Update (3/25/21): After adding 50% more data and correcting for a process error, the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center revised its estimated fall enrollment decline for the high school class of 2020 to 6.8%.
A new report from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center quantifies the disastrous impact the COVID-19 pandemic has had so far on the high school class of
2020’s postsecondary enrollment. According to the report, postsecondary enrollment overall declined 21.7%, while students from high poverty schools saw a 32.6% decline compared to last year.
Students from high poverty high schools (where 75% or more of students are eligible for the free or reduced price lunch program) saw the steepest decline, but high schools in categories across the board all saw enrollment declines:
Low income high schools (where 50% or more of students are free or reduced price eligible): -29.2%
Higher income high schools (where less than 50% of students are free or reduced price eligible): -16.9%
Low poverty high schools (where less than 25% of students are free or reduced price eligible): -16.4%
High minority high schools (where 40% or more of students are Black or Hispanic): -26.4%
Low minority high schools (where less than 40% of students are Black or Hispanic): -18%
Rural high schools: -18.1%
Suburban high schools: -19.8%
Urban high schools: -25.1%
The report notes, “The immediate college enrollment rate decreased to 27.7 percent from 35.3 percent last fall, a decline ten times steeper than last fall’s drop (from 35.9% in 2018 to 35.3% in 2019).”
Although few observers of enrollment trends, including the NCAN staff, expected positive news about postsecondary enrollments in light of FAFSA completion declines of 4.2% from the class of 2020, it was hard to imagine the news being quite this bad. Given
these enrollment declines, fears about a “lost class” of high school seniors now seem justified. It will take a Herculean effort of policy and practice to reconnect students from this class with a postsecondary pathway.
The best thing policy can do for the class of 2020 is to ensure that the rollout and distribution of the forthcoming COVID-19 vaccines go smoothly. A return to normalcy will give practitioners and institutions the breathing room to reach out to these
students and make a return to the classroom seem both plausible and worthwhile.
NCAN member programs and others engaged in students’ postsecondary experiences would do well to keep some, or any, kind of contact with students from the class of 2020 so that students know where to turn when they need support. That means keeping email
addresses, phone numbers, and other communications avenues updated so that as opportunities and milestones to get back on a postsecondary pathway arise, students can hear about them.
Additionally, there need to be more postsecondary on-ramps for the class of 2020 (and for the class of 2021 given where its FAFSA completion is at this point in the cycle). That might look like increasing support for national service programs like AmeriCorps
and strengthening the college and career readiness programming they provide.
Finally, concerns about postsecondary pathways aren’t isolated to these high school classes. Postsecondary affordability was a concern before and during the pandemic, and it will surely be here afterward. NCAN continues to believe that doubling the Pell Grant and restoring its purchasing power is an investment Congress can make in individuals that will reverberate benefits through families, communities, states, and the nation overall. Doubling the Pell would send a tremendous message to students that they
can afford college, and because Pell is an existing program that can be easily scaled, it could go into effect quickly if signed into law.
The report is the latest in the NSCRC’s High School Benchmarks series. In light of the pandemic, the NSCRC – with funding in part from NCAN – accelerated its release by about a year to provide insight into students’ outcomes. To get to these
results, researchers at the NSCRC first asked high schools to submit their class of 2020 graduation lists this fall. The report includes data on those high school students’ postsecondary enrollments by Sept. 18, 2020. Then, because not all of the
college level data are available earlier in the fall, the NSCRC matched at the high school x institution level.
From the report:
Analyses are based on a fixed panel of both high schools and colleges (the same subset of high schools and the same subset of colleges that reported data to the Clearinghouse within the same early time frame across all three comparison years, 2018-2020).
As of September 18, 53% of colleges that participate in the Clearinghouse had submitted enrollment data. As of the same date, 2,324 high schools had submitted graduate data. Only those high school graduates that enrolled in one of these colleges are
counted in the results. Thus, the results should be considered highly preliminary, representing roughly half of the colleges reporting, for graduates from roughly one-tenth of the nation’s high schools.
In other words, consider high school A, which sent students from the classes of 2018 and 2019 to colleges B, C, and D. If by Sept. 18, 2020 only enrollment data from colleges B and D was available, then only high school A students from the classes of
2018, 2019, and 2020 who matriculated to colleges B and D are included in this analysis. Students from the classes of 2018 and 2019 who went to college C are excluded from the analysis but will be considered in a future report.
The report concludes, “Based on preliminary data, there is little evidence that COVID-19 impacted high school graduation rates, but emerging evidence that the pandemic has impacted immediate college enrollments considerably, especially for low-income
students, and particularly their access to public colleges.” It adds to the NSCRC’s drumbeat of publications this fall that has kept practitioners, policymakers, and the public apprised of postsecondary enrollments this semester.
NCAN is as grateful for the research team’s efforts as we are perturbed by their findings and resolved to continue assisting students and closing equity gaps.
To accompany the report, we hosted a webinar to explore both the NSC’s enrollment research and NCAN’s findings on best practices to aid students who are most at risk of missing their postsecondary pathway. You can watch the recording of "Is the High School
to College Pipeline Broken? The Data Says Yes" below.
Panelists:
Kim Cook, Executive Director, National College Attainment Network
Dr. Douglas Shapiro, Executive Director, National Student Clearinghouse Research Center
Stacy Lightfoot, Vice President, Public Education Foundation-Chattanooga
Catalina Cifuentes, Executive Director, Riverside County Office of Education
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