PJ Tabit
Well, thank you everybody for attending again. I think those were some really excellent and sobering in a lot of ways, insights into the impact of COVID-19 on Arizona state and post-secondary education were generally, I should add that the reason president Crow needed to prerecord the address was that he teaches a class at ASU and he didn’t want to miss it. So I really do appreciate that commitment to education. I think it’s very fitting. So we’ll add to those remarks now with the discussion of perspectives on post-secondary education during, and with the view to the future after the pandemic. Before I introduce the panel, I do want to offer some framing remarks so we can move to the next slide. I do have to say that these are my views and opinions and not necessarily the views of the federal reserve board or the federal reserve system.
PJ Tabit
So we go to the next slide. I’m going to organize my marks into three buckets to touch on the topics of our panelists. So state budgets, college enrollment, and student financial wellbeing. So starting first with state budgets, we can see here state government tax revenues have performed slightly worse during this recession compared to the last recession so far. So the blue line shows this recession tax revenues at the start of the recession, 2020 Q1 on the blue line compared to the start of the last recession in 2007 on the orange line. So we can see tax revenues are slightly below where we were in the last recession. But we go to the next slide. You’ll see that federal government aid has really compensated for that in a lot of ways. You can see a huge increase in total government receipts in Q2 of 2020.
PJ Tabit
And just one number to put that into context was that federal government transfers accounted for about 22% of state and local receipts in 2020 Q2, which is typical, but that increased in 2022 Q2, increase to about 44%, so about double. It’s since come back down. But I think once we have data for the start of this year, we’ll probably see that increase again, due to the American rescue plan. So taking an aggregate, state budgets are actually performing at least no worse than they were during the last recession and in some ways actually much better. So next slide. But a way in which they are dramatically different compared to the last recession is that state government employment and education has fallen dramatically. During the last recession, it actually increased over the course of the recession. In this recession, it’s decreased almost 15%, which is a dramatic decline.
PJ Tabit
Of course, this isn’t a perfect measure given the unique public health circumstances of this recession. Some positions are just not needed as campuses are closed or operating at reduced capacity, but it does mirror what we’re seeing in other areas of state government employment that state governments are clearly taking a pretty cautious budgetary approach during this recession. Next slide.
PJ Tabit
So turning into enrollment, I think enrollment has actually trended better than, than many expected. Overall enrollment declined two and a half percent year over year in fall 2020. It had already been on a downward slope for several years. You can see the 2015 to 2019 average there. But importantly, public two year colleges have been hit especially hard, which is something I know Walter will talk about. And there’s also been, I think, worrying increase in enrollment, in for-profit colleges as well. Next slide. Also, worrying is the sharp decline in enrollment of first year students, 13.1% overall. And it’s unclear, I think, whether these students will ever come back and enroll in postsecondary education. Next slide. There have also been disparate impacts by race. So looking at the census pulse survey data from late last summer, Hispanic and black students were more likely than white non-Hispanic students to say that they had canceled plans altogether to take post-secondary classes in the fall.
PJ Tabit
Next slide. There also impacts disparate impacts by income. So low income students, as you can see were much more likely than higher income students say that they’d cancel plans to take post-secondary classes in the fall. And this statistic really stood out to me as well. You can see on this chart, the highest rates of people saying that canceled plans were in the mid to high thirties. But if you just look at snap recipients, 43% of snap recipients, so that they had canceled plans to take classes in the fall, which leads us on the next slide into a conversation about the state of student finances. Overall, student financial wellbeing is about at the same level that it had been pre-pandemic. So about 72% of respondents in July of last year, July, 2020, had said that they were living comfortably or doing okay.
PJ Tabit
And that’s about what it was pre-pandemic in 2019. But on the next slide, you’ll see that still an alarming number, about 16% of individuals in households with post-secondary students indicated that they sometimes or often did not have enough to eat as of February of this year. So those are just some of the themes that our speakers will touch on today. And we’ll dive into these topics with more detail with our panel. We’ll have Jeremy present first, followed by Walter and then Sara. But first we have another poll question for you. You can answer it in that multimedia viewer in the chat, and while we wait for those results to come in… Oh, I should say that the question is, rate the state of higher education today, 10 being functioning smoothly, one being not functioning at all. And we’ll take a look at those numbers after I introduce our excellent panel.
PJ Tabit
So Sara Goldrick-Rab is Professor of Sociology and Medicine at Temple University and President and founder of the Hope Center for College Community and Justice in Philadelphia. Sara’s innovative research on college students, basic needs sparked the national real college movement and legislation to address food and housing and security. Sara’s book, Paying the Price, College Costs, Financial Aid, and The Betrayal of The American Dream was featured on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah and awarded the $100,000 Brewer Meyer prize, which she donated to student emergency aid.
PJ Tabit
Dr. Walter G. Bumphus is President and CEO of the American Association of Community Colleges with a career in Higher Education spanning over 40 years. He has been a professor in the Community College Leadership Program and chair of the Department of Educational Administration at the University of Texas at Austin. President of the State Community College system in Louisiana, and a CEO of two community colleges, one in Texas and the other in Louisiana. He has also served in the corporate world as president of Voyager Expanded Learning for four years.
PJ Tabit
And then finally, Jeremy Anderson is the President of the Education Commission of the States, a national education policy organization that serves as a partner to state policy makers. In his role, Anderson works with all state educational leaders from governors to chief state school officers from both political parties to provide unbiased information, personalized support and opportunities for collaboration. Jeremy’s passion for education runs deep. He was raised by two amazing teachers in Kansas, and his wife is an early learning teacher in Colorado, where they currently reside with their three children.
PJ Tabit
So just a reminder, if you have questions, which I encourage you to have, please submit those in the Slido section that we’ve been using a lot in the multimedia viewer. And we’ll get to those during the Q&A. If you don’t already have Slido activated, just click the link there. And our poll results, show that on a scale of one to 10, you all rate the State Of Higher Education as a 5.6. So I think that’s really interesting. And since we are big on data and experimentation here at the fed, there will be a post-test, of course. So we’ll see how these presentations change your opinion on that. So with that, Jeremy, I will turn it over to you.
