New Jersey community colleges see a drop in enrollment. Here's why

Economic downturns are traditionally a boon to enrollment at community colleges.

Many experts expected the trend to resume when the COVID-19 pandemic devastated the economy. 

It has not.

Community college leaders have found themselves in uncharted territory as a new study shows dramatic enrollment declines for the fall 2020 and current spring 2021 semesters.

"It's a challenge unlike any that we in higher education have ever seen," said Larry Hlavenka Jr., executive director of public relations, community and cultural affairs at Bergen Community College. "There's no playbook for it. We're breaking new ground here for sure."

Enrollment at two-year schools rose significantly during the Great Recession that followed the housing bubble burst in 2008. Experts expected the same would happen in 2020.

Representatives of four New Jersey community colleges, including three presidents, spoke to the Daily Record and USA TODAY Network about the declines and what they are doing to meet the needs of students in a pandemic economy.

The four schools — Hudson County Community College, County College of Morris, Raritan Valley Community College and Bergen Community College —acknowledge troubling enrollment declines in the fall and spring semesters.

They reflect new data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center that shows six weeks into the spring semester, community colleges across the country reported a 9.5% drop in enrollments compared to the spring 2020 semester, which began before the pandemic closed campuses and brought the nation to a halt.

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That decline nearly triples the 3.3% decline in enrollment seen at public four-year institutions compared to last spring.

Declines at two-year institutions were even higher among students of color and males, the NSC report shows.

Continuing a trend that began in the fall, Native Americans saw the largest spring-to-spring drop with a 17.3% decline, followed by Latinx with a 13.5% drop, Blacks with a 13.4% drop, whites with an 11% drop and Asians with an 8.4% decline in enrollment.

A consensus of these college leaders points to two mitigating factors during this period of pandemic and related economic stress: unprecedented concerns about health and safety while crushing financial burdens continue for many, especially potential students from low-income families.

"Our students are facing catastrophic financial challenges right now," said Hudson County Community College President Christopher Reber.

Hlavenka said "right now, the issue is safety." He said until students feel safe, "they are not going to return to the classroom, no matter what we offer."

What worked in the past, may not work now or future, some leaders said.

Community colleges must adapt to the needs of a new generation of consumers "that streams their music, streams their movies and shops online," said County College of Morris President Anthony Iacono.

The remote-instruction model forced upon the schools last spring, Iacono said, has accelerated that process for the better.

"We've learned a lot about serving differently to a different audience," he said.

Minority declines

Hlavenka points out that in every county or region, community colleges "are the melting pot for higher education."

"Most are majority-minority institutions, including Bergen," he said of his suburban institution with its main campus in suburban Paramus and an approximate 50-50 split between students identifying as white or minority. 

But urban institutions like Hudson, where 87% of the student body is classified as minority, took the hardest hit, particularly in Jersey City, the nation's most diverse city.

Among that group, "56% are Latino, a third speak English as a second language when they come here," Reber said. "The majority are first in their family to attend higher education. They are disproportionally working, some full-time, some while raising kids. We have documented students. Foreign students."

Reber is inspired by what he called "the most resilient students who overcome these challenges" at Hudson, but "all of these elements of diversity in our student body also place our student body at risk of non-completion."

"Even in a non-pandemic time, they are balancing so many life challenges with their studies," he said. "You have to understand that context to fully understand what we are experiencing."

Bottom-line, enrollment at Hudson is down about 15% overall for the academic year ending in July, Reber said. "But you have to drill into that number to more fully understand the issues. We budgeted for 20%, so we're actually doing better than we predicted."

The pandemic's effect on minority and low-income students carries over into the mostly wealthy suburbs of New Jersey.

"We see a problem with students who were here in spring last year who have simply disappeared," McDonough said. "Those are our most vulnerable students. They were first-generation college students. They were students of color or from low-income groups. We lost about 900 of those students, enrolled in the spring of 2020. By the time the fall rolled around, they had disappeared."

Clean campus

Financial issues notwithstanding, McDonough said he knows the student loss "was the result mostly of the pandemic."

"We are trying to reach out to these students and recover their enrollment, but that is such a difficult task," he said.

Bergen continues to address pandemic-related safety concerns despite the school having "zero cases of community spread since the beginning of the pandemic."

"Twenty-thousand visits from September to December and not one case of anyone getting sick through person-to person-transmission," Hlavenka said. "That's a testament to our protocols and everyone on campus following those protocols."

At Hudson, Reber plans to invest some of the expected $29 million to $30 million coming from the $40 billion earmarked for community colleges in the new federal stimulus bill into continuing efforts to provide clean campus facilities.

The school already has spent millions "outfitting our buildings with the most comprehensive safety equipment, air-purification systems in every building, thermal mirrors that measure a person's temperature when they enter any building, all kinds of PPE, deep-dive cleaning, ongoing sanitation, etc."

Most of the schools hope to see some return to normalcy beginning in the fall and carrying over to the fall of 2022, when Reber said he hopes to see enrollment back to expected levels.

Meanwhile, Hlavenka notes a "paradox" among the current student body.

"In the spring and fall of last year, [students] they were figuratively banging on the doors saying 'let us in, we want to be on campus, we want to be here.' But when there were on-campus classes offered at institutions, the students still didn't enroll for them. The reason for that is they want to be safe. So the paradox is they want to be here, but they don't feel safe, so they're not going to be."

Exceptions have been noted at the four schools for increased enrollment in shorter-term courses, including summer courses that can be completed online.

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"I think that speaks to our student's inability to commit to something long-term," said Lisa Dougherty, vice president for student affairs and enrollment at Hudson. "Sometimes they're living week-to-week, so they are taking advantage of classes that are maybe three weeks, or 7 1/2 weeks. We expect that will continue as well."

Current students also are experiencing what Iacono calls "zoom fatigue."

"Students did really well in the summer," he said. "They liked the online. Summer they were in a whole different mindset. Fall came, they were hanging in there. But what students are reporting here and nationally is they've got Zoom fatigue, Their peer groups don't really exist the way they like them. That time between classes in the hall, their clubs, the activities, the social environment, that's a lot of reinforcement to stay in school. That's gone."

'New normal'

The college presidents all said the coming federal stimulus funds will help address short-term goals, including providing more money for tuition grants and other financial aid directly to students, an expansion of support services for mental health services,  and transportation and childcare needs.

"There is a lot of money out there," Iacono said. "There's never been a better time to go to college in terms of if you need money to go to school. The feds have flooded [community college funds] and they're flooding it again."

Some of those funds also will go to building an infrastructure that will get them through the pandemic and beyond.

"We're not just teaching classes online, we're running the entire institution to some degree online," Iacono said about necessary infrastructure upgrades.

The stimulus funds are a one-time benefit, but the improvements they pay for can help the schools prepare for the altered technological and economic landscapes of years to come.

"We've already learned a lot that I think will be really helpful in whatever the new normal is," said Christopher Conzen, executive director of Hudson's Secaucus Center and Early College programs. "We believe long-term, we'll not only make up for the lost ground, but through lessons learned and our continuing work to reach the members of our community, we will gradually begin to grow, on the ground and in the cloud."

"What we confront right now is how many of these enrollment patterns are permanent and will we continue to experience this decline," Mcdonough said. "How many were the result of the pandemic and are we innovative and agile enough to reimagine who we are as institutions to bring those students back?"

William Westhoven is a local reporter for DailyRecord.com. For unlimited access to the most important news from your local community, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.

Email: wwesthoven@dailyrecord.com Twitter: @wwesthoven