‘A lost generation’

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The pandemic has caused a steep drop in enrollment in New Jersey’s colleges and universities, most notably at its community colleges. Members of the higher education community are concerned about what that means for students now and in the future.

A report by the Center for Economic and Policy Research released on Feb. 16 details the dip in enrollment that institutions of higher education are experiencing nationwide. While the decline is ubiquitous, its steepness varies greatly depending on the type of institution. While elite private institutions saw just a 0.1% dip in enrollment for fall 2020 according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, public community colleges faced a 10.1% decline in enrollment for fall 2020.

New Jersey’s dip in community college enrollment was approximately 13% according to Aaron Fichtner, president of the New Jersey Council of County Colleges. This drop came as a surprise, as community college enrollments typically increase during economic downturns. But far-reaching public health concerns differentiated this economic downturn from previous events; and the demographics of two-year institutions show that this decline has likely had an effect on vulnerable communities above all.

“Community colleges as you might imagine disproportionately serve students who are working, students who are first-generation, students who have challenges and barriers to higher education. The pandemic has made it much, much more challenging to continue their education. Whether it’s because of job loss or the digital divide, the transition from high school to college was very much disrupted,” Fichtner said.

Mary Beth Reilly, interim executive director of enrollment services at Brookdale Community College in Lincroft, noted that the school’s research “shows that students of color, specifically African American and Hispanic students, have been most affected by the pandemic. While all students have performed much better in face-to-face environments, for these populations the discrepancy between performance in remote classes versus on-campus classrooms is greater than the whole.”

Community colleges overall are minority majority, with 45% white students, 26% Hispanic, 13% Black, 6% Asian/Pacific Islander, 1% Native America, 4% mixed race, 4% other, and 2% non-resident aliens, according to the American Association of Community Colleges in 2020.

Data released by The National Center for Education Statistics in 2016 found that 37% of community college students come from households, either dependent on their parents or independent of them, with an annual income of under $20,000. Some 30% of students are from households worth $20,000 to $49,999 yearly; and 33% of students are from households worth $50,000 and up yearly.

“When you talk about minority communities, there is research out there that we may be facing a lost generation or a lost cohort of college students because those communities chose not to go and its very difficult for them to make the decision to go to college when everything clears if they sort of missed the boat,” explained Bergen Community College spokesman Larry Hlavenka.

Michelle Van Noy, associate director of Education and Employment Research Center in the Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations, said that some of the students who have stepped away from their studies have done so because of an increase in childcare duties, whether for siblings or for their own children. Childcare poses challenges to taking remote classes, different than those it poses to taking in-person classes but still significant.

Reilly said many enrollees have had to work because of family situations and have therefore placed their educational pursuits on hold. “A considerable number of these students are from low-income households and will not see this dream realized. This is tragic. We are just as worried for our former students who have had to drop out for the same reasons …The data clearly shows that the longer a student remains out of school, the less likely they are to return – particularly community college students,” she said.

“All of these trends are going to exacerbate existing inequalities,” Van Noy said.

Statistics compiled by the American Association of Community College reveal the median earnings of full-time em-ployees changes substantially with every rung a person climbs on the education ladder. Someone with less than a high school diploma has a median income of $31,315, and with a high school diploma, the median income is $40,510.

Folks with an associate degree on average made $50,079. The difference that nearly $10,000 makes when set on repeat gives a person the ability to make hundreds of thousands of dollars more over the course of their lifetime, just by going to community college.

“Investing in community colleges has a two-pronged impact,” the CEPR study said. “A college degree dramatically expands the economic opportunities of the vulnerable students these institutions serve, and over a lifetime, every dollar invested in community college nets $4.80, resulting in an internal rate of return of 17.8 percent,” the study noted, citing a 2014 study from the Association of American Colleges & Universities.

Along with affecting students, deferments affect community colleges, too.

“These colleges do not have multibillion dollar endowments. With lower revenues, many will be forced to close.

Closures would result in thousands of low-income students losing access to affordable higher education and economic mobility,” CEPR noted.

Reilly and Hlavenka underscored the importance of the federal COVID-19 stimulus package funding the colleges received last year in keeping the institutions afloat and serving their student populations. However, according to the CEPR report, community colleges serve 33 percent of all students but only received 22 percent of CARES funding.

To prevent further downstream effects, Van Noy suggests that colleges do some intentional outreach to people that had applied and deferred and not enrolled. High schools can take part in reengaging recent grads, trying to steer them into college degree programs. Fichtner said that the state government is going to need to encourage people to build skills, something Gov. Murphy was expected to do Feb. 26 by signing into law the Community College Opportunity Grant Program. The CCOGP will allow people in households that make less than $65,000 a year to attend community college tuition-free.

“These are the kinds of things it’s really important to keep our eyes on. While enrollment is down, the number of stu-dents receiving community college opportunity grants is actually up this year,” Fichtner said.

Institutions can do their part to incentivize students as well, and the NJCCC is partnering with RWJBarnabas Health to offer tuition grants to RWJBarnabas employees who don’t have a degree and have a household income of $65,000 or less.

At Bergen, Hlavenka noted the importance of approaching students that have been affected by the drop in enrollment in appropriate ways. “Different communities have different ways to communicate and different [factors] of influence. We’ve learned in the Asian population in Bergen County, familial influence plays a massive role in collegiate decision. When we’re talking to Asian communities, it’s not so much going directly after the student, it’s trying to speak to the families and the parents, because they will impress upon the student that it’s time to go back.

In the Black and LatinX communities, we’ve learned it’s the reputation. They want to hear about what kind of quality comes out of Bergen, what are the academic programs coming out of Bergen, they want to know how Bergen is going to put them on a path to success,” he said. “We look at those kinds of things and decide, what are the tactics that we want to deploy in light of that information?”