Schenectady County Community College in New York is shutting down a five-year-old degree program in casino and gaming management.
The reason: sheer lack of interest.
Despite the presence less than two miles away of the $330 million Rivers Casino & Resort, no new students have signed up for the course in the last three years. During the latest school year, only one part-time student enrolled. There were no full-timers.
It’s a far cry from the 2015 debut, when 47 full-time and 18 part-time students enrolled in the program, which offers an associate degree in applied science and boasts a simulated casino floor among its features. In the 2016-17 school year, which coincided with Rivers’ opening, there were 35 full-time and 14 part-time students. Surprisingly, the following year, it dwindled to nine full-time and seven part-time students.
“I think the program will not continue the way it is currently configured,” said Steady Moono, president of State University of New York Schenectady, which sponsored the program and may attempt to revive and restructure it, officials told the Daily Gazette newspaper.
No one is directly blaming the program’s failure on the disappointing performance of the four upstate casinos, Rivers among them. Since they first opened three years ago, all have fallen well short of their projections for gaming revenue in a New York market crowded with casino choices, including six full-scale tribal operations and 10 machine gaming venues, seven of them at racetracks.
“In this particular case, enrollment never became as robust as we had anticipated,” David Clickner, the college’s assistant vice president of academic affairs, told the Gazette.
The college still offers courses in food services, hospitality and business, all of which tie in to casino careers, and Rivers, which provides many of those careers and a number of student internships besides, states its relationship with the school remains “strong.”
“Many of the college’s offerings are of great value to the casino for helping us develop and hire a skilled workforce,” said General Manager Justin Moore, who termed the school’s culinary and management programs “world-class.”
