Why did community college enrollment drop for fall 2020? IHE article

[polly_mer]

https://insidehighered.com/blogs/confessions-community-college-dean/what-we-talk-about-when-we-talk-about-tuition

[Hegemony]

I have no idea about the national picture. But in my town, our community college is still offering about two-thirds of their classes in-person. My guess is that they figured that since there are no dorms, they can control spread of the virus better than a residential university. Anyway, my son was going to enroll, but he's not willing to sign up for in-person classes. (The reasons why are not particularly germane to the discussion.)  And their online classes are completely full. It's the in-person classes that are badly enrolled.  I don't know if this mirrors national trends at all, but I'd bet it's the reason that this particular community college is seeing a drop in enrollment.

[sprout]

My CC's enrollment is down, but by less than 10% - much less of a drop than we were fearing.  We definitely saw classes that were clearly fully online fill first.  Classes that had times left on the schedule filled better when we made an adjustment to make it more clear that these were virtual meeting times, and would not be in-person. We also saw a very late surge in enrollment, with lots of people registering only two or three weeks before fall quarter began.  I'm not sure what exactly was behind that pattern. 

[Anselm]

I imagine that many parents are broke due to the pandemic induced recession.  Financial aid looks at the previous year's income. 

[Aster]

That article is a misleading nothing burger. The author clearly didn't put much effort into reading the primary data article that he purported to be referencing. This one.
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/09/24/undergraduate-enrollment-falls-25-percent-community-college-enrollment-75-percent

Considering the publication dates between the two articles (september 24 vs. september 28), I feel that the second article is an unnecessary, half-a$#, knee-jerk, fluff piece. If it has any value, it's in forcing critical thinking readers to look up the original reference article and get a much better informed reading from there instead. A good read of *that* shows that Matt Reed's later opinion piece takes data out of context, misreports data, and creates conjecture where conjecture is unnecessary.

Here is a piece from Elizabeth Reeden's *data* reporting article from September 24th. It is informative and breaks down enrollment numbers into various categories.

At community colleges the number of traditional-aged learners declined more sharply than did the number of adult learners: the number of 18- to 20-year-olds and 21- to 24-year-olds declined by 9.5 and 8.7 percent, respectively, while the number of 25- to 29-year-old students and those age 30 or over declined by 6.3 and 7.3 percent, respectively.

For the most part, undergraduate enrollments declined for both full-time and part-time students. At private nonprofit colleges, the number of full-time students declined by 3.7 percent, and the number of part-time students declined by 5 percent. At community colleges, full-time student numbers fell by 7 percent and part-time student numbers by 7.8 percent.

Consistent with the fact that the biggest enrollment losses were seen at community colleges, the biggest enrollment drops by program type were also seen at the undergraduate certificate (-9.7 percent) and associate degree (-7.5 percent) levels. Enrollments in bachelor's degree programs decreased by 0.5 percent, while enrollments increased for postbaccalaureate certificate programs (up by a substantial 24.2 percent), master's (+6 percent) and doctoral programs (+2.1 percent), as well as graduate certificate programs (+3.1 percent). Enrollments in first professional degree programs, such as law and medicine, declined by 1.9 percent.

I don't believe that Matt Reed understands just what types of courses and programs are commonly taught at community colleges.

[polly_mer]

Matt Reed is a community college administrator and has been for more than a decade.  Asserting that Dr. Reed doesn't understand community colleges is an unusual rhetorical technique since that's really his beat.

[Aster]

Matt Reed is a community college administrator and has been for more than a decade.  Asserting that Dr. Reed doesn't understand community colleges is an unusual rhetorical technique since that's really his beat.

Maybe he should learn how to read articles that he's referencing better then. Or perhaps he is a community college administrator that is siloed away from everything except the associate's degree programs at his own community college. It's possible; we have senior administrators at Big Urban College that are almost completely clueless about programs that they don't directly work with.

[polly_mer]

With more institutions reporting, community college and indeed all college enrollment continues to be down:  https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/10/15/worrying-enrollment-trends-continue-clearinghouse-report-shows

The expectation for community colleges was that they would pick up extra general education enrollment for transfer to 4-year institutions and that's not happening.  The other enrollments at community colleges are also down.

The listed reasons in this new IHE article are similar to the ones that Dr. Reed listed: students who are struggling just don't enroll.

[spork]

With more institutions reporting, community college and indeed all college enrollment continues to be down:  https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/10/15/worrying-enrollment-trends-continue-clearinghouse-report-shows

The expectation for community colleges was that they would pick up extra general education enrollment for transfer to 4-year institutions and that's not happening.  The other enrollments at community colleges are also down.

The listed reasons in this new IHE article are similar to the ones that Dr. Reed listed: students who are struggling just don't enroll.

It would be useful if data existed on how community college enrollments have dropped in relation to the number of in-person vs. online courses they are offering. I would not be surprised if some of the enrollment decline is composed of people who are now caring for children at home.   

[Aster]

It's mostly the vo-tech courses that are leading the the enrollment drops at most community colleges.

And they're down because many of them can't be done remotely.

When you tease the vo-tech and other applied credit courses out of the enrollment equation, there isn't a whole lot left to raise the alarm about at many CC's.