The Complexities of Online Education and Fall 2020 Enrollment Data

Like many observers, I’ve been trying to digest more information from the Mother of All Updates from the National Student Clearinghouse (NSC), which reported undergraduate enrollment dropping 4.0%, community college dropping 9.4%, graduate increasing 2.7%, and enrollment from first-time beginning students down 16.1%. The headline stories have mostly focused on the likely long-term impacts on community colleges and their target student population, but there are more lessons to be learned.

Migration to Lower-Cost Options Overwhelmed by Enrollment Avoidance

On the surface, this argument made a lot of sense. If students are forced into a remote teaching, or even hybrid, scenario without significant campus experiences, then many will seek out roughly equivalent online programs in lower-cost community colleges until mostly on-campus life can continue. While this migration may be happening in some cases, the much bigger trend comes from students just not enrolling. By far community colleges are taking the biggest enrollment hits despite their very low costs.

Inside Higher Ed’s Dean Dad called this situation out when the first NSC fall report came out, importantly describing the difference between low tuition and affordability.

It’s almost as if the popular narrative is missing the point completely. [snip]

My guess is that the gap has much more to do with family income and wealth levels than with tuition levels. An already-polarized economy became even more so with the pandemic. Those who were able to sit out the recession via graduate school, did; among folks who otherwise might have gone to community college, more pressing survival needs came first.

In other words, when we talk about tuition, we aren’t really talking about tuition. We’re really talking about affordability, which is much more a function of underlying income and wealth than it is of price. We’re talking about students’ ability to support themselves (or be supported by their families) while pursuing certificates or degrees. In the context of economic desperation, even free tuition can be too much, because of the opportunity cost of subsistence-level work forgone.

With the new data, the situation is even more extreme than what Dean Dad described – a 9.4% drop in community college enrollment and a 23% drop in first-time student enrollment in that sector. At the same time, across the board graduate programs are seeing increased enrollment as are more expensive for-profit undergraduate programs. The situation is obviously more complex than the pandemic leading a significant shift to lower-tuition community colleges.

Students Who Had No Desire for Online Programs Want On-Campus Options

What many people tend to forget this year is that despite the rapid shift to remote for almost all college students in the spring, these same students have different expectations and needs in terms of learning modality. While the number of students who want mostly or fully online programs has been growing for decades, the majority still want fully on-campus options, perhaps augmented with a few online courses here and there. What the NSC data along with anecdotal observations show us is that emergency remote teaching may have saved us in the spring and summer, but it is not a viable long-term strategy. Especially for disadvantaged students, as described in Inside Higher Ed’s coverage of NSC.

“We are hearing from several sources that community college students are looking for in-person learning,” [president and CEO of the American Association of Community Colleges Walter] Bumphus said in an email. “The disruption of in-person learning to remote was absolutely necessary but the enrollment figures show us that it is not a good long-term solution for many students.

There is evidence of this same demand in other sectors, including Marjorie Blen, a junior at San Francisco State University, from EdSurge’s Pandemic Campus Diaries.

I think about that every day. Being in class, I could have sat next to someone, met someone. That person could have become my friend for life. And I don’t get that. And the first year, and I’m paying this insane amount of tuition, but I don’t get . . . it’s just not the thing. No matter that virtually the university tries to make you feel like a college student, a university student. It is not. The social component is so important, important in order to have that college experience. Nothing can replace it.

And I have nothing against online learning. I’ve done online learning before the pandemic. I took hybrid classes. But we still need that social component of being in the institution physically, with the teachers, and the students, and the groups, and the events. Everything that makes college worth going and paying for.

And there are clearly winners and losers in terms of institutions and fall enrollment – many campuses that have reopened (with significant health protocols) are having significant enrollment increases. Much of this observation is anecdotal, but there does seem to be an underlying theme confirming that the market demand for on-campus education has not gone away. And this demand is starting to show up in the data.

There have been many disappointments and cases of mismanagement, for example at UNC Chapel Hill, leading to students being sent home or into quarantine. These situations are real and show the peril of reopening, but at the same time the data seem to show a strong, pent-up demand for on-campus education options.

The False Dilemma of Primarily Online Institutions

At the same time, the NSC data show a strong increase in enrollments for what they term Primarily Online Institutions, or POI. As a note, NSC uses IPEDS data from Fall 2018 and defines POI as schools where 90% or more of their total enrollments come from exclusively online students. Think of the national for-profit chains (e.g. Walden University, University of Phoenix, Capella University), the big private nonprofits (e.g. Western Governors University, Southern New Hampshire University, Excelsior College but not Liberty University), and some publics (e.g. Penn State World Campus, CSU Global Campus, University of Maryland Global Campus, Purdue Global).

For these schools, their enrollments are up across the board, albeit much more for part-time than full-time students.

Arizona State University is an interesting case, as they are not a POI, but they do have a large online presence they have cultivated for two decades. ASU’s enrollment is up for both online and on-campus options.

Sun Devils aren’t letting the pandemic slow down their academic journey — Arizona State University is welcoming its largest student community in university history, with multiple learning modalities giving students options whatever their circumstance.

Despite historic challenges facing colleges and universities across the country because of COVID-19, ASU’s fall semester will kick off with more than 127,500 new and returning students, a 7.6% increase over fall 2019. Of that total, over 53,000 are fully online students, ASU Online’s largest fall enrollment to date.

In fact, ASU probably gives insight into how to avoid thinking of a false dilemma of whether students want on-campus or online. That school is an example of one that offers both on-campus and has a long-term commitment and investment in online programs. And it appears that ASU has been hit with the decreasing enrollment of first-year students, which they describe in terms of their long-term growth.

The incoming first-year campus immersion class is the second-largest ever at 12,800, behind only last year’s in size. Of that group, 46.9% are from underrepresented populations.

Putting It Together

The story is emerging, and we still have much to learn over the coming months, but there are some themes to consider.

For those students who never wanted an online program, the fall enrollment data are starting to show many of them voting with their feet and choosing schools that offer on-campus options with meaningful campus life. But for those students who either prefer online or that accept that they must continue with remote teaching, there appears to be a preference to work with schools that already know how to run online courses and programs. Schools with real experience teaching online, that have developed online support structures and improved services over a matter of years, not months.

Stephanie Moore provides a more pithy version of this blog post on Twitter.

I have some half-baked thoughts (and not enough coffee), but I think there’s important nuance in here that we are likely to miss. In short, rushed online – or emergency remote teaching – isn’t great and shouldn’t continue, but quality online IS working, and places doing that already have remained stable.or seen growth. In other words, students are moving towards the quality, not necessarily the modality. I think the data tells that story?

Anecdotally, we made this decision. I knew this year would end up online, so our son – a first-year – went to a community college that we knew was experienced with online, then he’ll transfer to a public 4-year. We just felt it would be a more stable experience. It’s all online except for one lab, and we feel it was absolutely the right decision. Glad he’s not quarantined in a dorm.

Originally tweeted by dr stephanie moore (@steph_moore) on October 16, 2020.