After months of preparation, Cornell University in early March was ready to launch its plan to get its entire student body counted in the 2020 Census.
It was a tall order: Students are historically a hard-to-count population. But for a community like Ithaca, N.Y., a small, remote college town whose population is about 50-percent students, the task is critical, said Kate Supron, Cornell’s campus-community liaison. The once-a-decade count of the nation’s population is used, among other things, to distribute billions of dollars in federal funds for a host of services, to divide state and federal legislative districts, and to help businesses decide where to invest.
But as the university was about to open its Census campaign, the Covid-19 outbreak shut down the campus, and many students returned to their hometowns, a sudden development that added an extra dose of confusion to the survey process. And it risks costing communities like Ithaca dearly.
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Now, as in many college towns across the country, Ithaca’s self-response rate, the share of households that filled out the Census form by mail or online without having to be contacted by surveyors, is down. And without in-person access to most of its students — for whom the task of filling out a Census form may be much less pressing in a pandemic — colleges’ outreach may fall on deaf ears.
“We’re just trying every way we can to get the message out, and we can’t stop because we still have low response rates,” Supron said.
Census and college leaders are still holding out hope that they can capture an accurate count. The Census Bureau has extended the July 31 self-response deadline to October 31, giving itself more time to achieve that goal. For the first time ever, Census forms can be submitted online.
One slice of students will be counted, no matter what: Those who live on campus are automatically tallied as living there. But most students live off campus. And while the Census Bureau quickly advised in March that students should report their address as if they were still studying on campus, some experts fear that the message may be lost.
Many students who left campus in March may never return to their college homes or even to the campus, said Gloria Betcher,chair of the University Communities Council of the National League of Cities. So it is hard to see how an accurate count of a typical college town’s population would be possible, she added.
“It means for a decade, we are going to be impacted by this mass exodus that occurred at one point in time in 2020,” Betcher said.
As of May 24, the City of Ithaca, which encompasses both Cornell and Ithaca College, had a self-response rate more than 20 percentage points below what it recorded in 2010, according to the Census Bureau‘s website.
The response rate for Athens, Ohio, a remote town anchored by Ohio University, had a self-response rate nearly 10 percentage points lower than its 2010 tally. Athens has a population of about 24,000, according to the Census Bureau. But only around 5,000 of its residents are not students, according to Anirudh Ruhil, a professor of data analytics and visualization at the university.
“The numbers are nowhere near what they would be under normal circumstances,” Ruhil said.
The numbers are even worse in Philadelphia. In a section of University City, a neighborhood where University of Pennsylvania and Drexel University students live, the self-response rate as of May 24 was 41 percentage points less than its 63.5-percent rate of 2010.
In phone conversations with still-uncounted students, Philadelphia officials have had a hard time explaining why it is crucial to respond to the Census using the address where they were living when they attended classes on campus, said Stephanie Reid,
executive director of the city’s Census campaign, Philly Counts 2020. Many students have not responded to calls, grown suspicious when asked to fill out a Census form again if their parents already had done so, or simply hung up.
“Students are going through a lot right now,” said Reid. “The Census doesn’t feel that important.”
‘Universities Don’t Exist in Isolation’
For many cities and towns, a Census undercount could mean losing out on millions of dollars in federal funds.
For every person in Vermont who was missed in the 2010 Census, the state in 2015 lost an estimated $2,309 in federal funds for critical health services such as Medicaid, according to a study by George Washington University’s Institute of Public Policy. Likewise, Pennsylvania lost $1,746, Ohio lost $1,206, and West Virginia lost $1,017 for every person missed.
Colleges, too, could be hurt. The Census determines how an entire campus is represented politically and can help create local job opportunities for both graduating seniors and the spouses of faculty and staff members, according to Terri Ann Lowenthal, a longtime Census expert and consultant. An accurate count can help universities secure federal research grants, and allow their local communities to receive funds for services that colleges rely on, such as public safety, public transportation, and economic development, she said.
The vibrancy and quality of life of any university town is directly tied to the accuracy of the Census.
“Universities don’t exist in isolation from the communities in which they are located,” Lowenthal said. “The vibrancy and quality of life of any university town is directly tied to the accuracy of the Census.”
The National League of Cities and several other municipal and higher-education groups are lobbying Congress to set aside funds for college towns to conduct a population recount next year, so they can amend the numbers being recorded during the pandemic, said Betcher. However, institutions and college towns are still working to count as many students as possible.
The impact is apparent in Morgantown, W.Va. Leidos, a government-contracting company, used the Census to decide recently to expand its footprint in the city, home of West Virginia University, in part because it was attracted to the work force, backed by a young, growing population, said Russell Rogerson, chief executive of a local business organization, the Morgantown Area Partnership.
But as of May 21, Morgantown’s self-response rate was about 19 percentage points below its 2010 rate of 64.5 percent. Like many colleges, West Virginia University is trying to reach its off-campus students with mass emails, said Ron Justice, the university’s local-government-relations specialist and a former Morgantown mayor.
Cornell had to shift its Census-messaging strategy for students. It had planned to advertise the Census on digital screens and posters around campus as well as in neighboring businesses, and set up informational tables at its eateries, Supron said.
Now all the messaging is online, and Supron has been coordinating with university offices, departments, and faculty members to help get the word out, she said.
Cornell has been targeting virtually everyone who could possibly connect with students in trying to improve its response rate: local landlords who rent to students, managers of student clubs, and Cornell Votes, a group that encompasses students in a number of campus organizations.
Ohio University is trying to reach students by email, and both the city and county of Athens have sought out residents and students on social media, said Ruhil. However, he said, any outreach is difficult considering that people are dealing with high unemployment rates and a new reality.
“All of that has taken front and center on the stage,” he said, “and I don’t think people are paying much attention to the Census count.”