Community colleges, which usually see an increase in enrollment during a recession, were hit particularly hard by the pandemic. Nationally, enrollment at community colleges fell more than 10% in the last three years. This fall, that trend seems to be improving. For Central Oregon Community College, enrollment is up over 20%. We talk to Alicia Moore, Vice President of Student Affairs at COCC, about what those numbers mean, and what the future of community college looks like.
This transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.
Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. During the Great Recession of 2007 and 2008, Central Oregon Community College (COCC) was the second fastest growing community college in the country. When the economy improved, enrollment started to decline and then came COVID, meaning that for more than a decade, COCC kept seeing fewer students year after year. That has finally changed. When fall classes started a few weeks ago, the college saw a 21% increase in enrollment. Alicia Moore is the vice president of student affairs at COCC. She joins us to talk about these numbers and the future of community college. Welcome to the show.
Alicia Moore: Thanks for having me. Glad to be here.
Miller: It’s great to have you on. What is driving this increase right now?
Moore: You know, it’s a little too soon to tell both with Central Oregon Community College and across the state and region. But there are some emerging points that are coming out. There’s some speculation that the job market is beginning to slow. We’ve seen that all throughout the United States and it’s certainly in Oregon. And the significant increases we saw in wages during the pandemic are starting to slow down. So anecdotally, in talking with our students through new student on-boarding and advising, many are saying they don’t see that career track that they anticipated having through some of those higher paying jobs.
The other piece we’re really seeing is a lot of community colleges in particular are turning to more holistic student supports, with an emphasis on basic needs, by adding services such as food banks, emergency loans, clothing supplies, especially those things needed for an internship or an interview. And those wrap-around support services are bringing students back to the higher education setting.
Miller: Where are you seeing the biggest growth in terms of programs?
Moore: The biggest growth that we see is in a lot of our technical programs, those designed in a one- or two-year time frame to give students the hands-on skills needed to go out and get a job. And for COCC, our biggest growth has been around culinary and some of our health careers programs like medical assisting, pharmacy technician, some of our technical programs like geographic information systems, which is a computerized mapping program, and areas that really are designed as technical skills to quickly get students out into the workforce.
Miller: I think of community colleges as serving a really wide variety of student needs. People seeking two-year certificates or spending two years, then transferring to a four year school or taking noncredit courses. Is there a most common path for your students right now?
Moore: There really isn’t. And you described just a few of the pathways and the students we serve. So there’s the traditional students that many people think about in college, getting some first and second year classes to transfer and get their bachelor’s degree. We have our technical education students getting certificates and associate degrees. We have a lot of folks engaging in non-credit education to build up skills and develop their business, especially for businesses. And we also have huge growth in our high school programs in which students can take college classes in the high schools, taught by their high school faculty, and have the same curriculum that their college counterparts might have leaving high school with several college credits already completed. So that expansive growth is really part about the “community” word in the words “community college.” And we’re really proud to have such a broad-based mission.
Miller: And so if there are high school students taking classes with high school teachers, but getting community college credit through COCC, those students would be counted in the overall enrollment numbers?
Moore: Yes, they are definitely part of our enrollment growth. And there’s two different ways high school students can take classes in community colleges in Oregon. One is what we just mentioned, in the high school with a high school faculty member. But they can also come on a college campus and take classes and be integrated into our regular courses with college aged students.
Miller: What did more than a dozen years of enrollment declines mean for course offerings and the hiring or laying off of staff and other faculty?
Moore: We were really fortunate that we did not have to do any layoffs during this last decade, especially amongst our faculty in our more traditional programs. Some of that is because of our financially conservative approach we bring to that. But it’s also because we did need to expand many of our services for those wrap-around supports, whether that’s financial aid or scholarships or some of our programs to serve underrepresented populations. Those help shore up some of our enrollment and lessen the decline. And while we did decline, it was at a far smaller rate than what we see of many of our Oregon or national peers. So we are very lucky in that sense and that we’re able to maintain all of our academic programs and have a good pipeline of students coming in.
Miller: Is it too early to know if this increase is just a temporary blip or the start of a real trend?
Moore: It’s a little too early to tell. My inclination, after years of doing this work, is that this is the start of a trend to return to really pre-COVID numbers and which is more akin to our historical enrollment before the 2007 recession. And part of that is because we know that nationally, during the pandemic, over 600,000 students their very first year straight from high school, never attended a community college in the United States. And those students took a break and we’re starting to see those students, thankfully, come back to higher education as they often were part of populations that are most disenfranchised in this country. So I do think this is a trend to not only help that population come back to higher ed, but we also see a trend on the more technical education both nationally and from the state of Oregon.
Miller: When we had many conversations about the disruptions, the COVID caused disruptions, to education in the K-12 world, a lot of what we heard from teachers and all kinds of support staff were that kids suffered and being away from a classroom made it harder for them once they were back in a classroom. Is that true for the population you’re talking about who maybe spent three years away from a classroom and now are coming back to community college?
Moore: Because of the expansive services that community colleges provide, both developmental education and pre-college math and writing, we’re able to help those students who might have struggled during the pandemic to come back and really get a jump start in their college career. The other piece that’s helpful here is that students are more excited about being in person and in some traditional online courses, as opposed to the remote education. Remote education requires you to be on your computer at a specific time, engaging. And that’s really hard to engage for a lot of our students. And so we, when working with our students, developed a change in our class schedule to offer far more in-person classes, far more fully online classes which allow more student flexibility. And that’s where we see our students going. So the disruption they had during the pandemic is definitely real. But we’ve been able to work with students and be responsive to address that. So they don’t have to struggle while they start their classes with us.
Miller: We have about a minute left. Where do you see COCC going in the future?
Moore: I see us continuing this enrollment growth and really responding to our community needs. With the statewide emphasis on Future Ready Oregon and expanding our technical education programs, we have three campuses throughout the Central Oregon region and are working to grow those areas. That is a hope for a great future that really does meet the community part of our mission. So we’re excited to be back in person, we’re excited for the energy that we have on campus, and it’s just a great new direction to see us shifting towards.
Miller: Alicia Moore, thanks very much.
Moore: Thank you. Have a wonderful afternoon.
Miller: Alicia Moore is vice president of student affairs at Central Oregon Community College. She joined us to talk about the first enrollment increase at COCC in a dozen years.
Contact “Think Out Loud®”
If you’d like to comment on any of the topics in this show or suggest a topic of your own, please get in touch with us on Facebook, send an email to thinkoutloud@opb.org, or you can leave a voicemail for us at 503-293-1983. The call-in phone number during the noon hour is 888-665-5865.