AP: College enrollment up, mostly at 2-year schools

A record high of about 11.5 million Americans age 18 to 24, or nearly 40 percent, attended college in October 2008, according to a study of Census data released Thursday by the Pew Research Center. Virtually all the increase of 300,000 students over the previous year came at two-year schools, while attendance at four-year schools remained flat.

Overall college attendance has been going up for about 30 years; what’s new is the sharp uptick at community colleges, driven in large part by recessionary bargain hunting and closer ties between two- and four-year colleges that give students more confidence they’ll be able to transfer.

“It’s not just middle-aged people coming back to school and very poor people any more,” said Mike Grace, 24, a student at Wake Technical Community College in Raleigh, N.C., who plans to transfer to nearby North Carolina State next spring. “I’m seeing what I would consider to be relatively rich kids coming to school.”

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