Georgia Highlands College

Georgia Highlands College is a two-year institution that serves as a point of access to the University System of Georgia. Students commute from more than 10 counties in Northwest Georgia to campuses or sites in Rome, Cartersville, Marietta, Dallas and Douglasville. Founded as Floyd Junior College in 1970, the college has more than doubled its enrollment since 2003, and now serves more than 5,000 academic and continuing education students respectively every year. The change of name from Floyd to Georgia Highlands College was the result of the college’s expansion into neighboring counties and the need to identify with that larger, more diverse audience.

The student body is primarily female (64 percent), and the median student age is 24. As a commuter college, the institution draws from Floyd, Polk, Chattooga, Gordon, Bartow, Cobb, Paulding, Cherokee, Douglas, Carroll and Haralson Counties in Georgia. It also attracts students from eastern Alabama and southeastern Tennessee.

Georgia Highlands’ students are enrolled in 48 transfer and career programs leading to two-year associate degree, many in health-care fields. The most popular majors are nursing, business and education. The nursing program expanded in 2006, adding a new cohort in Marietta and enabling the college to graduate 150 license-eligible students each year. GHC also maintains a cooperative agreement with the University of West Georgia so that students on the Floyd campus can continue at that site and earn their bachelor’s degree in early childhood education from West Georgia. Additionally, the college offers cooperative programs with Georgia Northwestern Technical College.

Students may participate in a variety of extra-curricular programs, including academic, political and social organizations, student media and intramural sports.

The founding campus in Floyd County sits on 226 wooded acres with a scenic 56-acre lake, beside which students jog, picnic and study. Since the Cartersville campus opened in 2005, enrollment there has more than tripled, giving that location the highest student population of any GHC site. Most recently, renovations were completed on one of two buildings that sit on the historic square in Dallas. The site opened fall semester 2009, as did a temporary site in Douglasville, on the campus of Chapel Hill High School. The Douglasville site is expected in more permanent quarters in time for spring semester 2010.