Pandemic Recovery Efforts in Practice: Community Colleges’ Use of Higher Education Emergency Relief Funds

• In Event: COVID-19 and Community Colleges: Can Timely Research Accelerate Their Recovery and Support Racially Minoritized Students?

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic brought about unprecedented challenges for higher education as a whole, with community colleges and their student populations being profoundly impacted. Traditionally educating underserved groups including students of color, low income students, and first-generation students, community colleges were already experiencing declining enrollments before the pandemic. As the impacts of the pandemic hit in 2020, community college students experienced higher rates of illness and job loss, and enrollments at community colleges dropped further for every major demographic group — whether defined by race/ethnicity, gender, or age — with significant declines among Black, Hispanic, and Native American students (Brock & Diwa, 2021).

In response to impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic, Congress passed a series of legislative acts that injected recovery funds into various aspects of the U.S. economy, including billions of dollars to postsecondary institutions through the Higher Education Emergency Relief (HEER) Fund. Pandemic relief funds include money allocated to both the students attending the colleges and universities, as well as the institutions themselves. Institutions also received other funds based on certain institutional characteristics, such as Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs), Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), and Tribally Controlled Colleges and Universities (TCCUs). While the amount of money each institution received depended primarily on student enrollment levels, to date, there is no clear picture of how community colleges have used federal recovery funds.

In this paper, we analyze data from the U.S. Department of Education’s Education Stabilization Fund (ESF) Transparency Portal and the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) to understand how much pandemic relief funding community colleges were awarded and what percentage of those funds have been spent. We draw from Shaw et al.’s (2023) framework for mapping community college state finance systems to better understand how this pandemic relief funding can shape community college recovery and success. More specifically, the descriptive analyses presented in this paper seek to illuminate award and spending patterns by institutional and student characteristics.

Preliminary analyses reveal that colleges with larger shares of White students received significantly less funds overall but have spent considerably larger portions of those funds. We also find that TCCUs have almost three times as much money leftover as other colleges, and not a single historically Black community college has spent all of their funds. These findings motivate greater exploration of community colleges’ use of recovery funds, particularly among those serving high populations of minority students.

Analyzing the distribution of pandemic relief funding across community colleges, as well as how those funds have been spent, will help shed light on how funding plays a crucial role in both helping community colleges recover from the pandemic and increasing student success (Edgecombe, 2022). These analyses will also build upon the high-level analysis presented in our initial brief on spending of pandemic recovery funds at community colleges (Authors, 2023).This crucial research will inform policymakers, practitioners, and other researchers on funding and spending trends while drawing lessons to inform community college funding efficacy and community college recovery efforts.

Authors

• Tia Jane Monahan, Teachers College, Columbia University

• Hollie Daniels Sarica, Community College Research Center