Jeremy Anderson
That’s great. Thanks so much. And it’s great to be here with all of you. I want to spend the next 10 to 12 minutes or so, and I’m going to try to lay out how states have responded with resiliency in the face of this pandemic, but it hasn’t been simple for what they’re doing. And so what I want to start out with real quick is taking a look at what we do at the Education Commission Of The States and how that impacts works. If we want to go to the next slide, we view ourselves as the essential indispensable member of any team addressing education policy. We were actually founded over 50 years ago when the civil rights act passed. Governors were afraid of that act, not for the civil rights’ act part, but that bill was the first federal bill that actually took on education policy. Before the civil rights’ act, education was truly a state issue only.
Jeremy Anderson
Next slide. One of the things that we do is we review every single piece of legislation in every single state. We review every governor’s state of the state address, and we put them all in a database. So when our commissioners who are usually the governor, the chief state school officer, the State Higher Ed exec, the Chair of House Ed, the Chair Of Senate Ed, and those leaders in the state, when they call us with a question, we usually don’t know exactly what their state has to have as far as policies, but we do know what the 49 other states are already doing on that policy issue. And so we truly believe in the power of learning from experience because we know that informed policy makers are going to help make better education policy across the country. Next. A lot of the work that we do is around research and reports, and you can find a lot of those on our website at ecs.org, and I’m going to provide some links at the end.
Jeremy Anderson
We also do a lot on council work that we do with our commissioners across the country. What I want to talk about today though, is really focusing on some of the research that we’ve been doing and it’s linked to one of the reports that we have. And so over the next 10 to 12 minutes, I want to talk about the impact the pandemic has had to us. I also want to highlight that while we track state policies, we do a lot with the federal government and a lot on federal policies. Our focus is on state policies, but the federal policies play a big role on those. Next. So to talk about what I want to go through, I want to use the metaphor of this three wheeled car. This car is one of many odd three wheeled car experiments that came out of post-World War II. Odd as it is designed, this car can actually drive really well until it needs to turn. External impacts like turns, potholes, other cars on the road can be catastrophic.
Jeremy Anderson
A quick turn of a three wheeled car like this usually puts the car on its side. And while the car was designed to be light enough to lift back up again, falling on its side, usually leads to the driver being stuck inside. So what does this have to do with post-secondary finance? Well, a lot actually. Traditionally, post-secondary institutions rely on three main revenue sources, state appropriations, tuition revenue, and state and federal financial aid programs. And it’s really no different in higher ed finance that external pressures can quickly upset this fragile balance. Economic recessions often lead to decreases in state appropriations and increased reliance on tuition revenue. At the same time, student demand for financial aid programs increase as political pressures also are there to preserve funding. These challenges compel leaders to work hard to rebalance as best they can.
Jeremy Anderson
And I know as you’ve talked about last week and Dr. Crow even talked about, the impacts of this pandemic have brought on revenues, significant problems for post-secondary education. In my time with you, I want to focus a little bit on how states are actually responding to pick this car back up, and I’m going to use three different sources of information that ECS pulls together every day to inform my remarks. One is a report that just came out a couple of weeks ago, where we reviewed all 42 of the governor’s state of the state addresses. The second is, the introduce bills in the current state legislative sessions that our office reviews every single morning. And the third is the analysis from a series of briefs that we had commissioned on ensuring equitable student transitions in the midst of this pandemic. All of this data is publicly available on our website, and we encourage you to use it in your own analysis or let us know how we can help you if you have questions around how states are responding.
Jeremy Anderson
So by and large, we find that states are doing three main things to shore at post-secondary education in the states. One, is focusing on workforce development functions of higher education. The second is allocating federal relief to both institutions and to students. And the third is focusing on student transitions from high school to post-secondary. So let me give a brief example of each of these.
Jeremy Anderson
Next. For higher education as workforce development, there’s a lot of access to skills and training that are a key component of the state’s recovery from this pandemic. State leaders are working and are seeking ways to leverage higher education institutions in efforts to train and retrain workers. For example, in Iowa, through the future ready Iowa program, many Iowans have access to career aligned post-secondary programs. This utilizes a combination of state, federal and private dollars that cover the direct tuition cost of the program. In her state of the state address in January, Governor, Kim Reynolds highlighted continuing the work of this program and increasing the number of Iowans with education beyond high school during this pandemic. In Indiana, in his state of the state address, Governor, Holcomb highlighted the workforce ready, and employer grant programs, which connects students to post-secondary opportunities in high demand fields across the state.
Jeremy Anderson
The governor also committed $40 million to workforce development programs in his speech. And lastly, Michigan. As the pandemic intensified in Michigan, Governor, Whitmer created the Michigan reconnect program, which was policies that are connecting essential workers to training for opportunities at absolutely no tuition cost. The program provides last dollar grants to students, age 25 and older, to attend their in-district community college for an associate’s degree or Appell eligible certificate program. And all three of these are state examples of higher education focusing on workforce to try to move out of the pandemic in the recession.
Jeremy Anderson
Next slide. When it comes to the federal relief, there’s a lot, both in the first, the second, and now the third, a bill that has come out of Congress. So as Congress has allocated that relief to students and institutions, states have also used those federal dollars to support post-secondary education. The three investments from the feds have been critical investments that have supported expansion of distance learning and have shored up a lot of state financial aid programs. As examples, Hawaii. Governor Ige directed over 31 million from the Cares Act to be invested in computers and internet connectivity, along with $61 million for personal protective equipment for K12 and post-secondary schools and institutions. In Alaska, the University of Alaska is using a good portion of the governor’s education, emergency relief fund to grow an existing online dual enrollment program.
Jeremy Anderson
The expansion of this dual enrollment program will allow students from all districts in Alaska to access college level courses and receive both college and high school credit. And lastly, Connecticut. Incoming and continuing post-secondary students are going to be facing additional financial barriers to attend college due to the pandemic and the economic recession. Connecticut already had an existing need-based scholarship program, but they have invested a large amount of their governor’s education emergency relief dollars to fill more of that fund than they had in the past.
Jeremy Anderson
Next slide. Lastly, I want to talk about the focus on transitions from high school. As Congress has allocated relief to students and institutions, so too, have states used federal dollars to support a lot of post-secondary issues. At the state level when we’re talking about high school and what the transition is to that post-secondary, there are some really interesting examples. Kansas, Colorado, and Washington are three states that have actually been focused on fostering competency-based learning to ensure credit accumulation and ultimately, graduation.
