[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp15196.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Impact of COVID-19 on Community College Enrollment and Student Success: Evidence from California Administrative Data

Author

Listed:
  • Bulman, George

    (University of California, Santa Cruz)

  • Fairlie, Robert W.

    (University of California, Los Angeles)

Abstract
Although enrollment at California's four-year public universities mostly remained unchanged by the pandemic, the effects were substantial for students at California Community Colleges, the largest higher education system in the country. This paper provides a detailed analysis of how the pandemic impacted the enrollment patterns, fields of study, and academic outcomes of these students through the first four semesters after it started. Consistent with national trends, enrollment dropped precipitously during the pandemic – the total number of enrolled students fell by 11 percent from fall 2019 to fall 2020 and by another 7 percent from fall 2020 to fall 2021. The California Community College system lost nearly 300,000 students over this period. Our analysis reveals that enrollment reductions were largest among African- American and Latinx students, and were larger among continuing students than first-time students. We find no evidence that having a large online presence prior to the pandemic protected colleges from these negative effects. Enrollment changes were substantial across a wide range of fields and were large for both vocational courses and academic courses that can be transferred to four-year institutions. In terms of course performance, changes in completion rates, withdrawal rates, and grades primarily occurred in the spring of 2020. These findings of the effects of the pandemic at community colleges have implications for policy, impending budgetary pressures, and future research.

