Two-thirds of institutions responding to a new survey by The Chronicle reported drops in undergraduate enrollment this fall, with community colleges experiencing the steepest declines during a semester of pandemic-fueled challenges.
The survey of enrollment managers and registrars provides a look at enrollment shifts and spring-planning decisions at institutions representing a broad cross-section of Carnegie classes. The Chronicle undertook the project in collaboration with the course-scheduling firm Ad Astra and Davidson College’s College Crisis Initiative.
The responses to the survey reinforce some of the top-level findings of recent studies by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center and the American Council on Education: Declining enrollment, increased operating costs, and state budget cuts are inflicting deep financial pain on nearly every sector of higher education.
But among the injured, community colleges stand out. According to The Chronicle’s survey, nine out of 10 suffered enrollment declines this fall compared to the previous year. More than half of the two-year colleges reported that enrollments dropped by 10 percent or more.
Those results underscore the enormous challenges community colleges and their students face in dealing with the historic public health and economic crises caused by Covid-19.
The situation in other sectors of higher education are not quite as dire. Some elite colleges have even seen enrollment gains during the pandemic. Forty-two percent of respondents from institutions in the prestigious Association of American Universities saw no change in undergraduate enrollments, while 15 percent reported increases of 0.1 to 5 percent.
In general, colleges that offered in-person courses fared better than those that were mostly online. But the responses also point to troubles for public regional universities and some private colleges.
A separate study released today by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center carried still more alarming news: Freshman enrollment is down nationwide by 16.1 percent.
What worries many in higher education is not just the dismal fall enrollment, but the prospect that the nation will continue to struggle with the pandemic through the spring and possibly next fall.
“The economy is not going to come back fully until we solve the public health crisis, and that’s true for higher ed, too,” said Douglas Webber, an associate professor of economics at Temple University.
The stimulus measures passed by Congress are helping sustain many businesses and institutions through the end of the year, Webber said. But without more federal assistance and a reliable vaccine, more jobs will be lost, making it harder for students to afford college, he said.
“We haven’t begun to feel the real economic damage,” Webber said.
The Chronicle survey, which was conducted in late September and early October, drew responses from 256 enrollment managers, registrars, and associated administrators. The largest group of responses came from baccalaureate-granting colleges, nearly 30 percent, and 28 percent were from doctoral-granting institutions. Masters-level colleges made up a quarter of the responses and nearly 17 percent were from community colleges. The survey responses were weighted to compensate for the variations.
While the overall picture was somber, the survey showed a range of undergraduate enrollment outcomes for the fall semester. More than a fifth of the respondents reported enrollment declines of 10 percent or more, but a nearly equal share of colleges saw increases.
More than 40 percent of bachelor’s-granting colleges had no enrollment declines or even small increases in students. Doctoral-granting institutions made up the smallest share of those reporting an enrollment decline of 10 percent or more.
But colleges in the middle, public regional institutions and a mix of private colleges that offer master’s degrees, were second only to community colleges in terms of enrollment declines. Nearly three-quarters of master’s institutions are reporting fewer students this fall than the previous year.
A larger share of four-year private colleges than four-year publics reported enrollment declines of more than 10 percent. But more than 28 percent of four-year private colleges had increased enrollment — double the percentage reported by four-year public institutions.
Barbara K. Mistick, president of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, said the figures result from the financial challenges families are facing because of the pandemic. That’s not an issue for the wealthy private colleges that meet students’ full financial-aid needs, she said, but for most private colleges that is not an option.
The survey also found a notable correlation between enrollment and mode of instruction. Colleges that were fully or primarily in-person for the fall — about 20 percent of respondents — were less likely to report enrollment declines than colleges that were fully or primarily online, a group that comprised nearly 40 percent of the respondents. Those using a hybrid mix of instruction made up 36 percent of the respondents.
That finding seems to confirm the mantra of so many college leaders that students really wanted to be back on campus.
Christopher R. Marsicano, an assistant professor of the practice in educational studies at Davidson College, said the differences could be a result of students’ expectations that being on campus for in-person instruction would be the same as it was in the past.
Conversely, students’ fears that fully or mostly online instruction was not going to be high-quality may have kept many away from those institutions, said Marsicano, who helped oversee the survey as director of Davidson’s College Crisis Initiative. (C2i, as the Davidson initiative is known, supplies data for The Chronicle‘s reopening tracker.)
But now that a semester has passed, Marsicano said, students may be less keen to be on campus, given the requirements for social distancing and to wear masks. “I would not be surprised if we saw a dip in in-person enrollment in the spring because it’s not a normal college experience,” he said.
Early indications suggest the spring semester could look a lot like the fall. Less than 20 percent of survey respondents said their institutions are planning for a fully or primarily in-person spring. A third are planning a hybrid mode of instruction, a quarter expect to be primarily or entirely online, and most of the rest are waiting to decide.
Dominique Baker, assistant professor of education policy and leadership at Southern Methodist University, said the survey’s results may be less an indicator of the success of any particular sector or mode of instruction than of the relative wealth of the institutions and the kind of students particular colleges recruit.
In other words, colleges that opened for fully or mostly in-person instruction are those that could afford to prepare a campus for the return of students, she said, and the students they recruit generally face fewer financial barriers to being on campus.
But the pandemic has also created a particular set of challenges for low-income students, working adults, and those with children — the kinds of students most likely to enroll at community colleges.
The study released last week by the American Council on Education reported that nearly 80 percent of community-college presidents surveyed said their enrollments had fallen.
A September report from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center said that community-college enrollments had fallen 7.5 percent compared with last fall. The decline among all undergraduates was 2.5 percent.
During past recessions, many unemployed people headed to two-year colleges so they’d be ready to find work once the economy recovered. That doesn’t appear to be happening this time.
Parents who might otherwise want to be taking courses are instead focused on taking care of their children, said Webber, the Temple University economist. “That’s where this decline is coming from,” he said. “It’s not that they don’t want to respond to the normal economic incentives, it’s that they can’t.”
One respondent to The Chronicle’s survey had another explanation for the decline in enrollment: “We have a large number of students who would have enrolled for Fall Semester, but do not have internet and/or cellular connectivity.”
John Barnshaw, vice president for research and data science at Ad Astra and an architect of the new survey, said there are indications that working adults, in particular, are now more interested in earning certificates or other credentials that take far less time than an associate degree.
Baker, at Southern Methodist, said the near-shutdown of the service industry has removed an important source of income for working families and made it impossible for many to go to college.
Comments that accompanied the survey also point to that issue. “Finances/Loss of family income affected approximately 40 percent of students who chose not to attend for fall 2020,” wrote a respondent from a private, four-year college.
In addition, financial-aid awards are based on a family’s’ prior-year tax return, which doesn’t account for the current economic conditions, Baker said. Colleges and the federal government could help solve the problem by making students aware that they can appeal their financial-aid award.
“If institutions can’t help mitigate these issues,” Baker said, “we’ve got a really tough road ahead.”
