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EdSource
Even if California college campuses reopen, will most students still come?
Worried about finances and health, some high school seniors are deciding to stay closer to home for college
Larry Gordon
April 28, 2020
Colette Han has decided to enroll at UC Irvine rather than accept an out-of-state scholarship offer.
Colette Han, a high school senior from the Los Angeles area, originally
thought of attending Wesleyan College, a small liberal arts school in
Georgia. That institution had awarded her a substantial merit
scholarship that added appeal.
But then the coronavirus pandemic hit.
Besides shaking innumerable lives and industries, the health crisis
also has altered or at least confused college futures for many of the
estimated 300,000 California high school seniors like Han who were
expected to begin higher education in the fall. In turn, that has
created immense uncertainty for colleges about fall enrollments.
Some students are doing the unthinkable — turning down their first-choice schools.
Han dropped the Georgia school because she was unable to tour it during
the lockdown and feared getting stranded across the country if another
outbreak occurs. Accepted at several other schools, she has decided to
attend UC Irvine as a business information management major and hopes
to live on campus, which is about 45 miles from her Monterey Park home.
“It was a difficult decision, but safety always comes first,” said the
senior at Mark Keppel High School in Alhambra. “If I am alone in a
college out-of-state, it would be really hard to come back home. And if
I got sick in another state, it would be really hard for my family to
take care of me.”
Decisions like hers are adding to what California college officials say
is unprecedented uncertainty about how many new freshmen will turn up
in the fall and how many current students will return. Some of that
depends on whether regular face-to-face classes will resume, a big
unknown as the May 1 deadline approaches at many schools for students
to send commitment deposits.
For every Californian who elects to stay home, officials worry there
are many others from other states and countries who also elect not to
leave home or are unable to obtain visas to come to the United States.
Family unemployment may drive students from private colleges and the
University of California to less expensive options, like community
colleges and the California State University, or to skip school for a
year altogether.
“The enrollment question is probably the biggest question for the fall.
And it’s probably the thing that gives me the most anxiety,” Lande
Ajose, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s senior policy advisor for higher education,
told EdSource. This time of year, campuses usually start planning for
fall classes and dorm space. Now many colleges, public and private,
“are not able to count on the assumptions they usually use,” she said.
In case things don’t improve, some colleges are modeling scenarios with
10% to 20% enrollment drops, even after dipping deeply into their
waiting list of applicants. At the same time, more students will be
seeking boosts in financial aid. Those nightmarish projections suggest
significant declines in tuition and other revenues, leading to layoffs
and cuts in programs and services for the 2.3 million students at
California’s public colleges and universities and the 470,000 or so at
its private campuses.
“Of course, kids are scared and don’t know what to expect,” said
Yesenia Aguilar, director of the College Bound counseling program at
the Boys and Girls Clubs of the Los Angeles Harbor, which is helping
students obtain additional scholarship grants. The overall goal is to
calm them down, keep them on track to their “dream schools” if
possible, and to ensure they do not abandon higher education in a
panicky moment. “Most kids are resilient and they are not giving up,”
Aguilar said.
Besides many colleges giving students an extra month, to June 1, to
send in enrollment deposits, some are offering enrollment deferrals
until the spring. Officials always worry about so-called summer melt —
students who put down deposits yet don’t attend in the fall — but are
very concerned that those numbers could be much higher this year.
Colleges were rattled by a recent national survey by the marketing and
research firm SimpsonScarborough that showed that 8% of high school
seniors who had planned to attend a four-year college are now unlikely
to do so and that 14% are considering not going to their first-choice
school because of the pandemic.
UCLA’s vice provost for enrollment management, Youlanda
Copeland-Morgan, said that deposits from California students actually
are somewhat higher than normal this year, but that some international
students — who this year comprised 11% of UCLA’s 31,500 undergraduates
— are not likely to return to UCLA or UC’s other eight undergraduate
campuses because of visa problems related to the crisis.
UCLA is likely to dip more deeply into its admissions waiting list and
offer spots to more Californians and students from elsewhere in the
United States, she said. “This is a very difficult and unprecedented
year in terms of our ability to predict what’s going to happen,” she
said. UCLA admitted only about 13% of its 109,000 freshmen applicants
so far this year, she said. Traditionally, a very high percentage of
those admitted wind up attending — 43% last year.
UCLA is seeing a significant increase in appeals from future freshmen
who say they need more financial aid than they did a few months ago.
