Kela King had two children by the time she was 17 years old. She dropped out of high school, received her GED, and for 13 years has struggled to complete her college degree as a working mother.

When King, now 35 and a mother of three, failed two classes last year because she was focused on her children’s needs, she wondered if she was ever going to graduate. But with the support of the student parent success program at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee — which helped her navigate her studies while working — she hopes to walk across the stage in December 2026.

“I’m building this legacy,” King said. “Even if I don’t get to where I want to be, you’ll be able to see the legacy just in the building.”

For King and many other student parents, attending college can be a very tough road. Obstacles like financial stress, balancing coursework with family responsibilities and finding affordable, quality child care make it difficult for students raising children. 

Parents make up about and according to , which provides research and resources for pregnant and parenting students. They represent a diverse population, including a significant share of , , and individuals from Student parents face especially steep challenges and are than those without children to leave college before completing their degrees.

These students have unique needs, and a growing body of points to that colleges and universities can take to help them flourish and graduate. Successful practices include: Offering child care on or near campus with financial assistance to cover or subsidize the cost; providing access to food and other basic necessities; building a student parent support center; and creating opportunities for peer community building. 

There’s a key — Child Care Access Means Parents in School (CCAMPIS) — that helps colleges and universities support students like King by subsidizing child care and funding support services for student parents. But the program has come under threat recently. Last year, the federal government abruptly CCAMPIS grants for about a dozen colleges that depend on the funding. 

The future of the program’s funding has been precarious for some time, but in February, after facing potential elimination under the Trump administration for months, Congress approved the final 2026 federal budget, maintaining CCAMPIS funding at , the same as it was in 2025. This brought relief to some higher education institutions, but not for the colleges that saw their grants terminated.

Financial cuts to programs that support student parents will certainly hamper efforts to serve these students — especially through child care — but advocates say there are actions campus leaders can do to help them persist and thrive.

“Child care is huge, but it’s not the only thing that’s necessary for parenting students to be successful,” said Nicole Lynn Lewis, executive director of , a nonprofit that supports student parents in college. “We also want to see, across the institution, real intentionality around supporting these students. And sometimes that’s low hanging fruit at no cost or low cost.” 

For example, if a higher education institution simply shows student parents in its marketing material, it would send a message “that I belong here,” she said.

While more research on outcomes is needed, said Theresa Anderson, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute, some have shown that initiatives such as a student parent resource coordinator, regular peer meetings and monthly stipends help by increasing graduation rates and offering a . Anderson has also found in her that parents who receive a college degree typically earn more than those of similar socioeconomic status without a degree, which suggests the importance of bolstering support for student parents. 

The question for colleges and universities is how to translate research on what helps student parents thrive into reality — and in ways that suit their specific type of institution. About half of student parents attend community colleges, while 20% attend private, for-profit institutions and a combined 29% attend public or private nonprofit institutions, according to by the SPARK Collaborative. They tend to have as high or higher grade point averages than their non-parent peers, but they are also to graduate from college within six years than those peers. 

Changing that dropout rate is one of the goals of Howard Community College in Columbia, Maryland. Over the past four years, it has stepped up its services for student parents. The institution’s progress includes big-ticket items such as reopening its child care facility — which closed during COVID — and starting a that offers scholarships and wraparound services, including case management and academic coaching. Howard has also offered changes resulting in smaller, but still significant benefits, such as priority class registration.

For its efforts, the college last year was awarded a by Generation Hope. The seal, which the organization has given to 22 higher education institutions and nonprofits, recognizes “exemplary, measurable efforts in supporting parenting students.”

Celeste Ampaah, 23, and the mother of a 5-year old, said she first felt unseen on the Howard college campus. “I didn’t even know that there were any other parents on campus, especially people that were my age,” she said. And she wasn’t aware of the resources the college offered. 

She was leery about letting her professors know she had a child, afraid it would seem like she was asking for special privileges or making excuses.

