Nonresident enrollment at NMC declined

The Northern Marianas College is currently intensifying efforts to lure more foreign students into studying at CNMI’s lone higher learning institution following a decrease in its nonresident student enrollment in the last two academic years.

In academic year 1996-97, 483 foreign enrollees registered at NMC out of the 1,721 total student population. The following year, the figure dropped to 373 which further dipped to a 225 nonresident students AY 1998-99.

NMC Director for Developmental and Alumni Relations Tony V. Deleon Guerrero said this is one of the many challenges the Board of Regents is looking into also as a way of giving boost to the Commonwealth’s ailing tourism industry.

“We are currently working on how we can attract foreign students to pursue college education in the CNMI,” said Mr. Guerrero.
Early this year, the college sent Mr. Guerrero to Japan to entice college-bound Japanese students to consider pursuing their studies at CNMI’s lone college.

“It was a marketing scheme, a first attempt to promote NMC outside the islands of Micronesia,” he said.

According to Mr. Guerrero, the largest number of students attending international universities and colleges are mostly Japanese.

NMC has expressed plans to tap the Japan and Korean markets, citing it would be economically beneficial to attract international students to the CNMI.

“Especially since tourism has gone down since the onset of the Asian economic crisis,” he added.

But the main factor keeping most foreign students such as the Japanese and Koreans to enter NMC is their inability to speak English.

The college has then devised a way to address this through a program called Intensive English Language Learning, especially designed for students from the Asia Pacific Rim.

“We are distributing brochures on the English language so they can start with a short term intensive program and learn the language as it is the medium of instruction here,” said Mr. Guerrero.

The program provides a language-learning experience where English is the one language most people use to be understood.

The IELL is a program of NMC’s Language Department, which has been serving students from Micronesia and the Pacific Rim for over 15 years.

The program offers intensive courses for students who want to develop conversational English skills, as well as English reading and writing abilities. It is ideal for most students who have had English instruction in schools on the Asia Pacific Rim.

Upon completion of the course, students receive a certificate of completion from NMC stating the amount of English instruction received.

Mr. Guerrero’s recent visit to Japan proved to be fruitful as the college has already been receiving positive feedback from some Japanese high schools.

NMC is currently working with the Miyazawa High School, the Marianas High School’s sister institution, under a shared student exchange program.

“There are one or two students who have already expressed interest to pursue studies at NMC,” he said. (MM)