“By doubling the program, we could get back to that,” she said. The proposed legislation would bring the tuition aid closer to where it was in the 1980s, she added. Right now Pell Grants are not covering as much of the cost of tuition as they did in the 1980s, said Victoria Jackson, the assistant director of higher education policy at Ed Trust, a nonprofit advocacy organization. President Joe Biden announced recently the proposed “Build Back Better” Act will increase the funding of the Pell Grant program by up to $550 per student. Substantial changes are also likely coming to the college funding system itself. “So really, students I think are choosing how they want to receive their education going forward,” Parham said. Going forward, these institutions will need to continue to provide students with the resources and support they need to finish their degrees - including childcare, transportation, broadband internet access and help for other issues that impede their ability to stay in school. Universities and community colleges in particular, Parham said, have done a great job focusing on the needs of the students who have stayed. “And certainly with the pandemic, that has not been the case." “We used to be able to say that during times of economic downturn, community college enrollments would trend upward with people trying to re-skill, people re-thinking their work lives and retraining and maybe taking time during a bad economy to go back to school,” she said. Parham said these students may not have the emotional or physical bandwidth to deal with “working and parenting and doing everything online.” Some may not want to take courses online. The shift to online and hybrid classes during the pandemic has made completing school harder for the average community college student who is likely older, working or a parent. Two-year colleges in particular are having even more trouble retaining and enrolling students, Parham added.Ĭommunity college students might find it harder to come back. “So the problem does not cease to exist when COVID ceases to exist, it’s going to be a couple of years before we can right the ship,” Parham said. Many public colleges receive funding based on their student population of students - less enrolled students means less allocated funding. And in turn, the nation needs a skilled workforce to remain competitive in the global workforce.Ī drop in enrollment is problematic for other reasons as well, she said. “Seeing those enrollment numbers dropped means that we're looking at a number of Americans that are no longer on the on-ramp to the middle class, which is concerning,” she said.Īmericans need more opportunities for advanced education and to build skills that help them enter the workforce, Parham said. This is concerning news, Parham explained. Young people and service industry workers put out of work during lockdown didn’t flock to secondary education. Universities and colleges still are experiencing low numbers as the pandemic continues. Enrollment typically rises during economically hard times, and peters back down as the economy improves, she said. While enrollment has been trending downward since high enrollment during the 2008 recession, it has shot down during the pandemic, according to NPR. The study, which used data representing 8.4 million undergrad and graduate students from about half of the nation’s colleges, found that there are currently 240,000 fewer undergraduate students enrolled this fall than in fall 2020, according to NPR.įlorida’s numbers are on track with what the rest of the country’s institutions are experiencing, said Martha Parham, senior vice president for public relations for the American Association of Community Colleges. That compares with a 3.2% drop in undergraduate enrollment nationally. Study shows how far college enrollment has fallenĪ recent study released by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center found that so far this fall, undergraduate enrollment is down in Florida by 2.6% since last year. For the second year in a row, undergraduate enrollment is down at the nations’ colleges and universities, including in Florida. What’s more important, decisions - those in the Build Back Better Act and otherwise - will actually impact current and prospective students.Īnd the makeup of the country’s college system is changing too. has been hard to follow with its constant changes. The conversation about college funding in Washington D.C. Now, huge changes are on the cusp for the nation’s colleges and universities. Classes stopped and started, many colleges shifted to online courses, loan repayment paused and some schools shuttered altogether. A lot has changed about secondary education since the pandemic began nearly two years ago.
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