“I just stopped going to class if I had a hardship,” she said. 

But that changed once she connected with Howard’s resources for student parents and became a parent scholar. Now she proudly carries the backpack that proclaims “Student Parent” below the Howard logo and reaches out to other parents. 

“I’m not ashamed anymore,” she said.

Priority class registration is one benefit Ampaah says is an enormous help. “Being able to plan my classes and work around my schedule before everyone else jumps on board feels like a luxury,” she said. 

There is room for improvement, she noted, including displaying resources for parents on the college’s website more prominently, and training faculty and staff to be more aware of student parents on campus and the difficulties they face.

Some of the obstacles that affect student parents, such as transportation costs, also impact many low-income students, so the goal is to connect those students with the services already available, said Maya Mechenbier, a fellow at the Beeck Center for Social Impact and Innovation at Georgetown University who co-authored a recent of the needs of student parents in Maryland. 

In an interview for the study, Mechenbier recalled, “one mother shared that having to walk across campus or use public transportation while quite pregnant was a big barrier for her. Had she known about transportation subsidies sooner, she might have not had to drop out at that time.”

For that reason priority parking for student parents is a welcome benefit, something California Polytechnic State University (CalPoly), a four-year university that is part of the California State University system offers. 

The university has also garnered the FamilyU Seal for its parent-friendly services. Much of the institution’s progress has been led by Tina Cheuk, an associate professor of education, who was a student parent herself when in graduate school at Stanford University.

It was about a decade ago, and she felt completely isolated, Cheuk said. She recalled asking for a quiet place to breastfeed her daughter — a lactation room — and being told it simply wasn’t possible.

She threatened to file a case with the U.S. Office of Civil Rights and ultimately received the space she needed. And that started her on the road to become a student parent advocate at Stanford and later at Cal Poly.

A student parent at Cal Poly won’t run into Cheuk’s problem today, as the university now offers . There is also on-site child care and a coordinator for student parents within the student affairs office. In addition, there are community events for families — and at graduation, children receive some regalia and walk across the stage with their parents.  

Some of these supports are mandated under California state law, which that public colleges and universities give student parents priority registration and provide a “clearly visible” on the institution’s website outlining resources available to such parents, as well as a designated support person.

The law, Cheuk said, “serves as a minimum. But if all can meet that minimum, that is a signal to potential students that there are resources.”

More states and colleges are recognizing that in order to serve student parents, it’s important to about their lived experiences. But one of the sticking points around serving this population, experts say, is simply identifying who they are.

There is no federal mandate to collect such numbers and a tool that many colleges used — a question on the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) form that asked if students had dependents — when the form was simplified for the 2024-25 academic year. 

While the FAFSA number wouldn’t have included international students or those who didn’t apply for financial aid, it was one data point.

“Without such data, it’s difficult to understand the characteristics of those students, which programs they’re in, and where they’re facing roadblocks and barriers,” Anderson said.

Five states — California, Illinois, Minnesota, Oregon and Texas — requiring student parents to be counted. The Urban Institute has awarded grants to 23 higher education institutions, including Cal Poly, through its , as an effort to develop best practices for colleges to identify student parents in their data systems. 

For example, Cheuk said students could be asked if they have dependents when filling out an intake enrollment; California community colleges already do that during their application process. 

Some colleges — even ones that implement best practices — are struggling in the face of rollbacks. UW-Milwaukee has had an on-site child care facility for more than 50 years and a longstanding wraparound and scholarship program aimed at serving student parents, said Rachel Kubczak, the manager of UW-Milwaukee’s who has been working with student parents at the institution for the past decade. She is also King’s advisor.

The child care facility is still operating robustly, but when UW-Milwaukee last year, Kuczak said, many students had to scramble to cover the child-care subsidies they lost through that program or simply reduce their child-care hours, which affected their ability to work and go to classes.

In addition, the university’s wraparound program was supported through one generous grant from 2005 that ended in 2021. That left Kubczak, as the only full-time staff member, struggling to figure out how to serve these students. 

