After enrollment dips during pandemic, ACC launches plan to help students return to school

Austin Community College is partnering with the nonprofit InsideTrack to boost reenrollment after a seeing a drop in students seeking higher education degrees during the COVID-19 pandemic, the nonprofit announced Wednesday.

In this partnership, the InsideTrack will provide outreach and “holistic” coaching to more than 6,800 former ACC students who stopped taking classes in the past one to three years, and it will train coaches to make the program sustainable, said Seth Carreiro, InsideTrack's associate partnership director.

InsideTrack coaches reach students by text, email or phone. About 10% of those in the pool of 6,800 former students have already been contacted by InsideTrack or ACC directly.

“We are seeing a higher than usual rate of engagement,” Carreiro said, “which is really promising.”

Community colleges nationwide had drops in enrollment during the COVID-19 pandemic. Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board data indicates that enrollment in Texas community colleges and technical schools fell from 769,000 in 2019 to 688,000 in 2020 and 665,000 in 2021.

The decline comes as job needs grow. A study at Georgetown University predicts that 63% of Texas jobs in 2031 will require postsecondary training beyond a high school degree.

As the spring semester at ACC began Tuesday, the district reported that new student enrollment is up 7% but not yet at pre-pandemic levels.

Last year, the Department of Education awarded ACC a two-year grant to help students return to school to complete their degrees. The college received more than $770,000 to launch the Austin Community College Ensuring Student Success project to bolster student support and to reach out to about half the 15,000 or so students who dropped out during the pandemic — and it contracted with InsideTrack to help with the outreach.

“What we did was we suggested that we were going to reach out to half of those, so 7,000," said Guillermo “Willie” Martinez, ACC's associate vice chancellor of student engagement and academic success. “The reason we got InsideTrack was so that we could do it en masse.”

Primary reasons students stopped going to school during the pandemic included finances, work and family commitments, Carreiro said. The nonprofit's coaches will connect students interested in reenrolling with ACC resources to make it possible for them to return to school, Carreiro said.

Martinez said January marks the official launch of the partnership. The school's hope is to reenroll 1,000 students for next summer or fall, he said.

The “COVID (pandemic) exasperated difficulties for many, many people,” Martinez said. “One of the things that we've done is just be more cognizant of that and trying to see how it is our responsibility to try to support what happens outside of the classroom and trying to intervene as much as possible.”

ACC has been taking numerous steps to holistically tackle student barriers to completing a degree. InsideTrack previously partnered with ACC to bolster advising in 2017. Last week, ACC Chancellor Russell Lowery-Hart proposed free tuition for 2024 high school graduates. ACC also opened three centers connecting students with food, resources and community last fall and offers free financial, academic and technical resources.

Martinez said the college has not only expanded its resources but also rethought how it communicates to students about those available resources and matches them with support.

“The biggest takeaway with this grant, and with other efforts, is come back to ACC and let's help you finish your goals,” Martinez said. “There's enough people here that want to see you succeed, and there's enough support and resources here that we can ensure that you are going to be successful.”

Carreiro said community colleges are leaders in their communities, and this reenrollment commitment is a positive investment for the future.

“We won't get everyone, but if we could get even just a small portion of these students reenrolled in school,” Carreiro said, “I think we would be doing not only the institution but the community a great service.”

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Austin Community College, InsideTrack partner to boost reenrollment