“Students are not enrolling at the same rate because this pandemic has caught all of us flat-footed,” says @PamEddinger, Bunker Hill Community College’s president. #highered
@DavisJenkCCRC says the coronavirus recession is devastating America’s low-income, Black and Latino college students, while largely sparing middle- and upper-class white and Asian students who can afford the technology and time required to attend classes on Zoom. #highered
“The fact that disproportionate numbers of low-income students and students of color are sitting out this term in the long run is only going to increase the gulf we’re seeing between education haves and have nots,” Jenkins says.
During the Great Recession, more than a million new people enrolled in community colleges. But the current economic downturn is broader and deeper.
“This recession has really decimated the service jobs that community college students rely on to make ends meet while they’re studying,” Jenkins says. “Now they’re being forced to choose between learning for a brighter future and putting bread on the table and paying their rent.”
@TempleUniv sociologist @saragoldrickrab says the steep drop in enrollment has been "devastating, and it was preventable." #highered
“If we put the kind of money into community colleges that we put into highly selective private universities," Goldrick-Rab says, "students would be able to enroll, because community colleges could provide more services.”
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