The university will use private donations, the portion of federal
stimulus funds earmarked for students and campus money to offer
additional aid where possible, Copeland-Morgan said. “Our focus is on
eliminating the barriers for students and families,” she said.
Similar uncertainty may last into next spring throughout the 23-campus
CSU system, according to Edward Sullivan, assistant vice chancellor for
institutional research and analyses. With so much in flux, Sullivan
said he did not know whether CSU will enroll close to the 66,000
freshmen it had this school year. The proximity of CSU campuses to
their homes may appeal to California freshmen even as international
students are lost.
Some CSU campuses will seek to supplement fall enrollment with a large
group of new freshmen and transfer students in the spring, when the
health situation is likely to be more settled, Sullivan said. Some
students already enrolled at CSU may skip the fall semester if fully
online classes continue and then return in the spring, he added. Others
have become so comfortable with distance learning that they will not
want to interrupt their education, no matter what happens, he said.
“What we have learned through this is that we have to be flexible and
we have to recognize that things are different than they have been
historically,” Sullivan said. For example, CSU and UC are allowing
students to submit pass/fail grades in their required high school
courses, something impossible last year.
Concerns about family resources and safety may be the most important
factors, particularly for students very dependent on financial aid.
Jasmine Ramirez is an example of a student who probably will bolster
the CSU enrollment at the expense of UC. A senior at Long Beach
Polytechnic High School, she was attracted to UC Merced, but a campus
tour was canceled and she felt she could not “commit to a place where I
haven’t felt it out in person.” And she was worried about being 300
miles away from home if another virus outbreak occurs.
“It would be difficult for me, not just financially, but also
emotionally. I would feel I have to be with my family,” said Ramirez,
who is active in the Californians for Justice organization and wants to
major in sociology. So now she is choosing between CSU campuses in Long
Beach and Dominguez Hills, both within easy commuting range.
Jacqueline Islas, a senior at the Port of Los Angeles High School in
San Pedro, was set on Sacramento State, which she figured would be
perfect for state government internships in her criminal justice major.
Then her mother, a housekeeper who is the family’s main source of
income, lost a lot of work in the emergency and finances suddenly
tightened. Even with college grants promised, Islas became anxious
about being far from home during a health crisis and less able to help
her mother.
So now, with the counseling help of the College Bound program at the
Boys and Girls Clubs of the Los Angeles Harbor, she is choosing between
CSU campuses closer to home, in Northridge and Dominguez Hills, where
her older brother attends. “I’m a little disappointed because there was
so much potential for me to grow in Sacramento,” she said. “I know it’s
nobody’s fault, but now I have to go to a different route, to someplace
more local and more affordable.” But no matter what, she said she will
maintain her plan to start at a four-year university.
Chico State, a Northern California university that mainly enrolls
students from other areas, is working hard to keep admitted students on
track to enroll, according to admissions director Kim Guanzon. With its
“Choose Chico” on-campus events canceled earlier this month, the school
is holding virtual meetings, sending emails and making phone calls,
trying to reach its goal of enrolling 2,700 freshmen in the fall.
The campus admitted more applicants than usual because “we wanted to
hedge our bets a little bit,” Guanzon said. Chico State extended its
deposit deadline by a month until June 1 and is reviewing financial aid
appeals.
Calling this “an unprecedented time,” Guanzon said the campus is “doing
the best we can to serve students and help them work through their
decision-making process.” She said the school wants to keep the door
open to students who may stay close to home for the fall and then
realize they want to try Chico again later.
Education experts predict that California’s community colleges are
likely to see an enrollment rise from two sources: students who decide
not to start at more expensive four-year schools and people who have
lost jobs and want retraining.
“When there is a downturn and people are out of work, what they do is
come to the community college because the costs are low and the value
high and we’re particularly aimed at where the jobs are,” said Bill
Scroggins, president of Mount San Antonio College, in Walnut, 25 miles
east of downtown Los Angeles.
With increased unemployment among retail and hotel workers and others,
he said he expects more demand for vocational instruction in home
healthcare, biotechnology, cybersecurity and other fields that will
need graduates during the pandemic.
If the crisis continues into the fall, community colleges’ challenge
will be to meet that demand while maintaining social distancing orders
and offering remote learning options, he said, “It’ll be even more
important in an environment where family income has taken a hit,” he
added.
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