Community college enrollment is growing amid economic uncertainty

from Adam EchelmanCalMatters

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If you want to gauge the state of California’s economy, start with the colleges.

“When the economy is doing well, our enrollments go down, and when the economy is struggling or in a recession, we see our enrollments go up,” said Chris Ferguson, executive vice chancellor in the Office of the Chancellor of the California Community Colleges, which oversees all 116 community colleges in the state.

Ferguson said the state has not yet released authoritative data on fall enrollment, but early data shows upward trends. In interviews with CalMatters, some college presidents said they are seeing more than 10 percent more students than last fall. But they say the state has not provided enough funding to keep up with their growth.

California is not in a recession, but some economic indicators are grim. Unemployment is risingand it happens harder to find work. The price of consumer goods, such as toilet paper and cosmetics, is I’m going upand economists say President Donald Trump’s tariffs and increased deportations could lead to even more economic decline in the country.

“Usually when the economy gets a little crazy like it is right now, people need to upskill or find a new job,” and workers look to colleges for help, said Nicole Albo-Lopez, vice chancellor of the Los Angeles Community College District. In the Los Angeles area, students between the ages of 35 and 54 are returning to school in droves — up 28 percent from last year, she said.

Other factors may also be driving students back to school. The COVID-19 pandemic has created a sudden and historic decline in college enrollment, and some schools say the influx of students this year is simply a return to pre-pandemic levels. Much of the recent growth in enrollment has come from high school students taking college courses, which have exploded in popularity over the past few years.

But most college officials agree that uncertainty about the economy is at least one of the driving forces for new students this semester.

In the Los Rios Community College District, which represents four campuses in the Sacramento metro area, enrollment is up more than 5 percent from last fall. Part of that is due to “the difference between Wall Street and Main Street,” said Mario Rodriguez, the system’s executive vice chancellor: The stock market has performed well over the past few years, even as job seekers see fewer opportunities and families struggle with inflation. Enrollment in vocational technical classes increased 10 percent this semester in the district, which equates to nearly 4,000 new students.

These job-ready programs, such as medical assisting, welding and automotive, have always been popular, and some limit enrollment. School officials say waiting lists are growing.

Leaving work, starting school

Carla Gruen, 29, has worked as a medical assistant in San Jose for 10 years. At one point, she was making about $50,000 a year, but it wasn’t enough.

“Over the last year, eggs have started to get super expensive,” she said. “That’s when I started paying more attention to gas and groceries.” Together with her husband, she began planning ways to cut back—less coffee, fewer trips in their truck, less expensive gifts this Christmas. But they also needed a long-term solution.

In July, she quit her job and enrolled in a two-year radiology technology program at Foothill College, in the South Bay Area, that will teach her how to read X-rays, CT scans and MRIs. Her salary will double, maybe even triple, once she’s done with the new credentials.

A pay raise can be “life-changing,” she said. Right now, Gruhn said her family is small, just her husband and her dog, so their expenses are lower, but they know it will get more expensive as they want to buy a house and have children. “We try to plan for the future as well.”

At Foothill College, enrollment is increasing, especially in science and technology classes, said Simon Pennington, the school’s associate vice president for community affairs. Many of these students are looking to complete prerequisites to begin careers in the health care sector, he added. Healthcare is one of the largest and fastest growing job sectors in the state, according to a recent report from the Public Policy Institute of California.

In Merced, hours away from major urban centers like the Bay Area, Sacramento or Los Angeles, students are clamoring for electronics classes, where the fall waitlist has nearly doubled from three years ago. Demand has also grown for classes in criminal justice and mechanized agriculture, according to James Leonard, a spokesman for the school.

“When the economy turns bad, enrollment skyrockets,” said Dee Sigismund, Merced College’s vice president for learning, though she wasn’t sure the recession would have the same impact as it did 15 years ago. Looking ahead during the pandemic, Merced College, like most community colleges, now offers many of its classes online, which can make it easier for students to juggle school with full- or part-time work. She added that Merced is also experimenting with new, more flexible types of instruction, such as competency-based educationwhich allows students to pass a class by showing that they already have the required skills.

Colleges call for more funding

California community colleges receive most of their funding based on the number of students they serve. When enrollment declined during the pandemic, colleges were slated to lose funding, but the governor and Legislature granted the community college system a special exemption that delayed many funding cuts.

Now that enrollment is opening, many colleges say they have the opposite problem — they’re not getting enough money to service the influx of new students. That’s largely because the state funding formula is based on the college’s average enrollment over the past three years, so the sudden changes this year have been slow to take effect. Rodriguez said his Sacramento district serves about 5,000 more students than the system is funded to support, accounting for about $20 million in lost revenue.

This summer, the state agreed to send more money to California community colleges to account for recent enrollment growth, but Ferguson said that’s not enough to fully fund all new students.

Last month, presidents and chancellors from 10 different community colleges or community college districts, including representatives from Los Angeles and Sacramento, sent a letter to the governor, asking him to change state policy and allow colleges to receive more funding in next year’s budget. Although he did not sign the letter, Ferguson said the state chancellor’s office is asking the governor for similar changes.

In 2008, colleges had to cut services or classes even as new students poured in because the state did not provide proportional funding for each new enrollment.

Next year, California is expected to face $18 billion budget deficitaccording to a November analysis by the Legislative Analyst’s Office. In comparison, the state had a deficit of approx 24 billion dollars in 2008, worth about $36 billion in today’s dollars.

In Chula Vista, Southwestern College President Mark Sanchez said his district is already saying no to potential college classes in high schools and prisons because of a lack of state funding.

His district had more than 32,000 students in the last academic year — the highest enrollment rate since the Great Recession.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.