Why are there vacancies at the National Fire Academy? Are enrollments down?
Enrollments in the National Fire Academy (NFA) are actually up. Last year, in cooperation with our State training partners, our on-line training at NFAOnline, and in our resident and off-campus delivery program, the NFA reached 120,000 fire service professionals. In 1995 we trained just 15,000. Like every college, we plan our academic year based on last year’s enrollments, the number of new courses on the schedule, waiting lists for current courses and the calendar and our best estimate of the demand for courses the following year. It’s not an exact science. Vacancies occur for any number of reasons – some classes have low demand because the number of fire department members doing that job is low (e.g. public educators, data analysts, training, plans review, budget), but these courses are in many ways critical to the success of fire and life safety and the administration of the fire department! Other times we may overestimate the demand. When that happens, we cancel a low-demand course