Suggested Citation

  • Bulman, George & Fairlie, Robert W., 2022. "The Impact of COVID-19 on Community College Enrollment and Student Success: Evidence from California Administrative Data," IZA Discussion Papers 15196, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp15196
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp15196.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. George Bulman & Robert W. Fairlie, 2015. "Technology and Education: Computers, Software, and the Internet," CESifo Working Paper Series 5570, CESifo.
    2. Ahn, Kunwon & Lee, Jun Yeong & Winters, John V., 2020. "Employment Opportunities and High School Completion during the COVID-19 Recession," ISU General Staff Papers 202010190700001114, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    3. Julian R. Betts & Laurel L. McFarland, 1995. "Safe Port in a Storm: The Impact of Labor Market Conditions on Community College Enrollments," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 30(4), pages 741-765.
    4. William T. Alpert & Kenneth A. Couch & Oskar R. Harmon, 2016. "A Randomized Assessment of Online Learning," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(5), pages 378-382, May.
    5. Baker, Rachel & Bettinger, Eric & Jacob, Brian & Marinescu, Ioana, 2018. "The Effect of Labor Market Information on Community College Students’ Major Choice," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 65(C), pages 18-30.
    6. Bulman, G. & Fairlie, R.W., 2016. "Technology and Education," Handbook of the Economics of Education,, Elsevier.
    7. William G. Bowen & Matthew M. Chingos & Kelly A. Lack & Thomas I. Nygren, 2014. "Interactive Learning Online at Public Universities: Evidence from a Six‐Campus Randomized Trial," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 33(1), pages 94-111, January.
    8. Aucejo, Esteban M. & French, Jacob & Ugalde Araya, Maria Paola & Zafar, Basit, 2020. "The impact of COVID-19 on student experiences and expectations: Evidence from a survey," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 191(C).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Binelli, Chiara & Comi, Simona & Meschi, Elena & Pagani, Laura, 2024. "Every cloud has a silver lining: The role of study time and class recordings on university students’ performance during COVID-19," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 225(C), pages 305-328.
    2. Elisa Failache & Nicolás Fiori & Noemi Katzkowicz & Alina Machado & Luciana Méndez, 2022. "Impact of COVID-19 on higher education: Evidence from Uruguay," Documentos de Trabajo (working papers) 22-02, Instituto de Economía - IECON.
    3. Ilie, S. & Maragkou, K., 2024. "University admissions during a pandemic," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 2458, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    4. Schanzenbach, Diane W. & Turner, Sarah, 2022. "Limited supply and lagging enrollment: Production technologies and enrollment changes at community colleges during the pandemic," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 212(C).
    5. Fernanda Estevan & Lucas Finamor, 2022. "School closures and educational path: how the Covid-19 pandemic affected transitions to college," Papers 2210.00138, arXiv.org.
    6. Etienne Dagorn & Léonard Moulin, 2023. "Dropping Out of University in Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic," Working Papers 276, French Institute for Demographic Studies.
    7. Marina Bonaccolto-Töpfer & Carolina Castagnetti, 2024. "The COVID-19 pandemic: a threat to higher education? Evidence from a large university in Northern Italy," Journal for Labour Market Research, Springer;Institute for Employment Research/ Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), vol. 58(1), pages 1-13, December.
    8. Elisa Failache, 2023. "Taking advantage of COVID-19? Online learning, descentralization and tertiary education," Documentos de Trabajo (working papers) 23-09, Instituto de Economía - IECON.
    9. Eric Bettinger & Robert Fairlie & Anastasia Kapuza & Elena Kardanova & Prashant Loyalka & Andrey Zakharov, 2023. "Diminishing Marginal Returns to Computer‐Assisted Learning," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 42(2), pages 552-570, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Riudavets-Barcons, Marc & Uusitalo, Roope, 2023. "School Closures and Student Achievement: Evidence from a High Stakes Exam," IZA Discussion Papers 16074, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. Clark, Andrew E. & Nong, Huifu & Zhu, Hongjia & Zhu, Rong, 2021. "Compensating for academic loss: Online learning and student performance during the COVID-19 pandemic," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 68(C).
    3. Laia Navarro-Sola, 2021. "Secondary Schools with Televised Lessons: The Labor Market Returns of the Mexican Telesecundaria," Working Papers 2021-053, Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group.
    4. Ahn, Kunwon & Lee, Jun Yeong & Winters, John V., 2020. "Employment Opportunities and High School Completion during the COVID-19 Recession," IZA Discussion Papers 13802, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    5. Jongseok Ahn, 2020. "Unequal Loneliness in the Digitalized Classroom: Two Loneliness Effects of School Computers and Lessons for Sustainable Education in the E-Learning Era," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(19), pages 1-20, September.
    6. Ferman, Bruno & Finamor, Lucas & Lima, Lycia, 2019. "Are Public Schools Ready to Integrate Math Classes with Khan Academy?," MPRA Paper 94736, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. M Paula Cacault & Christian Hildebrand & Jérémy Laurent-Lucchetti & Michele Pellizzari, 2021. "Distance Learning in Higher Education: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment [A Randomized Assessment of Online Learning]," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 19(4), pages 2322-2372.
    8. Bergman, Peter & Rogers, Todd, 2017. "The Impact of Defaults on Technology Adoption, and Its Underappreciation by Pollicymakers," Working Paper Series rwp17-021, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    9. Marie Connolly & Catherine Haeck, 2018. "Le lien entre la taille des classes et les compétences cognitives et non cognitives," CIRANO Project Reports 2018rp-18, CIRANO.
    10. Vargas-Montoya, Luis & Gimenez, Gregorio & Fernández-Gutiérrez, Marcos, 2023. "ICT use for learning and students' outcomes: Does the country's development level matter?," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 87(PA).
    11. Bianchi, Nicola & Lu, Yi & Song, Hong, 2022. "The effect of computer-assisted learning on students’ long-term development," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 158(C).
    12. Eric Bettinger & Robert Fairlie & Anastasia Kapuza & Elena Kardanova & Prashant Loyalka & Andrey Zakharov, 2023. "Diminishing Marginal Returns to Computer‐Assisted Learning," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 42(2), pages 552-570, March.
    13. Rosa Sanchis-Guarner & José Montalbán & Felix Weinhardt, 2021. "Home Broadband and Human Capital Formation," CESifo Working Paper Series 8846, CESifo.
    14. Derksen, Laura & Leclerc, Catherine Michaud & Souza, Pedro CL, 2019. "Searching for Answers : The Impact of Student Access to Wikipedia," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 1236, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    15. Giovanni Abbiati & Davide Azzolini & Anja Balanskat & Katja Engelhart & Daniela Piazzalunga & Enrico Rettore & Patricia Wastiau, 2023. "Effects of an Online Self-Assessment Tool on Teachers’ Digital Competencies," FBK-IRVAPP Working Papers 2023-01, Research Institute for the Evaluation of Public Policies (IRVAPP), Bruno Kessler Foundation.
    16. Oliver Falck & Constantin Mang & Ludger Woessmann, 2018. "Virtually No Effect? Different Uses of Classroom Computers and their Effect on Student Achievement," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 80(1), pages 1-38, February.
    17. Briglauer, Wolfgang & Dürr, Niklas S. & Falck, Oliver & Hüschelrath, Kai, 2019. "Does state aid for broadband deployment in rural areas close the digital and economic divide?," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 68-85.
    18. Wu-Yuin Hwang & Uun Hariyanti, 2020. "Investigation of Students’ and Parents’ Perceptions of Authentic Contextual Learning at Home and Their Mutual Influence on Technological and Pedagogical Aspects of Learning under COVID-19," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(23), pages 1-19, December.
    19. Hull, Marie C. & Duch, Katherine, 2017. "One-To-One Technology and Student Outcomes," IZA Discussion Papers 10886, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    20. Falck, Oliver & Heimisch-Roecker, Alexandra & Wiederhold, Simon, 2021. "Returns to ICT skills," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 50(7).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    pandemic; COVID-19; coronavirus; community college; enrollment; grades; completion; students of color;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I23 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Higher Education; Research Institutions
    • I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp15196. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Holger Hinte (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaade.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.