But even without the funding she needs, Kubczak offers crucial types of support — often partnering with other campus centers — such as welcome orientations, coffee and pastry mornings, parenting workshops and assistance in navigating the system.

And she can chalk up some wins, she said, such as getting diaper changing decks in most bathrooms on campus, as well as safe and comfortable lactation rooms. 

There are also success stories, like King’s, Kubczak added. King, who is majoring in social work and minoring in American Sign Language is on track to graduate this year.

“As a teen mom, I’ve been counted out by family members saying I couldn’t do it,” said King. But Kubczak “pushed me and supported me.”

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified Kela King’s job and marital status. She’s currently married and working at a nonprofit.

Key Takeaways

• Initial estimates reported by the NSCRC in the fall report indicated that enrollment of college freshmen had declined by 5% last year, with especially concerning drops at four-year colleges that serve low-income students. The report projected the largest drop in freshman enrollment since 2020. 
• The NSCRC to that report earlier this month, stating that it had been based on a “methodological error” that “caused the mislabeling of certain students as dual enrolled rather than as freshmen,” which skewed the research group’s preliminary enrollment figures.
• The NSCRC’s subsequent research, reported in its recently released , found that freshman enrollment grew by 5.5% in fall 2024 compared to 2023, representing an increase of about 130,000 freshmen. The growth is driven by older first-year students; enrollment of 18-year-old freshmen is still below  pre-pandemic 2019 levels, the NSCRC said.
• Overall college enrollment grew 4.5% in fall 2024 compared to the previous year, a gain of about 817,000 post-secondary students. Total college enrollment is now about 0.4% above 2019’s pre-pandemic levels, with undergraduate enrollment at nearly 16 million students and graduate enrollment at 3.2 million students, the report found.

In his statement about the error, NSCRC Executive Director Doug Shapiro said the Current Term Enrollment Estimates report published in January provides a more comprehensive view of enrollment trends based on data from nearly all higher education institutions and uses different methodologies to determine freshman enrollees. The “Stay Informed” preliminary enrollment report published in October 2024 was based on data from half of the colleges and universities that submit data to the organization. 

“The National Student Clearinghouse Research Center acknowledges the importance and significance of its role in providing accurate and reliable research to the higher education community,” Shapiro said in a statement. He added that the center deeply regrets the error and is conducting a thorough review to discover its source. 

Inside Higher Ed that the error came to light as researchers were preparing the center’s January report and noted the sharp contrast between preliminary estimates and the final numbers, prompting a retroactive review of the October report and the center’s November . 

The research center created the Stay Informed report in the summer of 2020 to provide “early and real-time enrollment information” to meet the needs of the higher education community at the height of the COVID pandemic. It has continued to produce these preliminary reports each fall, followed by final and complete reporting on enrollment each winter in its January reports. 

Because the NSCRC has been the go-to source for statistical data on higher education, shook researchers and higher education leaders and the media outlets that covered the report. The past year has been a challenging one for the higher education sector. Jeremy Cohen, an NSCRC research associate and one of the report’s authors, said that there are a number of forces affecting freshman enrollment, including demographic shifts, the and the of the 2024-25 Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA).

The U.S. Department of Education with the preliminary results as early as October when its financial data showed a 3% increase in students receiving federal aid for 2024-25, with 10% more students on track to receive Pell Grants — figures that didn’t match the enrollment declines NSCRC had reported.

In a statement last week, the Education Department’s former undersecretary James Kvaal said he was “encouraged and relieved” by the revised assessment, which he said was consistent with what officials were seeing on the financial side. 

Though the enrollment figures for fall 2024 now tell a different story, suggesting at least a moderate post-pandemic recovery, the revised figures don’t change the fact that some steep declines still loom for higher education. According to a recent from the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, the number of 18-year-old high school graduates will peak in 2025 at around 3.9 million and are expected to be followed by a 15-year decline, bringing the projected demographic cliff to reality.