Jeremy Anderson
All three of these states have spent a lot of time over the last couple of years, transitioning to a competency-based learning model that’s available to students, and they’re seeing a lot of successful outcomes through it, through the pandemic.
Jeremy Anderson
Next slide. In Louisiana… Oh, actually go back one. Sorry. In Louisiana, Texas, and Illinois, there has been a big push on FASFA completion. While it’s something that many college going seniors do, it’s not something that’s required. Louisiana is the first state to require FASFA completion as a component of your high school graduation requirement. Texas and Illinois have now passed legislation that’s being implemented that would make FASFA completion a requirement to graduate high school. And this is not just a trend in a couple of states. So far, this legislative session, we have seen 11 other states that are hearing legislation to also require FASFA completion as part of your high school graduation requirement. In Louisiana, the first state to do this, we saw a significant increase in the number of students who enrolled for post-secondary classes after high school, because they had already figured out that there were FASFA options for them and financial aid that could make it assisting.
Jeremy Anderson
Lastly, Nevada and New Jersey are two states that are adjusting their state financial aid eligibility, as you may or may not have known, my wife and I certainly knew because we have a high school senior, it was really hard to take the ACT or the SAT during this pandemic. And I can tell you that in a lot of states, your scores are related to state financial aid eligibility. Nevada and New Jersey are two states that have already taken initiative to adjust their state financial aid eligibility, to respond to the testing being eliminated in some states, and to having a large number of students, usually students of lower income or rural students who are unable to take any of those assessments. And so what they’re looking at is, what are other ways that we could look at GPA courses taken or where the student is actually looking to go to college, to look at what the state financial aid eligibility might be for them.
Jeremy Anderson
So next slide. So the last slide I have for you is really to look at some of the links that we have for some of this research. And I’d urge you to take a look on our website at ecs.org, around first, the governor’s top education priorities in 2021, it’s available when you go to our website and type in Governor State of the State. The second is to look on the left hand side of our website at ecs.org, where we have a state education policy tracking database. You type in the issue that you’re looking for information on, and it will pull up a map of the US and show you, which states have the largest number of bills on that issue that they’re currently considering.
Jeremy Anderson
And the last is a paper that I talked about that we worked on at the beginning of the pandemic for the first four months with a lot of states. And it’s really an eight page series on equitable transitions during the COVID-19 pandemic, and what are some of the policies that states are grappling with because of the changes that COVID-19 has brought. That paper can be found on our website also by just typing COVID-19 into the search bar. So I know we’ve got a lot of discussions still to go, but with that, I’ll turn it back over to you, PJ for Walter to start his remarks.
PJ Tabit
Well, thank you, Jeremy. And I’ll turn, pass it directly to Walter.
Walter G. Bumphus
Thanks, PJ. I appreciate it. PJ, I’m going to ask that you, if you don’t mind put the next slide up.
Walter G. Bumphus
Colleagues, it’s great to be with you this afternoon and have a chance to contribute to this very important conversation. I’d like to first talk about community colleges and what I consider to be the three pillars of community colleges. Michael did a great job, Michael Crow earlier talking about these new wave of colleges and universities, and certainly community colleges fit right in there. Over the past 100 years, and we were a little over a hundred years old. And in fact, our association celebrated its hundredth year anniversary last March. And with the pandemic, we had to eventually cancel our annual conference, which was a real downer for everyone. But we started off as access institutions, and we did that very well. In fact, most folks would agree that of all the sectors of higher education community colleges have maybe done this better and more efficiently than all of them.
Walter G. Bumphus
We moved next into the era of what I call student success and completion because of although we were admitting everyone and trying to provide ample opportunities for each student that came through our doors, we didn’t have as many students graduating and completing as we would’ve liked. And so we took that criticism very seriously, and over the last 10 or 12 years, our rates have gone up considerably. Over the last four or five years, we’ve pivoted towards issues of equity within our institutions. And that’s been perhaps the top priority of most community colleges around the country wanting to make sure that we’re not only taking all students in, but we were graduating and having them complete hopefully at an equal rate, and we’re doing that much better today. Too.
Walter G. Bumphus
The next slide, please, AJ. I wanted to give you a picture of what our nation’s community colleges look like if you look at them over a map. We’ve got 1,044 separate institutions separately accredited, and they exist in every state in the union, and I’d like to say also in every congressional district in the US. And that’s always a good thing and sometimes a bad thing. Hopefully that those colleges are doing well.
Walter G. Bumphus
Next slide, please, AJ. The total head count that was most recently an audited head count across the country was 11.8 million students that have totally served across those 1044 campuses. As you can see five million students on the credit side, 6.8 million students in non-credit workforce and continuing education courses. By attendance, we’ve got 4.4 million or 64% that are attending full-time. And another 2.4 million that are going part-time.
Walter G. Bumphus
PJ, if you do the next slide, please, I appreciate it. The impacts of the pandemic were many on our colleges. All of our education, we were greatly impacted. But for the most part, we were maybe impacted a little bit more significantly because of the students we serve.
Walter G. Bumphus
When I talk about those 11.8 million students, we also are serving more first generation students, more low income students and more students of color collectively than the other systems of higher education. And like most of America, when you had that cover pulled off of a lot of aspects of our community, it wasn’t a pleasant sight. And what you’ve seen reflected in that is the fact that of all the sectors of higher education, when you start to look at the students that did not return, we had the greatest amount of students that dropped out and did not return for the fall and then for the spring semester, and I’ll talk about that a little bit more. But we rapidly moved courses from face-to-face to virtual. March of ’20, we had about 9.9% of our students attending virtually. And as you know, we had to make a rapid transition to virtual courses.
Walter G. Bumphus
And now we’re about 90% virtual with the exception of some career technical education courses. With that, we had to also provide a lot of training for our faculty to deliver this virtual instruction and a whole lot of ways that we could do some wrap around and other services to support those students. And I’m sure Sara will talk about many of those aspects a little bit later as well. One of the greatest limitations we found was broadband limitation and access to hardware and software for the most adverse students. And this is where if there was a shining moment for our community colleges over the last 12 months is the creativity, the innovation and the resilience of our colleges and our students, because we had examples of colleges that were holding classes in parking lots, at stop lights, any place they could get broadband access for their students and came up with really creative ways to make sure many of those students had some technology to do their research and their coursework. Student support services.
