Rushmore Casino

New Jersey-based Atlantic Cape Community College has adapted to the economic crisis hitting Atlantic City casinos in clever fashion. Where the school once trained blackjack dealers and roulette croupiers to work in local casinos, demand from Atlantic City casinos is dramatically down recently. As a result, the college now sells its curriculum – to train dealers in nearby competing states.

Though ACCC had reported sales of its program from throughout the country, many of those now employed in casino table gaming in Pennsylvania and Delaware got their jobs based on ACCC education received in their home states.

For example, Northampton Community College of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, implemented the course in a strip mall in nearby Monroe a few months before table gaming was introduced at casinos in Pennsylvania. The NCC program partnered with Mount Airy Casino, which provided blackjack dealers and managers to act as course instructors and ultimately hired from the program’s first graduating classes. The school drew 400 students to four- or eight-week courses in the first three months of opening.

ACCC’s program in New Jersey has seen a decline in overall enrollment, but the ratio of out-of-state students in the program has doubled to 14% in 2010. The majority of these are reportedly coming from Delaware, Pennsylvania and New York, and many temporarily move for the one or two months they’re studying.