Enrollment in the California Community Colleges (CCC) was
profoundly and unevenly disrupted by COVID-19. As colleges work
to help students sustain or reengage their paths to completion,
UC Davis researchers are partnering with the California
Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office and the Public Policy
Institute of California to understand effective recovery
strategies.
Research on Pandemic-Era Innovations
Working with community college leaders in our Research
Collaboration Council, the research team has documented
successful innovations or other efforts — often supported by
federal or state recovery funds – launched during the
pandemic period, with explicit discussion of scalability and/or
sustainability of these efforts. These innovations are
described in detail in a series of three blog posts published on
the Accelerating Recovery in Community Colleges Network web
site:
Federal Research Grants Support This Work
The U.S. Department of Education’s Institute for Education
Sciences has awarded $3 million to support a three-year
project called Evidence
to Inform Improvement: Supporting California Community Colleges
in Pandemic Recovery. Researchers
are working to identify which of these recovery activities
contributed to improved student outcomes. The goal is to inform
CCC leaders and state policymakers on best practices for
improving outcomes post-pandemic. Read the university’s
press release here. Learn more about the Research
Collaboration Council that informs and contributes to this
work.
To augment this project, Wheelhouse partners with the Community
College Research Center in the Accelerating
Recovery in Community Colleges Network (ARCC), a
national network of research teams investigating community
college responses to COVID-19.
Baseline Analysis of COVID Impacts
Analyzing rich administrative data from the CCC Chancellor’s
Office, UC Davis researchers Robert Linden, Michal
Kurlaender, Paco Martorell and Scott E. Carrell have laid
the foundation for this work with an infographic
illustrating changes in student enrollment and persistence in the
first 18 months of the pandemic.
Download and read the infographic (PDF)
Systemwide, enrollment declined by 14%. Moving beyond enrollment
declines, this analysis also explores how the pandemic
interrupted students’ persistence in CCC in 2020 and 2021.
Statewide, persistence fell by 5%. Both enrollment and
persistence changes varied widely by student characteristics and
college campuses.
Our understanding of pandemic-era CCC enrollment continues to
emerge, and there is much yet to know about how institutions and
the students they serve will respond to re-engage and recover
enrollment.