Tompkins Cortland Community College Increases Enrollment with Academic Portfolio Changes

Case Study
Tompkins Cortland Community College

TC3 in New York partnered with Hanover Research to align its academic portfolio with market demand, reinvesting the savings into its academic programs.

Tompkins Cortland Community College (TC3) is a public, two-year community college located in Dryden, New York, and a proud member of the SUNY system. Like many institutions, TC3 is focused on ensuring its academic offerings meet regional workforce needs while being institutionally sustainable.

Campus leaders were managing several high-stakes priorities at once: a new strategic plan, a rigorous accreditation review, and tough decisions about which academic programs best fit student demand, local job alignment, and the college’s mission.

With 65 academic programs, the institution needed a clear, data-informed strategy for making program decisions, including sustaining and sunsetting programs and exploring new offerings.

The Challenge: Build Internal Buy-In for Evidence-Based Portfolio Changes

Institutional data showed that the current academic portfolio was imbalanced. Some programs were producing few graduates, creating an operational model that was no longer sustainable.

While the college recognized the need for change, addressing it presented several hurdles:

Capacity Constraints: The college was focused on the demands of the upcoming accreditation site visit and the new strategic plan. Academic and enrollment plans needed to take on a complete portfolio review.

Need for Clarity: Translating large, complex datasets into a concise, decision-ready narrative is notoriously difficult. To foster constructive dialogues with multiple campus constituencies, the college needed an externally validated, credible analysis with an efficient focus on the data.

Faculty Engagement: Academic programs often carry deep emotional investments from faculty members who have dedicated their careers to their disciplines. Any decisions regarding program closures required transparency, shared governance, and highly credible evidence to minimize resistance.

With these needs in mind, TC3 turned to Hanover Research to support data-driven decisions that would lead to a sustainable mix of programs.

The Solution: A Data-Driven Process for Sustaining, Discontinuing, or Adding Academic Programs

To meet the college’s complex needs, the Hanover team paired an academic portfolio analysis with follow-on academic program market assessments.

This two-fold approach evaluated the viability of existing programs and assessed demand for potential new programming:

Current Program Performance: Hanover compared TC3’s completion data from the last five years to state and regional benchmarks, national conferral trends, and labor projections. Programs were then rated as over-performing, under-performing, or meeting expectations relative to those markers.
New Program Opportunities: Hanover identified a list of high-growth and promising associate and certificate programs to explore or expand, based on multiple market factors, including competitor program offerings, industry trends, national employment outlook, and local hiring and wage data.

To prepare this research for decision-making action, the Hanover team organized the information into executive-style summaries with separate data supplements that allowed for easy understanding of the top-level findings.

Furthermore, faculty members were invited to sit down with academic leaders and review the market feasibility of their own programs through Hanover’s program assessments, its interactive Academic Program Reviewer dashboard, and the college’s academic program review process.

This approach transformed the campus dialogue from subjective debates into objective, data-informed discussions.

“Our campus needed to understand which programs had potential for growth, revitalization, or redirection, and which were no longer viable. We also needed to know what new offerings should be considered for a more sustainable program mix. Hanover Research presented us with complex market evidence that not only clarified our executive decisions but also supported our college’s shared governance.”
—Aaron Tolbert, Provost & Vice President of Academic Affairs

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The Outcome: A Better-Balanced Academic Portfolio, Poised for Sustainable Growth

In a period of institutional change, Hanover’s impartial analysis allowed Tompkins Courtland Community College to navigate the complexities of academic portfolio optimization without spending countless hours of executive leadership and IR staff time to collect, validate, and defend data.

The visual representation of TC3’s current program output provided a campuswide turning point, helping faculty and staff understand the imbalance in the portfolio.

As a result, Hanover’s research directly informed the recommendations from TC3’s administration and faculty, leading to:

The board-approved discontinuation of 10 unsustainable academic programs
The successful launch of two new programs
A 13% enrollment increase in spring 2026 and a projected 6% increase for fall 2026, compared to the previous year

With Hanover’s support, the college now has a clear, proven process in place to review program viability based on labor and competitive market demand, ensuring not only institutional mission alignment but also stronger academic programs that maximize ROI for students.

Looking ahead, as TC3 continues its partnership with Hanover, it will include regression modeling and retention analysis, further supporting student success and institutional health.

“Hanover’s accessible scenario modeling and digital tools helped us directly engage faculty in the evaluation process. Once faculty reviewed the credible market data and insights, resistance to program changes diminished much faster than we expected, and more importantly, new insightful ideas for program growth took shape.”
—Aaron Tolbert, Provost & Vice President of Academic Affairs