Two-year colleges have been experiencing declining enrollment for years, with COVID-19 exacerbating this downward trend. Now that there is distance from the initial wave of the pandemic, many higher ed professionals are trying to understand how and when their enrollment numbers will recover. Though enrollment did spike temporarily in the 2021/2022 school year, that correction reversed the following academic year.
But enrollment is not the only measurement of health for a higher education institution — credentials earned are just as important to track. As a result of the uptick in enrollment in
the 2021/2022 school year, there is likely going to be an uptick in credentials earned as well. Unfortunately, this is not a sign of reversing trends, since declining enrollment has continued to plague higher ed institutions in the academic years following. Read on to understand the long-term effects of COVID-19 on two-year institutions in North Carolina, and what these results could mean for your own higher ed institution.
Within a subset of institutions from the North Carolina Community College System, falling new enrollments have been an ongoing trend. Despite stabilization and a partial recovery from the enrollment drop in 2020, new enrollments for postsecondary students is again showing decline.
While the 2021/2022 academic year witnessed a rebound of 5.9% in new enrollments among this cohort, it still fell significantly short of the peak observed in 2018/2019, experiencing an 17.4% decline from 2018/2019 to 2022/2023. Data representing the 2022/2023 academic year indicates a further decline, with a 4.4% year- over-year drop in enrollments.
Within our sample of North Carolina community colleges, falling new enrollments has been an ongoing trend. Despite stabilization and a partial recovery from the enrollment drop in 2020, new enrollments for postsecondary students is again showing decline.
The impact of the initial COVID-induced decline is just starting to impact the annual credentials earned. The 2021/2022 academic year saw a slight increase to credentials earned, improving over the previous year despite the drop in new enrollments. Likewise, the 2022/2023 academic year showed an even greater improvement, buoyed by the increased new enrollments from 2021/2022. There is still a risk of decline though, as we expect credentials to follow a similar trend to enrollment following the decline this past year.
These numbers underscore the continued repercussions of the pandemic on educational outcomes, even as schools are nearly fully in person and able to operate at full capacity.
The 2021/2022 academic year saw the beginnings of COVID’s impact, with credentials earned declining for the first time in years.
When looking at credentials earned among those newly enrolled since 2017, we notice that enrollments have stabilized lower than the pre-2020 baseline. There are positive signs though, as the number of credentials earned by this cohort continues to increase. This is largely due to the increased graduation rates of the students attending. In the last year we’ve seen an increase of over 1% in both one year and two year graduation rates.
Large institutions, characterized by higher enrollments, experienced trends similar to those of smaller institutions. Additionally, when comparing colleges based on their urban/suburban or town/rural settings, the differences observed in enrollment and credentials earned trends were minimal. Only 40% of institutions were able to increase enrollment for the 2022/2023 academic year within our cohort, leading to an overall decrease.
When analyzing the data by gender and students entering college with transfer credit, there are trend differences. Already entering college at lower rates than women (NCES), men saw an enrollment decline of 17% versus 8% for women. However, the credentials earned gap shrank slightly over this same time period, showing there is likely some sort of selection effect happening that is causing differences in the populations of men and women choosing to enroll in these schools.
Already entering college at lower rates than women, men saw an enrollment decline of 17% versus 8% for women.
Transfer student enrollment shows a different trend. While enrollments for both students with transfer credits and those without peaked in 2018 and 2020 respectively, the 2020 shock from COVID decreased enrollments for transfer students by 16% versus almost 25% for those without transfer credits. Since 2020, transfer student new enrollments have continued to decline to now being only 81% of what they were in 2018, while non-transfer student new enrollments have increased 6% since the 2020 trough. Students are coming in with less college experience than before, meaning that they may need to stay longer at the institution due to their lack of class credits earned. This provides evidence that the “typical student” is going to look different and continue to change. Colleges will potentially have to adapt outreach and offerings based on these new student demographics, as students come in with less college experience.
We also notice a steepening decline in enrollment for Black and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander students when compared to their peers. This has been seen elsewhere (NCES), and is further evidence of a pre-pandemic trend that continues years after its start. Equity gaps between student groups seem to be growing still, despite efforts to curb these disparities.
Despite the ebb and flow of enrollment that we’ve seen throughout the years, action must be taken to ensure that more students persist in their studies to achieve a certificate or degree. There will be an increase in credentials earned starting in the 2023/2024 academic year, however, this will be a short-lived increase due to the current trend of declining enrollment. These trends are shown to not be evenly distributed throughout the student body, but they do seem to equally affect schools of varying sizes and locations.
The trend of declining enrollment and credentials is concerning for both long-term student success and the overall vitality of institutions. For the health of your college or university, it is important
to analyze your data and identify students who have stopped attending school and are close to earning a credential. This group of former students may be able to return to school and earn their credential, setting them up for success in their future academic and professional careers.
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