Walter G. Bumphus
They have students experiencing mental health issues became somewhat of an issue. Food and housing insecurity were only exacerbated by this pandemic and needs for academic and counseling support were greater than ever.
Walter G. Bumphus
Next slide, please, PJ. According to the national student clearinghouse, we had a 9.5% drop in enrollment in the fall of ’20 from fall of ’19. And that figure was pretty similar for the spring of ’21. 18.9% of the drop were among freshmen and 30% among freshmen who were either black, Hispanic, or native American. And one of the areas as you start to disaggregate the data, unfortunately was in the black male category and we can’t afford to lose this particular group of students no matter who they are. And it’s really becoming a matter of concern for a lot of us in this sector. CCCSE, The Center for Community College Student Engagement conducted a survey that found the following. More than one third of black students said they lack access to a reliable computer compared with 23% of Hispanic students and 14% of white students. Nearly half of black students said they had to share a computer with other family members along with 36% of Hispanic students and 23% of white students.
Walter G. Bumphus
I’d love if you allow me to dive this in just a minute and add just a piece that we picked up from a group of students that we had a chance to visit with, and we’re starting to visit and interview more students. But a lot of the students talked to us about the fact that they did not want to have a camera in their home. They felt very insecure about that. And growing up as one of 10 kids in the household, I can’t even imagine personally what that would’ve been like for me, would’ve been very embarrassing and that’s what our students are telling us today that they’re sometimes embarrassed and do not want to go back to that mode of learning. They’re very eager to get back in-person. And I think most of them are saying to us that they think they’ll do a lot better in that in-person environment. Nearly one third of black and Hispanic students lack access to reliable internet service along with nearly one quarter of white students.
Walter G. Bumphus
Next slide, please, PJ. The enrollment declines… And I’ve said a little bit about this already. Access to broadband and technology. And I’ve had an opportunity thus far to meet with the Biden transition team and members of his education team probably four or five times. And I think they’re probably starting to refer to me as Walter broadband Bumphus, because that’s all I talk about when I’m asked about some of the challenges of our colleges, because it’s so significant. And we’re finding, it’s not just in the rural areas. We got many of our colleges in urban areas that are having limited access to broadband. And I’m advised by my university colleagues that is just not a community college issue, it is a four year college issue as well. Childcare services have been sporadic at best. Family responsibilities of caring for elderly or infirm individuals, financial challenges, having to take on additional jobs if they can get to their job all. And then food and housing insecurity, and I’m sure you’ll hear a bit about that in a few minutes as well.
Walter G. Bumphus
Next slide, PJ. Most importantly, and I talked about equity being the key issue of the day amongst our college leaders and our association. Black and Hispanic Americans are experiencing our racial tech gap, which could threaten their future ability to gain meaningful employment and grow wealth in a digitized economy. Black and Hispanic communities at 10 years behind the white community for the last 20 years, could eventually mean large numbers of black and Hispanic American workers could be disqualified or under-prepared for 86% of the jobs in the US by 25.
Walter G. Bumphus
Next slide, PJ, and I believe this is maybe the last one. The past versus a new normal. We often hear folks talking about getting back to normal. And my comment about that is, I’m not as concerned about getting back to normal as I am concerned about getting back to a better normal. We have to agree that many folks found the old normal not that good in some cases. So my goal is to hopefully get, as we deal with community colleges back to a better normal. We’ve heard about the big build back better. We totally want to be aligned with that philosophy and we want to make sure that most of the things that we’re able to impact are certainly going to be coming back to at least normal and hopefully much better for most citizens.
Walter G. Bumphus
Online course delivery provides flexibility to students, comfortable with learning through this modality allows students to schedule courses in a matter that fits with their other responsibility. And also in normal times, there are still opportunities for students to engage face-to-face, which promotes connectedness. In the pandemic, students do not have the choice for hybrid learning. Students are unprepared or uncomfortable with virtual learning for those adult learnings and other segments of our higher education community that are not comfortable with college in general. And one more time or less you’ll start calling me Walter broadband. Lack of broadband for real long time, learning when children are also engaged with online learning during the day. I think I got one more slide, PJ, if not, I’m going to say that’s my story and I’m going to stick to it. I think that is my story and I’m going to stick to it. Thank you very much, PJ. And I stand ready to answer any questions that anyone might ask about community colleges and the students we serve.
PJ Tabit
Well, thank you, Walter. And appreciate those remarks. There are questions starting to roll in. So we’ll go to Sara next, but just want to remind everybody who keeps submitting those questions and we’ll get to them right after Sara’s presentation. So Sara, it’s all yours.
Sara Godrick–Rab
Great. Thank you so much, PJ. And it’s always an honor to follow Walter and glad to be here with all of you. Today I’m going to be speaking from some brand new data this morning, the Hope Center For College Community and Justice released a brand new report, that to our knowledge, it is the largest study to date on how college students are faring during the pandemic. Before I share with you some of the data and information, I want to tell you a tiny bit about the Hope Center in case you’re not familiar with our work. We are an action research center based in the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University, which as you probably know, is Philadelphia’s only public institution serving students with four-year degrees. We are working on redefining what it means to be a student-ready college. And we lead a national movement called the Real College Movement, which centers students basic needs as central academic concerns.
Sara Godrick–Rab
We believe that students are humans first and that Maslow comes before bloom. And that therefore, if we are to help students get their degrees and help this nation recover from its incredible trying year going on year and a half now, we have to really attend to the very basics. So with the next slide, I’ll go ahead and tell you a little about some of the latest data that we collected. For the last six years, every fall, we have fielded a survey around the country. The first year it was 10 community colleges. And now as you can see, years later, and in the midst of the pandemic, last fall, we’d reached 202 colleges and universities around the country, including 130 community colleges and including 14 HBCUs. Critically, this survey is completely voluntary. No institution has to do it. We do it because the federal government and state governments have failed for decades to ask any questions of college students about their most basic needs.
Sara Godrick–Rab
Without that information, it’s hard to guide both institutional policy and practice. Now, we sent the survey out of those 202 colleges starting in September of last fall. A time when, as you all heard, enrollment was down. It was down among some of the most vulnerable groups in some of the most minoritized communities. At a time when FAFSA completion was also down and the job market was in terrible shape. That’s a really important moment. It’s a time when some of the students at most risk of basic needs and security are simply no longer enrolled. They have foregone college or stepped out entirely. Nonetheless, these 202 institutions sent our survey, which is an electronic survey out to more than two million individuals. These people were enrolled in bachelor’s degree programs, associate degree programs, certificate programs, non-degree programs, as long as they were 18 years old and somehow connected to one of these institutions.