Key takeaways from a underscore challenges facing the higher education sector including the economic concerns, practical realities and demographic shifts that have seen a notable decline in the number of freshmen enrolling in undergraduate programs. 

Preliminary undergraduate enrollment figures for fall 2024 show enrollment increases for traditional-aged undergraduate students from all income levels, with gains of 3% over 2023 and growth in all sectors. Both undergraduate and graduate enrollments are increasing across all credential types, with bachelor’s and associate degree enrollment increasing 1.9% and 4.3% respectively, building on gains from fall 2023. The number of students pursuing undergraduate certificate programs has also increased, continuing to build upon these programs’ multiyear advances.

Freshman enrollment is a different story.  

According to the report, which was released in October by the (NSCRC), total freshman enrollment was down 5% last year, reversing the 3.7% gain reported in fall 2023. Public and private nonprofit four-year institutions are seeing the largest decreases, down 8.5% and 6.5% respectively. Freshman enrollment is declining across all neighborhood income levels, with those from middle income neighborhoods seeing the biggest drop — a roughly 5% decline — at public and private four-year institutions. 

The NSCRC began publishing higher education enrollment updates in the summer of 2020 to help policymakers and education leaders understand the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on postsecondary enrollments. The report is updated within the first two months of each fall term to provide timely enrollment statistics, with a report published every January providing final fall term enrollment estimates.

The fall 2024 report was the first to break out data for colleges that serve low-income students, as indicated by the percentage of undergraduate students awarded Pell Grants at the institution. The new measure shows a significant decline in freshman enrollment at four-year colleges that serve lower income students, where these numbers have dropped by more than 10%, while enrollment in community colleges serving these students saw an increase of 1.2%.  

The fall report was also the first to highlight 18-year-old freshmen — the students most likely to have enrolled immediately after high school graduation — as a distinct subgroup. The report revealed that this population’s enrollment is declining across the board.

Freshman Enrollment Headwinds

Jeremy Cohen, an NSCRC research associate and one of the report’s authors, said a number of factors are affecting freshman enrollment numbers. 

“We can’t tell you how much of each headwind is the driving force behind each trend, but we can point to some factors that may be influencing some of the declines,” Cohen said in an interview. “One of the longer-term headwinds has to do with the demographic shifts in the country. We’re not quite to the point where the size of the high school graduating class is declining, but that’s expected to hit after 2025. There are also changes in the race and ethnicity composition of college-going students.” 

According to a published by the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, 2025 will be the year when the metaphorical “demographic cliff” that has been the source of much higher ed consternation becomes a reality. The number of 18-year-old high school graduates will peak in 2025 at around 3.9 million and will be followed by a 15-year decline, according to the report. 

“The other long-term factor affecting freshman enrollments is a cultural questioning about the value of a traditional four-year college degree,” Cohen said. “In this report, we’ve seen that enrollment in bachelor’s degrees for all undergraduates is growing the slowest, followed by associate degree programs, and the largest growth is in undergraduate certificate programs, which tend to be shorter-term, more trade- and vocational-oriented and are perceived to have closer connections to the job market.” 

Enrollment in undergraduate certificate and graduate certificate programs have grown 19.1% and 13% respectively since 2022, compared with 2.9% for bachelor’s programs and 2.7% for master’s programs over that period. 

Preliminary data in the Fall 2024 NSCRC report shows strong growth in mechanic and repair technologies/technician programs at both the undergraduate certificate and associate degree levels. Undergraduate certificate programs in construction trades and engineering technologies are similarly robust. Enrollment in programs focused on health professions and related clinical sciences programs is growing at both the associate and bachelor’s levels, while multi/interdisciplinary studies, engineering and social sciences are seeing gains at the associate degree level.

Another headwind that may have slowed fall 2024 enrollment figures is the rocky rollout of the “simplified” (FAFSA) that prospective students fill out to determine their eligibility for financial aid. 

