8-week vs. 16-week courses proving popular with students
Alamance Community College has shifted most of its courses from the traditional 16-week format to eight-terms to enable ACC students earn a degree or professional certification faster.
That shift to eight-week course formats – through a new program called “ACCelerate in 8” – has helped to fuel a double-digit percentage increase in enrollment in curriculum programs by the time the spring term started on January 12.
Dr. Justin Snyder, ACC’s senior vice president of Student Learning & Workforce Development, told The Alamance News this week that the number of hours students are required to be in class are the same for both the eight-week and traditional 16-week course formats.However, in most cases, eight-week courses meet more days per week and may be structured as both in-person and hybrid online courses to ensure that students meet minimum required contact hours.
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Full-time equivalent enrollment in curriculum programs (i.e., those which confer a professional certificate, diploma, or Associate’s degree) has increased by 15.5 percent for the spring 2026 term from that for the spring of 2025, ACC officials said this week.
“I don’t know that any of us anticipated it,” ACC president Dr. Ken Ingle told the trustees, adding that the community college is “realigning programs to be tightly tied to workforce and [student] transfer outcomes.”
ACC began offering most courses in eight-week formats when the 2025-26 academic year began last August, though some classes continue to be offered in the traditional 16-week format because certain programs require a higher number of “contact hours,” or in-person classroom hours, ACC officials said.
While the workload for the eight-week course formats remains similar to the traditional 16-week semester, research has shown that community college students are more likely to remain enrolled and graduate when their courses are offered in eight-week formats, ACC’s trustees were told earlier this month.
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The accelerated eight-week format also means that, should students need to pause their studies due to unexpected circumstances, it won’t negatively affect an entire semester’s worth of coursework.
“ACCelerate in 8” enables students to complete the requirements for an Associate’s degree faster and to stay motivated by knowing that they’ll cross the finish line faster, Snyder and ACC Vice President of Instruction Sonya McCook told The Alamance News following the trustees’ January 12 meeting.
Ingle said that the nursing assistant program and other medical programs are running significant waitlists, while Snyder said that the cosmetology and welding programs are also experiencing strong growth due to the shift to eight-week terms.
The welding program currently has about 50 students on the waitlist to get into classes; and enrollment in cosmetology has increased by 40 full-time equivalent students since shifting to the eight-week course format last fall, Snyder told the trustees,.
ACC’s total headcount – which includes students in curriculum programs, continuing education, Career & College Promise (dually-enrolled high school students), and the Basic Skills program – increased by 9.3 percent between 2023-24 and 2024-25, the latest period for which the comparative data is available, according to the state Community Colleges System (NCCCS). ACC’s total headcount increased by 1,153 students from 12,408 students in 2023-24 to 13,561 students in 2024-25, according to the NCCCS.
ACC received about $500,000 in additional state funding for enrollment growth, through a “mini-budget” bill that the General Assembly passed amid the budget stalemate in August 2025, Ingle told the trustees, adding, “One of the biggest challenges isn’t funding – it’s space.”
“While the switch to eight weeks certainly doesn’t work for every course, it works for a lot,” Ingle elaborated. “We know a lot of times the reason a student doesn’t succeed…has to do with what happens outside of class [such as expensive car repairs or lack of childcare]. The eight-week course schedule, it’s much less disruptive…and students are looking to get in the workforce quickly.”
“Early indicators show that our eight-week courses are making a meaningful difference for students,” Ingle told The Alamance News this week. “The data so far suggests this format helps students stag engaged, move forward more efficiently, and better balance college with work and family responsibilities. It’s a strong example of how we’re using data and innovation to better support student success.”
As of last fall, 80.4 percent of all course sections were offered in eight-week formats, compared to the fall of 2024, when 17.4 percent of all course sections were offered in eight-week formats, ACC Associate Vice President of Communications & Public Affairs Sarah Hardin told the newspaper Monday.
Potential impact on facilities
During the earlier discussion, trustee Jim Butler asked, “If we have our pulse on what the students need, and are looking at scheduling, to have [their coursework] more compacted, what are we going to do 12 months from now?”
Ingle said ACC could look at working with local business and industry partners to provide and/or help identify additional instructional space. “We know for the long term, we need more healthcare space; it could be rental versus purchase,” the president explained.
An updated master campus plan that an architectural firm developed for ACC last year called between $47.5 million and $77.5 million in new facilities and renovations of existing buildings to accommodate existing and future enrollment growth.
The new campus master plan gives no timeframes for new construction or renovations to ACC facilities.
The top priorities could include a new $32.4 million health sciences building to replace the existing Powell/Allied Health building that opened in 2008; and a second $3.1 million student services center, combined with a new $14.8 million new corporate education/conference center and parking expansion that could be built beside the Biotechnology Center of Excellence, based on the campus master plan that was presented to ACC’s trustees in the fall of 2025.
Ingle previously told the newspaper that, in the near term, ACC would initially pursue alternative funding sources, rather than a countywide bond referendum, to fund the construction of new facilities or renovations to existing buildings as the need arises.