Sara Godrick–Rab
The survey went their way. As you all can imagine, not everyone was able to access and complete the survey. As Walter said, broadband access is not great. But the truth is even in what we used to call normal times, students who sleep in their cars, students who live in homeless shelters, students who don’t have enough to eat, they are far less likely to open access and complete an electronic survey. The good news is that almost 200,000 of them did complete the survey. It’s a response rate of 11%. Interestingly, it’s one of the highest response rates we’ve gotten to date. It’s consistent with a lot of electronic surveys.
Sara Godrick–Rab
That said, I want to suggest that all the numbers we’re about to look at together are probably underestimates. They’re probably underestimates for at least two reasons. One, they do not capture the influence of basic needs and security on students not enrolled in college. And two students who answer our surveys tend to be more advantaged than those who do not. These numbers, as you will see, will exceed the numbers suggested by PJ because his numbers come from household surveys, college students in part because they face a great deal of housing insecurity do not and are not captured very well in household surveys. Go ahead to the next slide.
Sara Godrick–Rab
So the first thing that we learned is really about the immediate impact of the pandemic on individuals. You can see that 7% of those nearly 200,000 people had themselves contracted COVID-19. In addition, 41% of these students had a close friend or family member who was sick with COVID-19, and 13% of these students lost a loved one. There were enormous racial disparities in these numbers. As you can imagine, given the disparities in COVID19’s impact in the general population. Thing I want to highlight here is that one of the biggest challenges that higher education will be grappling with this fall is the extent to which it is not fully prepared to offer trauma informed care to a deeply traumatized student body. Next slide.
Sara Godrick–Rab
Now, we assess food insecurity using the USDA, standard validated measure. It’s the 18 item. We use an assessment of housing insecurity that comes from the survey of income and program participation. And we use a measure of homelessness aligned with the federal McKinney-Vento act. As you can see from this slide, we estimate that 58%, nearly three in five of the students who responded to the surveys had experienced at least one of those challenges. Food insecurity was measured over the last 30 days and housing insecurity and homelessness over the prior year. Typically, we see somewhat higher rates of food insecurity than we do in this survey. The rates of housing insecurity and homelessness appear to be fairly consistent with past estimates. Again though, we think that students at the most risk were no longer enrolled by the time our survey rolled around.
Sara Godrick–Rab
In addition, it is very common for the community colleges, for many of the reasons that Walter outlined to see higher levels of basic needs and security compared to four-year institutions. This year, for the first time we saw that gap in food insecurity, but we did not see that gap when it came to housing issues. Both four year and two-year students dealt with housing challenges. We suspect that this is because four-year institutions were more reliant on residential models that were disrupted due to the pandemic.
Sara Godrick–Rab
Next slide. There are many, many disparities outlined in our report with regard to race ethnicity, with regard to whether or not students have children. As I noted earlier, with regard to the type of institution that folks attend. And again, these disparities mirror the general population. There has been for several years now, a very consistent black/white gap, in basic needs insecurity rates.
Sara Godrick–Rab
The only group that face higher rates than African Americans in this country are the native American and indigenous populations. The gaps that we see are very similar to the size and magnitude of the gaps that we see in degree completion rates. And of course, given how many students were trying to go to college this fall while their kids themselves were also home from school. We saw major challenges there. Before the pandemic, more than one in five college students and almost 40% of community college students were enrolled in college while also raising children. A huge number of these folks found themselves without enough money to pay their bills during this pandemic. And again, that’s despite the stimulus checks and other forms of support that went out last year, which I’ll talk about more in a bit. Next slide.
Sara Godrick–Rab
Okay. So let’s think about how these students should have been connected to support and how they might be connected to support going forward. Emergency aid has been one of the longest standing practices to address students’ basic needs in higher ed. But the problem is that the programs have tended to be quite small. So the vast majority of community colleges, for example, before the pandemic said, “We have an emergency aid program.” But when you look at how many students were served, they would tell you, maybe 50, maybe a hundred in a year. During this pandemic, they have seen demand increase so much. It could be 50 to a hundred or more even in a week. We see that among the students who are dealing with food and/or housing insecurity, more than a third, but just barely a third. So 34% of them applied for emergency aid.
Sara Godrick–Rab
32% of them received it. Now that’s the good news. The vast majority of those who applied, received it. The bad news is that two thirds of students who had needs for emergency aid did not apply for emergency aid. And we further found that half of them didn’t know how to. That’s clearly a problem that we can solve, and it’s one that I’ll come back to in a bit. One of the other really important challenges that higher ed faces is in connecting its work to the work of the social safety net for a very long time. All of the talk about college affordability has been about financial aid, and that would lead one to believe that the simplification of a form like the FAFSA might actually really meaningfully make college more affordable.
Sara Godrick–Rab
But unfortunately, need-based financial aid has been covering a smaller and smaller fraction of the cost of attending college, including community college for years. So the unmet need of students attending community college on average, before the pandemic was approaching $9,000 a year. That’s after grants. $9,000 a year, when their typical incomes range between $30,000 to $40,000 a year. It’s untenable. So that means that other income supports including Supplementary Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, are really important. And yet we see that less than one in five of the students who so badly needed this support during the pandemic actually got access to SNAP. Next slide.
Sara Godrick–Rab
One of the core things that we have to consider as we work to improve both institutional practice and policy at both the state and federal level is that persistent racial disparities in access to support are being neglected. Now, it is common for a program on a college campus to be said to be successful if it serves minoritized students. So for example, if a program like the Campus Food Pantry or The Emergency Aid Program sees that black women come and use the program, it tends to be the case that practitioners think it’s working. We raise questions about that. With these data, we compare the extent to which the student has need. Need is higher for minoritized communities. We compare that to their rates of access and use of campus supports. And what we see is that the gaps are biggest precisely for those groups with the lowest rates of completion.