For the 2024-25 award year the U.S. Department of Education made substantial changes to the form’s need analysis formulas and calculation of Federal Pell Grant awards. Though the aim was for the new FAFSA to be simplified and faster, the rollout was plagued by issues including a delayed release, a math glitch that failed to adjust families’ incomes for inflation, and technical issues with the form itself. Higher education experts, lawmakers and advocates worried might lead to a precipitous drop in enrollments for the 2024-25 school year. 

Cohen said questions remain about what effect the delays and uncertainties about 2024’s FAFSA applications may have had. 

“We can’t tell for certain that this added to the decline in freshmen because there are all these other things going on. But it is a factor on the table,” he said. 

The Demographic Conundrum 

At highly selective institutions, enrollments for 18-year-old freshmen who identify as Black, multiracial and Asian declined by much larger margins than white and Hispanic students in the fall of 2024.

Cohen said the decrease in enrollments among the most selective institutions may be related to the striking down affirmative action programs in college admissions. But that isn’t the entire story, he added. 

The 2024 report saw a continuation of the trend of students declining to report their gender, race or ethnicity, which skews researchers’ ability to pinpoint all the factors at play. Nevertheless, Cohen said that the available data on 18-year-old freshmen at all institutions indicates significant declines in white students’ enrollment compared with that of other races or ethnicities.  

Combining all undergraduate and graduate enrollments, Hispanic, Black, Asian and multiracial students saw strong growth, but enrollment of white students continued to decline. 

“White students are a demographic group that is already declining in the high school population,” he said. “But these declines are certainly at a steeper level than those of the overall population.” Some of the decline in white freshman enrollments could be explained by the increase in students declining to report their race, but that can’t account for all of the decline. 

“Any way you cut it, there’s a large decline in white freshmen that appears to be larger than their decline in the high school graduate population.”

Cohen stresses that the Fall 2024 NSCRC report and the special report on 18-year-old freshmen are preliminary analyses, with updates to be released later this month.

Although a handful of education issues still divide governors along partisan lines, such as whether to establish universal pre-kindergarten programs or allocate public funds for private schooling, governors from both parties want to increase teacher pay and target incentives to shortage areas, expand access to higher education and promote college and career readiness in high school. In some instances, they backed priorities that traditionally have been linked to their political opponents, with Republicans proposing initiatives to address youth mental health and Democrats supporting the expansion of reading reform.  

But governors from both parties gave short shrift to one the most pressing problems facing local school leaders: sharply higher rates of in the wake of the pandemic. Neither Democrats nor Republicans outlined new steps to spur students’ return to school.  

The states’ chief executives concentrated their 2024 education policy priorities in seven areas: child care and early learning, the teaching profession, school choice, curriculum and instruction, student mental health, higher education and workforce development.

Child Care and Early Learning

Early learning and child care were a bipartisan priority, with 17 governors proposing measures to enhance accessibility and affordability for working parents. 

Democratic governors in Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, New Jersey and Michigan championed statewide universal pre-K, while Maura Healey of Massachusetts proposed the strategy for 26 facing social and economic challenges. Kansas Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly proposed the largest single-year investment in the state’s early childhood system, while the governors of Missouri, West Virginia, Nebraska and Hawaii proposed new or expanded child care tax credits. 

The Teaching Profession

Echoing a trend from last year, governors are seeking to strengthen the ranks of public school teaching by increasing compensation, addressing shortages and expanding recruitment — three closely connected strategies. Twenty-one governors have proposed such initiatives.

While both Republicans and Democrats addressed the issue in their speeches, most concrete proposals to raise teacher pay came from Republicans in Southern and Western states, which are less unionized and where salaries tend to be lower. In more-unionized, Democratic-leaning states, proposals were generally more focused on recruiting and retaining educators. 

