CPCC’s fall enrollment is down 30 percent compared to this time last year. Here’s why
In the midst of a global pandemic and racial reckoning, the dream of a college education fell to the back-burner for many young people.
“It’s not even a one-two punch, it’s more like a one-two-three-four punch,” said Tony Jones, director of student counseling services at Central Piedmont Community College, referring to the combination of factors discouraging students from investing in their education over the last year.
CPCC’s enrollment for the upcoming fall semester is almost 30% lower than it was at the same time last year.
Higher education enrollment has fallen to a recent national low this spring. Community colleges have been the hardest hit since the start of the pandemic. Since spring 2020, national enrollment at community colleges has dropped by about 476,000 students. That 11.3% decrease in enrollment is ten times the pre-pandemic rate of decline, according to a recent report by the nonprofit National Student Clearinghouse.
In North Carolina, undergraduate community college enrollment dropped by 7.2% since last spring, while 4-year undergraduate public college enrollment dropped by less than 1%, according to the same report.
Through contacting students who have dropped out or decided against enrolling over the last year, Dr. JJ McEachern, Dean of Enrollment Management at CPCC, has found that the pandemic raised a combination of emotional and infrastructural challenges that caused many to give up on or put off their educational aspirations.
“We serve a lot of low-income first-generation students, and disadvantaged students. And they’ve been hit hard,” McEachern said.
Racial and gender-based disparities
At CPCC, enrollment dropped by 6% among white students and 18% among Black and Latinx students over the last year, according to CPCC spokesman Jeff Lowrance. The enrollment decline was significantly worse among male students (15%) than female students (3%). These demographic differences reflect national trends, which show that after international students, Native American, Black, and Latinx men are suffering the highest enrollment declines in that order.
Online classes proved to be a challenging learning format for many students, while others lacked access to consistent wifi connection after the CPCC campus closed mid-way through the 2020 Spring semester, said McEachern. Childcare responsibilities, such as helping younger siblings with their remote learning, also played a role.
The distressing socio-political conditions of the last year have also profoundly affected students’ abilities to focus on school, said Jones, CPCC’s director of student counseling services.
Jones noted that the second-hand trauma from watching videos of the beating and killings of Black people had a particularly damaging impact on students of color and their ability to focus on their studies. Jones also noted that the ransomware cyberattack on the college earlier this year gave some students yet another reason to avoid online school.
“As we call students now, we are seeing that they are choosing to survive and not really thrive. In other words, they are choosing just to work, work, work, and some of them are not seeing the benefit of education right now because they don’t really know what their future looks like,” McEachern said.
Bringing students back to the fold
CPCC administrators are trying to bring students back to campus. By offering a variety of in-person, hybrid, and virtual learning opportunities for prospective students over the summer and fall semesters this year, McEachern is hopeful the school can make it easier for students to invest in their education while navigating other responsibilities such as childcare and multiple jobs.
Gov. Roy Cooper has also pledged $31.5 million of federal COVID aid towards alleviating the financial barriers preventing student enrollment at community colleges. The LongLeaf Commitment Grant Program guarantees eligible students $700 to $2,800 per year for two years if they attend one of the state’s 58 community colleges. Last week, the State Board of N.C. Community Colleges approved a marketing campaign to help spread the word about the grant program.
On top of this, the N.C. Community College System is pushing the N.C. General Assembly to grant $60 million to help colleges to sustain student services and future growth, said Thomas Stith, president of the N.C. Community College System.
