cliff. The next large group of students are currently in sixth grade, but even that group is not as large as the group from back in 2008.

“It’s not a Monroe County thing or a Pennsylvania thing; it’s a national thing. … This isn’t something that we weren’t expecting, but to switch to more online was something that caught us off guard but we’re ready,” Ruth said.