Democrat Andy Beshear of Kentucky and Republican Jim Justice of West Virginia proposed across-the-board 5% pay raises for teachers in their states. South Carolina Republican Gov. Henry McMaster called for raising the starting salary to $45,000 from $40,000 by 2025 and further raising it to $50,000 by 2026. Iowa Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds urged the legislature to allocate an additional $96 million, to raise starting pay to $50,000 a year — a 50% increase; establish a minimum salary of $62,000 for teachers with at least 12 years’ experience; and allocate $10 million for a merit-based grant program for educators.

Alaska Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy pitched a three-year incentive program that would offer hiring and retention bonuses ranging from $5,000 for teachers in urban areas to $15,000 for those working in rural schools. Washington Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee announced plans to increase paraeducator pay and create incentives for more teachers to serve special-education students. Missouri Republican Gov. Michael Parson proposed an additional $6 million for the state’s teacher Career Ladder Program, a performance-based pay matching initiative — on top of new funds to raise starting teacher salaries to $40,000 statewide. 

Wisconsin Democratic Gov. Tony Evers announced plans to launch a teacher apprenticeship program, and Kentucky’s Education First Plan provides funding for a teacher loan-forgiveness program.

Some governors are also looking for ways to lower regulatory hurdles to teaching. In Nebraska, Republican Jim Pillen proposed lowering “barriers for potential teachers to enter the workforce” by, among other things, allowing licensure reciprocity for teachers from other states. 

School Choice

School choice initiatives, particularly those involving private school options, emerged as one of the few starkly partisan issues in this year’s speeches. While both Democrats and Republicans offered charter school and public school choice initiatives, six Republicans advocated for vouchers and education savings accounts, while two Democrats strongly opposed such measures.

Alabama Republican Gov. Kay Ivey announced legislation that would eventually provide $7,000 for every student to spend on private education, calling it her “No. 1 legislative priority.” Similarly, Tennessee Republican Gov. Bill Lee expressed support for universal private school choice through what he called “education freedom” accounts, as he in November. If they succeed, Alabama and Tennessee will join with universal or near-universal private school choice programs. Georgia Republican Gov. Brian Kemp also pledged to push through private school choice this year.

Democrats, on the other hand, attacked public funding of private schooling. “I will continue to reject vouchers and any attempt to send public education dollars to private schools,” declared Kansas’s Laura Kelly. “Vouchers will crush our rural schools, plain and simple.” In Arizona, where Republican state leaders enacted universal education savings accounts with few limitations on the use of the funding and few reporting mandates, Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs pledged to work for greater accountability, as well as a requirement for students in the program to have attended public schools for at least 100 days before they can use an education savings account. Otherwise, Hobbs said, “the current projected price tag of $1 billion is only the start.”

In a departure from last year’s addresses, several governors pledged new support for public charter schools. Idaho Republican Gov. Brad Little announced plans to introduce legislation “to cut more red tape to support charter schools while providing taxpayers transparency,” as a way of expanding school choice without diverting resources from public schools. Colorado Democratic Gov. Jared Polis pledged to provide charter schools their full share of public education funding. And Oklahoma’s Kevin Stitt, a Republican, proposed moving high-performing charter schools into vacant public school buildings, especially in communities with underperforming district schools.  

Curriculum and Instruction

Governors signed a wave of literacy-reform legislation in 2023 rooted in the science of reading, and the leaders of nine states, both blue and red, have pledged similar initiatives this year. Healey, of Massachusetts, announced Literacy Launch, a $30 million to ensure that districts have high-quality curriculum and teacher training tied to the science of reading. New York’s Hochul called for legislation mandating evidence-based reading instruction and to train 20,000 teachers. 

New Mexico Democrat Michelle Lujan Grisham announced plans for a $30 million statewide literacy institute and a free summer reading program for 10,000 students. And Iowa’s Reynolds proposed requiring education majors to pass a test of reading instruction as a way to hold education schools accountable for teaching the science of reading and ensure graduates’ competence in early literacy instruction for teacher licensure.

