FOX VALLEY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – While enrollment in four-year colleges is on the decline, it’s a different story for tech schools.

Wisconsin’s tech school enrollment, this year, is about 284,000 students, statewide. That’s up about 10% from last year.

Fox Valley Technical College is one of 16 schools in the Wisconsin Tech College System.

As she wraps up her system-wide “Tour of Excellence” system president, Morna Foy, marked her 11th stop with a visit to Fox Valley Tech’s Public Safety Training Facility.

“This is just an amazing facility,” said Foy about the training grounds.

The multi-million dollar facility, which hosted a “Women in Public Safety” event during Foy’s visit, is just one aspect of the college that continues to see growth.

Foy crediting the tech system founders and their belief of building schools that are embedded within the communities they serve – a mindset that still rings true a century later.

She said, “We also deliver programming that we know there’s a job, in the area, for our graduates. So, that’s really the foundation to most of our programming decisions.”

Because the community needs are continuously changing, the tech colleges need to be flexible. That flexibility allows the schools to not only meet the needs of local employers, but also the needs of students – who now more than ever want a say in their education.

“Our program offerings don’t stay stuck. We are not offering the same things that we offered 100 years ago and we’re not offering the same things we offered 10 years ago. And that is because when we don’t have student interest, we don’t have job opportunities – even if we love that program, even if it was a program that was long lived and really important here for many decades, if it’s not right now we’re not going to continue to offer that and continue to make the expense of doing so,” said Foy.

Thanks to community support and state funding, the tech college system remains an affordable option for students, making it an attractive for those exploring careers or those looking to expand their education.

While finically stable, Foy says the system could always use more funding as it’s already stretching resources will exceeding demand.

Foy added, “We want to do more dual enrollment, most of which is provided completely free of charge to high schools and families. We want to do more customized training or work based situated training which means faculty going out into businesses and industry. We want to do more of this type of training for our local law enforcement agencies and there’s just a limit to our capacity without new investments.”