COVID goes to college, driving students away, part two

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Covid goes to college, Driving students away, part two

New data reveals significant enrollment declines among first-year students of color

by ALYSON CLARY | Nov. 24, 2020

As we previously reported, first-time college enrollment took a big hit this fall due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. At the time of our last report, the biggest unanswered question was whether BIPOC students, already underrepresented in the halls of higher education, were disproportionately represented among these declines. New data answers that question with a resounding “yes.”  

Among first-time beginning students overall, Indigenous and Latino students experienced particularly significant declines in enrollment (-23.2% and -19.9%, respectively). They also saw the sharpest departures from the previous year’s trend. First-year, Latino student enrollment in fall 2019 increased 1.3% from 2018, while Indigenous enrollment among first-year students in fall 2019 experienced a relatively modest decline of 3.6% from the prior year. The 18.7% decline among Black first-year students is also notably higher than the 13% decline among all students.

The appearance of these considerable trend shifts aligns with the outsized impact of COVID-19 on communities of color. The most recent update of our Color of Coronavirus project—which tracks the virus’s mortality rates by race and ethnicity—reports that, when adjusted for age difference, the mortality rate for Indigenous, Black and Latino Americans is three times as high as the mortality rate for White Americans.

The declines among first-year student enrollment are most pronounced among public four-year institutions and especially community colleges. Overall, first-year enrollment in public two-year institutions dropped by 18.9% this fall, including drops of nearly 30% among Black, Latino and Indigenous students. (You can see the full breakdown of first-year enrollment by race/ethnicity and institution sector here).

Why are these drops in first-time college enrollment cause for alarm? Prior research indicates that enrollment delays translate into much lower completion rates for those students. One of the concerns of the large gaps in first-time beginning student enrollment this fall is that they would compound other educational equity gaps experienced by BIPOC students.

For example, as of 2018, the undergraduate enrollment rate of 18- to 24-year-old Indigenous Americans (19%) was nearly half of what it is for the total U.S. population (41%). Once enrolled, Indigenous students had the lowest six-year graduation rate among all racial and ethnic groups—40.6% of full-time Indigenous students at a four-year institution graduate within six years compared to 62.4% for the total population. And, as of 2019 only 13.6% of Indigenous Americans age 25 to 29 earned at least a bachelor’s degree, far below the number for the total U.S. population (38.7%). Indigenous academics, education advocates and students have recently written about how to address these longstanding institutional and cultural barriers to higher education for their communities.

Latino Americans also face persistent equity gaps in education, although they have made steady progress on closing those gaps over the last two decades. The undergraduate enrollment rate among 18- to 24-year-old Latino Americans has risen from 22% in 2000, to 32% a decade later, to 36% in 2018. Nonetheless, this rate is still below that of the total U.S. population, which remained steady at 41% over the last decade, and below enrollment for White, non-Hispanic Americans (43% in 2010 and 42% in 2018). In 2019, 20.6% of Latino adults age 25 to 29 had earned a bachelor’s degree (up from 9.7% in 2000 and 13.5% in 2010) compared to 44.9% of White, non-Hispanic adults (up from 38.6% in 2010). The recent progress made by Latinos in higher education makes the dramatic enrollment drops this fall particularly disappointing.

The long-term effects of COVID-19 on higher education remain to be seen and may not become clear for several years. But, as in the case of healthcare, we see with higher education that the pandemic can reveal and exacerbate preexisting social inequities. As we move beyond this year and, hopefully, into a period of recovery, we need to remain vigilant that education gaps do not become further entrenched.

-Alyson