Sara Godrick–Rab
So for example, and Walter referenced this group earlier as particularly challenged in higher ed right now, black males face a 37 percentage point gap in access to campus programs. Their need is high, their utilization is low. We see the same thing happening with the Latinx females. The gaps of course are smaller for more privileged populations. This is true, irrespective of institutional type. Next slide.
Sara Godrick–Rab
Now, when students do get access to support, it helps. Here is some descriptive data on what students said they use the aid for. It reduced stress. It helped them afford educational materials. And 70% of them said it genuinely helped them stay enrolled. Now, these are not causal data. This is not something where we can say, we know for a fact that it did those things, but increasingly evidence is forthcoming suggesting that it is. So a recent randomized control trial done at Compton College, which is a community college in Los Angeles, early on in the pandemic, examined the causal impact of providing a $200 and a $50 emergency grant, which was delivered based on a student’s application and distributed within 24 hours of application on a 24/7 clock, not business hours, immediate help. That support appears to have doubled on time graduation rates last year. It is an early study.
Sara Godrick–Rab
It is a smallish sample of just under 300 people, but it does suggest that if done properly, emergency aid can pay off.
Sara Godrick–Rab
Next slide. So what now? Well, there are clear problems and there are clear avenues for solutions. Higher education is at this moment facing a $63 billion question in the form of the last two stimulus bills that came forward and offered the higher education relief funds two and three. What institutions do now will matter. They have an opportunity to move forward in transformative ways and to move past outdated practices in old assumptions. That might, for example, include turning away from using the FAFSA to decide who gets emergency aid, understanding the barriers in completing the form, understanding the inaccuracies of the assessments that it makes around student need, and understanding that much of the data are outdated. But our institutions are challenged because they have faced austerity for so long.
Sara Godrick–Rab
We also operate in a climate of fear. The department of education’s behaviors last year during the implementation of the Cares Act has led many institutions to be deeply afraid that they will do something wrong when distributing these dollars. And so they are proceeding incredibly slowly. They are using the most restrictive rules, and they are honestly afraid to innovate. These are challenges that need to be tackled. The department of education needs to encourage innovation. It needs to put their minds at ease and assure them title four audits will not apply to these dollars and it needs to provide technical assistance. Next slide, please.
Sara Godrick–Rab
In addition, Congress needs to go further. Now, I first want to note that I was very pleased to see the announcement today from president Biden. I’m glad that he is once again, calling for a $12 billion investment in the nation’s community colleges. This is an important part of infrastructure. And of course, this reminds us of the work we did in 2009 when we tried to pass 12 billion of support to community colleges in the American graduation initiative legislation. While that didn’t pass, then it is now sorely needed and needs to move forward. But Congress has to go further. The social safety net is not working well enough for college students. There were some changes made in the December legislation that were a step in the right direction. But the fact is that when it comes to work requirements, college should count towards the work requirement. College should count. And for decades now, it has not.
Sara Godrick–Rab
And that has had a racially inequitable impact and has disproportionately impacted low income women with children with deleterious effects across generations. It’s also important that federal emergency aid become a permanent part of the higher education landscape and be well established as outside of title four, so that it is not constrained by the rules and administrative burden that come with other programs, including the Pegram. And making community college freeing now will serve as key stimulus. This is one area where I think Michael Crow and I may see the world a bit differently. I believe the community colleges do know what they’re doing, and they are able to move very nimbly. They are able to make investments in the right areas, but they have never been adequately resourced. And making community college free is both about lowering the price point for the students and about a driving investments in increased public support and awareness to the sector where it can do the most good.
Sara Godrick–Rab
So that is where our work is at. The Hope Center is, as I said, in action research center. So we are also at this moment, not only rolling out a federal policy agenda, as well as a state agenda, but we are also offering institutional technical assistance to institutions all over the country. And we will be taking in a capacity building cohort of open and broad access institutions and minority serving institutions starting this fall to try to help support them through this moment so they can emerge stronger and better prepared for the future. Thanks for having me today. And I’m going to pass it back over to PJ.
PJ Tabit
Well, thank you so much, Sara. And we’ll move now into the Q&A, some excellent questions rolling in. So I encourage you all to keep submitting those and we will get to those with our panelists. So Jeremy, why don’t I start with a question for you that ties together something that both Walter and Sara touched on was, which is about the needs of students being much broader than just traditional financial aid for tuition. It includes basic needs, insecurities, access to broadband, access to computers and such. And I know you’re specifically focused on state aid, but is there a conversation among states about broadening their thinking about what it means to provide student financial aid to include those things?
Jeremy Anderson
Yeah, that’s a great question, PJ, we’re actually seeing a lot of states that are working on broadband. Are they working at a pace that is fast enough to meet the needs? Probably not. There’s a lot of states that are using some of their federal funds that they’ve received and a lot who put some state funds in, but it’s still an uphill battle. I think for some of the very important issues that Sara highlighted, we saw a lot of governors who instead of talking about school security, talking about K-12 and post-secondary school security, their conversation switched to mental health and food insecurities in their language. That’s a major change. So a pandemic brought that on. But it’s not just talking about school security and it’s a one line in a speech, there’s a whole paragraph about mental health services and food insecurity that a lot of these governors are talking about and we’re seeing legislation that’s following. I don’t think that means we’re going to get this accomplished and solved quickly, but it’s a good sign as to where we’re seeing some of the policy in the states.
PJ Tabit
And thanks for that answer. And I’ll remind everybody, you can change your view layout by clicking layout in the top right of the screen. Then you can go to a grid so you can see all of us at once instead of just whoever’s speaking at any given time. So Jeremy, you raise an important point around mental health. And Sara, you touched on this as well. And we have a question that sort of gets that more specifically. So in addition to being a researcher, you’re also an instructor. So could you talk about just learning outcomes for students who are dealing with basic needs insecurity, and then on top of that, the COVID traumas that you talked about in your remarks?
Sara Godrick–Rab
Yeah, absolutely. I’ve actually been really glad to be teaching during this pandemic so that I could get a really close-up look at what this is looking like. I guess the number one thing I’d say is that every day is different for students right now. One day they’ll think that everything is okay because they have found a little bit of work. Many of them lost their jobs as restaurants closed, for example. But the next day they’ll get the heating bill, which this winter was a surprising to many and higher, and it’ll throw them into a crisis. I think the most important part of teaching during this pandemic has been learning to be truly flexible, learning how to do good high quality asynchronous instruction and learning how to communicate care in strategic ways to help students feel that they belong, even when they’re not completely okay.
