Page 34 - BusinessWest December 8, 2021

Indeed, if one were to chart the numbers from the past 15 years or so, she explained, there would be a bell curve, or something approximating
it, with the numbers slowly rising until they hit their peak just after the Great Recession and then beginning a gradual tumble after that.
“When I came in in 2017, we had already seen seven consecutive years of declining enrollment — this is certainly a long-term trend,” she said, adding that she believes there is some artificiality in comparing today’s numbers to the high-water marks of a decade or so ago. “If you take out the effect of the recession, both the ramp-up and the decline afterwards, it doesn’t look as extreme and bumpy.”
But ‘gradual’ turned into something much more pronounced during the pandemic, said those we spoke with, noting that enrollment is off 20% or more from a few years ago, and for a host of reasons.
The declines have become the most pressing topic — after ever-changing COVID protocols — at the regular meetings of the state’s 15 commu- nity-college presidents, said Cook, adding that, collectively, the schools are looking for answers, a path forward, and perhaps an understanding of what ‘normal’ will look like in the short and long term.
The answers won’t come easily because COVID has created a situation without precedent, and the current trends, as noted earlier, defy historical patterns, he explained, adding that the overarch- ing question now is “where are the people who would be our students? What are they doing?”
And at the moment, many of them are still try- ing to simply cope with the pandemic.
“They’re still trying to figure out childcare in
many cases,” he went on. “Or they may be recon- sidering what their own career process might be. And there’s a lot of people who are standing pat and taking stock of what’s important.”
Cook said there has been growth in some numbers, especially those involving students of color and especially the Hispanic population, and there has been growth in some individual programs, such as health science, which the school didn’t have four years ago.
But numbers are down in many areas, includ- ing nursing — at least from a retention stand- point — at a time when demand for people in that profession has perhaps never been greater. It’s another sign that these are certainly not nor- mal times.
Royal agreed. “When we have a typical reces- sion, people don’t like the fact that they can’t find jobs or that they’re laid off,” she noted. “But they know that they have to retool, they go back to college, so that they can be prepared for when the jobs come back and the wages start to go up. Now, people are stuck.
“When you have such a global event as COVID-19 has been for our world, then it has put a lot of people in this state of ‘I don’t even know what a couple of months is going to look like — I might not even know what next week is going to look like. How can I think about going to college and starting a future when I’m not even sure what we’re here for anymore, what my purpose is, and what I want to do?’ All of this is causing people to stay still.”
And it’s prompting those running community colleges to do what they can to get them mov- ing again, understanding this may be difficult given those factors that Royal described and fresh
Michelle Coach says there is general optimism that enrollment numbers at ACC and elsewhere in Connecticut will start to move higher, especially with the many incentives being offered.
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