Swot Analysis For Montecito State College

Montecito State College: Division of Extension Studies

Introduction/Overview
Montecito State College consists of an undergraduate day division, a graduate school, and a Division of Extension Studies. The Division of Extension Studies controls a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses accessible in the late afternoon, weekday evenings, and Saturday mornings, in addition to day and evening classes during two summer sessions. The division also offers an array of continuing education programs, which includes noncredit workshops, courses, and seminars. In addition to Montecito State College’s permanent campus, they also have four satellite campuses for students who may not live near the college. One of the purposes of these satellite campuses
This allows students that aren’t in the Montecito campus radius to easily access our other facilities. The objective of the satellite campuses was the attract students who might begin their studies at a satellite and then later go on to complete their degrees by taking more advanced courses at Montecito.
Also, we are currently using The Monitor to promote the Montecito State name, the location of our main campus and other campus locations, and the fields in which extension courses were offered. We also use selected suburban papers and published catalogs to promote the Extension Division. 20,000 copies of the catalog were printed to be mailed to a variety of organizations and agencies, including public libraries, company personnel departments, and other locations on campus. This allowed a very long range of people to be reached. Another strength for Montecito is that the President agreed to increase the communication budget. That gave them a huge benefit to allow them to increase and/or retarget their advertising
Satellite campuses tended to draw from a much smaller radius than did the main campus, so they were having a difficult time attracting students. The satellite campuses in Sherman City, the suburban towns of North Sherman, San Lucas, and Puget accounted for 20% of total course registration. Enrollments per course were lower (and still dropping) than at the main Montecito campus and there was a much higher rate of course cancellations. Courses were automatically cancelled if student registrations failed to reach a pre-defined minimum which in turn lost them a lot of money. They even had to close the Puget campus. Another weakness is Montecito’s current advertising situation. The person responsible for advertising and publicity (Roberta Jensen) was the director of public information. They public information office served every department on campus. It handled all news items for the college and developed publicity for major events. That is a lot of work for one person to be responsible. If Jensen was just in charge of advertising, she would be able to complete her job more efficiently. In addition, their advertising budget is small compared to other colleges and their budget was intended to remain unchanged. With costs rising, they needed to figure out how to allocate their expenditures using the same