Sara Godrick–Rab
One big problem that happened for a lot of higher education is that for years now, faculty have not been given the professional development they’ve needed to learn these skills. In fact, we’ve increasingly moved to a workforce that is utterly exhausted having to teach as many as five or six or 10 classes at a time just to make ends meet. So they don’t have time for the PD, that as a tenured and full professor, I took a summer and invested in years ago. That represents a major change in different experience.
Sara Godrick–Rab
So we need to take this time to help support the students, but also to support the staff and faculty so that they can build this muscle and be able to teach, for example, students with children on their laps, students who won’t turn their cameras on, who are depressed, students who reach out with a suicidal thought. I had all of the above, and yet I’m really proud to say every one of my students got through the term last semester, despite those challenges, the three that took incompletes are actively working on their incompletes. And I think that the key thread was that I reached out to them as humans. They did not feel like I was trying to pretend like everything was the same and as business is usual because it wasn’t
PJ Tabit
Great. Yeah. Thank you. So I think that leads into a question for Walter that came in from the audience. And just to add some context to us, the question is about how to realistically assess community college success given how different the completion rates for are for community colleges versus a four-year college. So I think Walter, if you could talk about that and then I think it ties into a question for Jeremy as well around state governments, emerging or increasing interests in accountability for institutions. So Walter, do you want to take that first?
Walter G. Bumphus
I’ll try. Absolutely. I’ll try. But before I do that, I want to commend my friend, Sara, for the great work she does. No one else can speak to these issues quite like she can. And I’ll tell you what, experiences that she has, are just spot on. So Sara, thank you for the great work you do. Now to the question, PJ, you’re right. Many people talk about the success. And I tried to spell that out when I about the three pillars of community colleges, access, student success and completion and equity. Only access piece. Well, I said before, we did it very well, but what we take in at most community colleges are the top 99% of any high school class. When I was at the university of Texas at Austin, Myanmar Maya, by the way, we were only taking in the top 7% of any high school class in the state of Texas.
Walter G. Bumphus
We used to jokingly say, the only thing that we could do to a student would be to screw them up if we didn’t do it well with them. On the other side of the coin, you think about community colleges. That’s why people rejoice when you see a student that has graduated, despite the odds and overcome the odds. That’s not an excuse. We have total responsibility for each and every student who comes to us to hopefully make a difference in his or her life. And that’s why we try to do that. I’m not asking to be measured by a different yard stick. All I’m saying is, for us, we are talking about various outcome measures that might take, say, four years for a student who enters a community college to finish their two-year degree. But if they’re working almost full time, if they’re not going to school full time, they just don’t complete two-year courses in two years, it may take four or five six.
Walter G. Bumphus
And we’re finding now is that when community college students are evaluated over a six year period, their graduation rates tend to be about the same, if not better. I think another gauge to look at our students through is to look at those students who transfer to a four-year school. Those students, once they transfer, once they’ve gotten their first two years behind them, they tend to perform better than what they call the native students, despite whatever academic requirements they had to enter the university with.
Walter G. Bumphus
So I think you have to look at it in multiple ways. There are multiple measures to look at the graduate self community colleges. Not making excuse mind you, because so many students, once they get that light turned on, they get that inspiration they need, most importantly, that support. Whenever we can help a student not have to work 50, 60 hours a week and still try to take a full-time load, we’re better served. And I could continue on in that respect, but there are lots of data out there to support the decisions I’m taking on that.
PJ Tabit
So Jeremy, to that question, I actually have explored the really great tool that you have on the website of categorizing state legislation, into different focus areas. And there’s a strong component of institutional accountability that’s been a focus of state legislation. So in those conversations, do you hear the nuanced thinking that Walter’s describing?
Jeremy Anderson
So we do, and we don’t. I think we’ve seen a lot around accountability right now because of the recessions and states having difficulty with their budgets. So they’re starting to say, where are we getting the best outcomes? And are we really serving the right students with some of these policies? Things that don’t always get discussed in good times, but definitely do in bad budget times. We’re seeing a lot of policies around governance. Questions around who should be governing all of higher ed, or where do community colleges and where do some of the four year institutions fit in governance? And I think that’s a good question for states to be having to find what are the best outcomes.
Jeremy Anderson
But we’re seeing a lot of states that are taking some really interesting policies, especially around I think to Walter’s comments around how are we helping some of those first generation students really make it to, and through the first year of college, not to a degree, just getting through the first year, we’ve got a program called Strong Start To Finish with the Gates Foundation and Kresge Foundation and Ascendium. And it’s actually working in like 13 states.
Jeremy Anderson
But one of them is the California Community College system. And the goal there is to say, how do we help first generation students get to and through the first year? And it’s really based on three gateway courses. If we can help the average college student get through an entry level math, an entry level English, and an entry level science course, their chances of getting a degree go up almost sevenfold. And so, really trying to help some of these institutions in the states understand what is the scalable policy that helps you really touch those students at the right time to, as Walter said, give them that lift so that they actually figure out how they can achieve this because there’s so many opportunities out there, but we are… And I think Dr. Crow talked about it. We are not having the successful numbers that we would desire for all of the different individuals that the investments are being made in. And that can be made better if we look at better policies.
PJ Tabit
Well, and that’s a good TF for my next question for Walter. And I promise this isn’t a trick question. So there’s a report on your website titled Community College Enrollment Crisis. And I think it’s interesting because it was published in 2019. And the comment that was made, the insight that was highlighted in that report was that community college enrollment had been falling between 2010 and 2017 in large part due to the growing economy. And now obviously we’re in a position where we have a severe recession and enrollment has fallen even further. Obviously there are some specific acute public health challenges that account for that. But I think my question is, what do you think happens to community college enrollment in the next two or three years as we come out of this pandemic?
Walter G. Bumphus
Great question, PJ, is one I’m getting often now, because unlike most cycles of where we’ve had high unemployment to students tend to go back to school. That just hasn’t happened this time. I do believe with some of the things we’re doing creatively in the workforce space, you’re going to have many more students coming to community colleges, but not necessarily to transfer. I think you’re going to have students coming to us for workforce purposes. One of the best committees I served on in the last few years has been a committee I was on. Last year, the American workforce policy advisory board, where I served with Genni Rometty, from IBM, Tim Cook from Apple, and many others. But they were so positive about the contributions of community colleges to their workforce, to their talent development pool. That’s where I think we’re going to maybe see more of a priority in some community college.
