Community College Enrollment Crisis? Historical Trends in Community College Enrollment

Abstract

Community college enrollment has been in decline nationally since peaking in 2010. This report will put the recent community college trends into perspective by reviewing community college enrollment from 2001 through 2017, and by examining concurrent trends that are related to community college enrollments. This report will provide the reader with a better understanding of enrollment changes for students with different characteristics (such as age, gender, or race and ethnicity) as well as by enrollment intensity. In addition, community college enrollment trends will be compared to other sectors of higher education. Furthermore, this report will examine enrollment trends in the context of other national, non higher education trends such as unemployment rates and high school graduation rates to better understand the trends we are seeing in community college enrollment.