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.
New Federal Research Grants
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
will 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 will inform and contribute to this
work.
To augment this project, Wheelhouse will partner 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.