When the economy went down, Lanier Technical College's enrollment went up.

"This is a historical trend," said Dave Parrish, director of marketing and public relations for the college. "People generally look at more fast-track job preparation methods to get into the job market and maintain a job. When the economy's real strong, enrollment's steady. We rarely as a college have a dip. We either grow or remain status quo."

Brenau University had a somewhat different experience as the economy suffered.

"In 2008 to 2009 when the economy really went down, a lot of private schools increased their scholarship budgets. We decided not to do that," said Scott Briell, senior vice president for enrollment management and student services. "We felt like if we did that we're essentially trying to buy students."

New student enrollment for the women's college went down as the economy fell, but Brenau was able to maintain steady numbers anyway.

"Our adult numbers went up as a lot of people decided to go back to school," Briell said. "That was really '08-'09, but it's gone back up."

Briell attributed the initial dip to the college competing with "free."

"Typically when the economy is in turmoil I think a lot of students look to the public institutions ... and take the trade-off of smaller classes and go for less cost," he said.

Gainesville State College has not had a decrease in enrollment since 1998, when the college converted to a semester system, President Martha Nesbitt said in an email to The Times.

"While the figures are still in flux, when we took a snapshot today we're at ... a 2.4 percent decrease from fall of 2010," she said. "We are attributing this slight decrease to the rise in admissions standards to once again require the SAT or ACT, changes to the HOPE scholarship and certainly the current economic situation."

Though there has been an increase in the number of students requesting financial aid at North Georgia College & State University, officials are hesitant to immediately correlate the increase to the economy alone.

"We have not seen a decrease in enrollment," said Terry McLeod, interim associate vice president for academic affairs at North Georgia. "What we've been able to do is increase our enrollment data with returning students."

By focusing on retention, McLeod said, North Georgia students are able to maintain a community feel instead of recruitment efforts being concentrated solely on incoming freshmen.

"We set targets for each population. We try not to miss those targets going low or exceeding them," he said.