By Ashley A. Smith, EdSource
California’s community college system is experiencing a systemwide decline of student enrollment this fall, with some campuses reporting double-digit losses.
The fact that fewer students have enrolled for this fall reveals a worrisome decline for the nation’s largest college system — with 116 institutions serving more than two million students. While enrollments have been largely flat in recent years, with variations among the colleges, the situation appears to be different this year, with the picture complicated by the coronavirus pandemic, job losses, the transition to mostly online classes and historic wildfires.
“This is an issue that we’re paying very close attention to, that we’re very concerned about, particularly as it relates to any loss of enrollment for our most vulnerable student populations,” California Community Colleges Chancellor Eloy Ortiz Oakley said during a Board of Governors meeting Monday. “We did begin the (fall) semester with a brief decline in enrollment. We’re beginning to see that gap close. We’ll have more data come November but right now we’re probably looking at around a 5% to 7% decrease in enrollment so far.”
Woodland Community College President Art Pimentel reported the local college sawn an increase in new students enrolled in the fall 2020 semester compared to the previous fall semester “although our overall enrollment at WCC is flat.”
“While other regional community colleges have seen a decline in enrollment, WCC’s enrollment is flat due to a variety of factors that include an increase in new students who are taking less units, more high school students taking courses via concurrent enrollment and an acceleration of our dual enrollment program in the school districts across our service area,” Pimentel added.
He said the college’s focus during the semester “has now shifted to retaining our current students and making sure they are aware of the instructional support services offered by the college such as tutoring and library services.
“Due to the pandemic, our focus has remained on increasing access to technology, financial support, and increasing access to student support services both in-person and on-line across our three campuses in Woodland main-campus, Lake and Colusa counties,” Pimentel stated.
Statewide, meanwhile, Oakley said the college system also saw “an enrollment increase during the summer session, which is good news. Many students were able to recover from the onset of the pandemic and take classes that they needed.”
Oakley’s numbers are based on a community college survey to which less than half of the colleges have responded so far, with most reporting declining enrollments, counting both part-time and full-time students. Some colleges are bucking the trend, and reported slightly higher enrollments, officials said.
Nationally, community colleges are seeing what appear to be even more significant enrollment declines than California. The 24-campus Alabama Community College system, for example, has seen a 29% decline, and enrollments at the 14 community colleges in Pennsylvania are down anywhere from 3% to 30% this fall, according to Inside Higher Ed.
Typically, in an economic recession enrollments in community colleges increase because students have a harder time finding jobs, and seek to improve their skills by taking college classes.
In the past, community colleges have experienced slight declines in enrollment when the economy is doing well and students have chosen to work instead of going to school.
But the declining enrollments during the current recession are at least in part a reflection of students’ reluctance or inability to participate in online instruction, said Michelle Siqueiros, president of the Campaign for College Opportunity, a California-based advocacy organization. “While many of us are tech-savvy, there’s really a sense that students want to be in the classroom,” she said. “This could be a lost generation because typically students who drop out or don’t enroll in college don’t go back.”
Information provided to EdSource from selected colleges indicate a wide range of enrollment declines, from 3.8% to 20%.
One of the colleges hardest-hit by an enrollment decrease this fall is Santa Rosa Junior College, where student headcount for this fall is down 19.47% from 24,062 last year.
“When the pandemic hit, we had to shut down a lot of our career education courses like automotive, welding and our restaurant program in culinary arts,” Santa Rosa President Frank Chong said. “We’re back up with culinary arts, but a lot of students don’t like to learn remotely and some are dealing with personal hardship.”
Chong attributes some of the decrease in students to the wildfires and poor air quality, forcing people to evacuate their homes in Sonoma County.
Within the nine-college Los Angeles Community College District, two of its colleges saw double-digit decreases in enrollment. Los Angeles Southwest College, with just over 14,000 students last year, and Los Angeles Trade-Technical College, with 7,396 students, are down 20% and 16% respectively this fall. District-wide, the colleges have maintained 90% of their enrollment, said Chancellor Francisco Rodriguez. Last year, the district enrolled about 145,000 students.
“We’re seeing that Covid is having a disproportionate impact on students who are poorer,” Rodriguez said. “The two colleges that serve the poorest or lowest-income students have the greatest drops in enrollment.”
Despite the decrease, many community colleges expect enrollment to recover, if just a little, once they can count the full student-body this fall. At Santa Rosa, President Chong said he expects the decrease to be less than 20% once the college counts its “late-start” classes, or those that begin after Oct.1, along with non-credit students.
EMichael Burke, Daniel J. Willis and Louis Freedberg contributed to this report as did The Daily Democrat. Also contributing are members of EdSource’s California Student Journalism Corps: Hannah Getahun and Iman Palm from Cal State Long Beach, and Marlene Cordova from Cal State Los Angeles.
