Sacramento community colleges see rise in student enrollment after plummets during COVID-19
Student enrollment is beginning to pick up steadily at Los Rios Community College District campuses after a slump that began in 2020.
As a result of the COVID-19 shutdown, community college enrollment plummeted statewide. Colleges administrators had to tackle both a shift to online learning and a strategy to get back the students they lost. All four Los Rios colleges had a total of more than 98,000 students in 2019. By 2021, they had around 83,000 students.
Today, all four colleges are beginning to see numbers rise to what they used to be. According to data from provided by the district, the colleges altogether currently have more than 91,000 students.
“We have made restoring enrollment to our pre-pandemic levels our top priority over the last several years,” said Gabe Ross, chief strategy communications officer for the district.
One key strategy to increase student enrollment has been adapting to online courses, Ross said. Around 55% to 60% of classes districtwide are online to meet the “student demand.”
“Those classes go faster, those are the classes students have demonstrated they want,” Ross said. “So a big part of our success ... is sort of not being dogmatic to a particular modality.”
Los Rios’ dual enrollment numbers have also “skyrocketed,” said Ross. Dual enrollment refers to the concurrent enrollment of college classes for students at another academic institution. Most commonly, high school students will take courses at a community college alongside their standard classes.
In 2018, Los Rios had about 1,500 dual enrolled students. The program had more than 4,000 students in fall 2023. Many times, students will be recruited by outreach staff at individual colleges, said Sonia Ortiz-Mercado, the associate vice chancellor of Educational Services and Student Services at Los Rios. The colleges have also increased the number of outreach staff.
“Our colleges across the district made investments in increasing the outreach staff capacity,” Ortiz-Mercado said. “From a student service plan, we have more staffing to be able to go out into the community to work with our high schools students to help them enroll.”
Dual enrollment has boosted student headcounts for community college across the state, not just those within Los Rios. A memo from the California Community College Chancellor’s Office stated that their student headcount systemwide saw a 8% increase from spring 2022 to spring 2023, with the majority of that increase being aided by dual enrollment programs.
While overall enrollment is on the rise across the state, segments of the student population that dropped off significantly at the beginning of the pandemic have not returned. For example, enrollment of students ages 20 to 24 measured a 27% decrease in spring 2023 compared to the pre-COVID-19 era.
In Sacramento, some colleges have even seen higher student headcounts than prior to 2020. At Folsom Lake College, for example, their student headcount increased by more than 3,000. Ross attributes this to population growth in the areas those colleges are located.
But what about the retention at Los Rios? The district is also looking to retain more students of color, who were disproportionately affected by the pandemic. Ortiz-Mercado said this is where affinity centers across colleges offer support.
Ross said the district’s overall course completion success has dipped since 2019. In 2023, the district saw students completing courses at a 73% rate.
“When students don’t have success in courses, that’s when they tend to drop out or discontinue their education,” Ross said.
To retain these students, several colleges have increased tutoring efforts and are working on streamlining communication between students and counseling.