Walter G. Bumphus
We’ll always have a transfer mission. Don’t get me wrong, not complaining about that. But I think we get measured by one yardstick when it’s workforce, we get measured by another, when it’s those students who are coming to us to transfer and many times when we have to tell a student and that’s where the developmental ed courses come in. You’re not going to be here for two years. You’re going to really be for three or four, if you’re working full-time. And that’s the piece where I think the enrollment will continue to go up. I don’t want to get back on that arts again.
Walter G. Bumphus
But I do believe you’ll start to see our enrollment starting to increase, maybe not significantly the next year or two, but I do believe with the resource that we’re getting with the CAS, RISA, and now the rescue plan money, it’s going to allow our colleges and our faculty to be even more creative. I’m doing a 50 state virtual listing tool. We’ve already gotten through 24 states. And I have never been more encouraged than I’ve been after listening to faculty and presidents in 24 states. Now talking about what they’re doing to turn the tide on enrollment, the creative solutions they’re coming up with. And so I’m more optimistic now that I have been in years regarding that crisis that you referred to.
PJ Tabit
That’s great. And we have a couple more minutes. So Sara, I have a question for you that actually came from the audience, asked for your thoughts on the hunger free campus designation and how that may help students in need.
Sara Godrick-Rab
Sure. Yeah. One, strategy that’s being pursued both in terms of state legislation and at the federal level. I think it’s promising. I do want to note that food insecurity is beyond hunger and I want to make sure that food insecurity in all of its forms are addressed because they all have deleterious impacts for students. I also want to make sure that it is not divorced from issues of housing. They very much travel together. And it’s important that we put something together that does not allow a campus to say, “We have addressed food insecurities simply because we have opened to food pantry,” or even simply because we have a swipes program. The truth is, I want to see every one of those institutions get that designation if, and only if, they have actually bridged the social safety net and their higher education policies effectively on their campuses. So that’s an important part.
Sara Godrick-Rab
The stimulus money does create an opportunity for institutions to lean into that work with or without their states. And I hope that they do. To Walter’s point just now there were 34 million people with some college, no degree before the pandemic. That’s a crisis that is also part of the student debt crisis. And frankly, that’s part of a health crisis. And that is part of the crisis affecting children around the country. We need to bridge a lot of systems, not just workforce, but also our public benefit systems in order to help get those people back on track.
Sara Godrick–Rab
But if we do so, colleges and not just community colleges, but all sorts of colleges, will see increasing enrollment that they hope to see. That’s going to be essential though. Otherwise, people can’t afford to stay and they can’t afford to learn.
PJ Tabit
With our remaining minute. I wanted just ask a closing question for each of you, which is we’ve been in this pandemic for a little over a year now, and obviously we’ve learned a lot in the last 12 months. So for each of you, what’s something that has surprised you about either how have institutions responded or state or federal government has responded. And I’ll just go in the order that you are arranged on my screen. So Jeremy, if you want to go first?
Jeremy Anderson
I’m not sure it’s an issue, but I think it’s two words we’ve used a lot. Response versus rebuild. I think a lot of us thought the response to COVID would be through as we got into 2021 and it’s not even close. States are still just responding to COVID and I think that’s going to continue for this entire year. There is a lot of rebuilding that’s going to happen. Totally different policies, totally different investments by states. I don’t think we’re going to see any of that materializing until probably 2022 when legislatures go back in. I say that because I think a lot of people thought we’d have a three to four month response policy and we’re actually going to have probably an 18 month response to this pandemic before we start thinking about where we want to land.
PJ Tabit
And Sara?
Sara Godrick–Rab
Well, I’d say that I’m pleasantly surprised. I have been by congressional action around emergency aid. It’s been really good to see them invest in a more flexible funding stream and to do so outside of title four. We have our ways to go, as I said, on implementation and guidance around that. But both under the last president and under the current one. There have been big investments made and I think that’s good.
PJ Tabit
And Walter.
Walter G. Bumphus
I probably would join Sara in her comment. I’m more than pleasantly surprised at the response for getting in regards to those stimulus packages that I referred to, the three of them. But also I’m very pleased at the interest I’m finding from this administration. I was on a Zoom call this morning with an agency wanting to know how much we would like to see of an investment in the infrastructure bill. And the infrastructure bill was more than bricks and more and more than broadband, but what other things could be done to address some of the challenges we were having with enrollment and so forth. But also I’d be remiss if I didn’t say the optimism I’m finding from my colleagues in community colleges. Not everyone I’d say, but most folks I’m chatting with are not totally distressed, but rather optimistic about what this next year or two will look like.
PJ Tabit
Thank you. Well, that’s all the time we have. So thank you all for presenting and taking those questions and thank you to the attendees for coming. We have a closing poll question for you, which is based on today’s session. How would you rate the state of higher education today? Again, 10 being functioning smoothly and one being not functioning well at all. And we’ll take a look at those results in a moment. So as I noted, this is the second of a four-week series. We’ll be back at 1:00 PM Eastern on April 7th. It’s a week from now. Wesley Whistle, who’s the senior advisor at the New America Foundation will provide a keynote note address on the status of the reauthorization of the higher education act.
PJ Tabit
We’ll then have Ray Boshara from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis to moderate a panel on match savings programs for college and that’ll feature Kate Hoffman, who’s the executive director of Earn To Learn. Eileen Klein, President Emerita of the Arizona board of Regents. Lee Lambert, who’s the chancellor and CEO of Pima Community College. And Glen Hammer, who’s the President CEO of the Texas Association of Business.
PJ Tabit
If you have not already registered for that session, I would like to do so. Just go back to the e-mail, inviting you to this session and follow the prompts from there.
PJ Tabit
So looking at the poll results, it looks like, I think, maybe a slight increase. I think we’re 5.6, maybe 5.5 before, something like that. And now we’re 5.8. So maybe a little bit of the optimism that Walter expressed has filtered down to you all. But I think there’s certainly a lot to be optimistic about and certainly a lot to be concerned about as well. So I think this results certainly reflects that.
PJ Tabit
So thank you again for coming and hope to see you soon.