Other curricular initiatives were also sprinkled among the governors’ addresses, including a $10 million investment in math education in South Carolina; a proposal by North Dakota Republican Gov.Doug Burgum to require financial literacy instruction; Indiana Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb’s proposal to require computer science for high school graduation; and Pennsylvania Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro’s plan to assemble toolkits on digital literacy and critical thinking to help students discern fact from fiction.

Student Mental Health

Eleven governors on both sides of the aisle addressed student mental health and youth behavioral concerns, supporting both school and community-based approaches. In Idaho, Little proposed a statewide student behavioral health initiative and doubled funding for school advisers. Reynolds proposed a new youth behavioral health facility. And Evers and Hochul pledged increased funding for school-based mental health services. 

Hochul was also among the governors who addressed the impact of social media, pledging to advance legislation to safeguard children’s privacy online and to regulate the algorithms that target them on social media feeds. Lee of Tennessee pledged to mitigate the negative impact of social media on children by enhancing parental involvement, and Connecticut Democratic Gov. Ned Lamont announced plans to send guidance to local school boards regarding smartphone and social media use in schools. 

Higher Education

Governors from across the political spectrum proposed steps to improve college access, starting in high school. The leaders of 17 states announced plans to expand dual high school-college enrollment, lower the cost of associate degrees and increase scholarship opportunities. Michigan Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer proposed making two years of community college tuition-free for all high school graduates. South Dakota Republican Gov. Kristi Noem advocated free tuition for National Guard members at private colleges within the state, building upon last year’s initiative to extend free tuition at state universities. And in South Carolina’s McMaster asked the General Assembly to freeze college tuition for in-state students and increase appropriations to higher-education institutions. 

Some governors are rethinking how their states structure and fund higher education, including two that hope to shift to an outcomes-based model. In Pennsylvania, Shapiro announced a Blueprint for Higher Education that would unite state universities and community colleges under a single governance structure, funded through “a predictable, transparent, outcomes-based funding system.” Oklahoma’s Stitt similarly wants to shift to an outcomes-based model, urging legislators to “stop subsidizing institutions with low enrollment and low graduation rates.” 

Several governors announced investments in evolving and emerging job markets. Arizona’s Hobbs announced plans to expand the state’s medical schools and open new ones, and Democrat Dan McKee of Rhode Island proposed expanding a cybersecurity program into a full-fledged cybersecurity institution. Not surprisingly, governors are looking to higher education to spearhead work on artificial intelligence. New York’s Hochul announced the formation of the Empire AI Consortium, a $400 million research and development network of seven public and private universities. New Jersey Democrat Phil Murphy announced a similar initiative — what he called an . 

Workforce Development 

Fifteen governors from both sides of the aisle argued that college shouldn’t be students’ only postsecondary option and proposed ways to provide alternative pathways after high school. In at least five states, that work begins in high school. Healey wants to increase investments in “innovation pathways” that provide high school students with hands-on, skill-based learning. Virginia Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin told legislators that all high school students should graduate with both a diploma and a credential setting them up for high-paying jobs. And Missouri’s Parson proposed allocating $3 million toward expanding youth apprenticeship programs, alongside a $54 million investment in employer-driven education and training.

Some governors want to see specialized high schools focused on career readiness. Alabama’s Ivey asked the legislature to prioritize funding the Alabama School of Healthcare Sciences, a residential high school designed to address the medical field’s workforce shortage. The school would offer a unique STEM-focused curriculum, along with hands-on clinical training. 

Hobbs wants to double the number of postsecondary apprenticeships in construction and trades such as plumbing, while Shapiro intends to establish a new Career Connect program to link employers with talented youth, creating thousands of internships over the next decade.

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Meghan Gallagher of ����Ӱ�� developed the interactive maps. FutureEd Research Associate Jingnan Sun contributed to the analysis.

“That moment is something you always remember,” says Nicole Lynn Lewis, founder of , a Washington, D.C. nonprofit that supports teen parents in getting a college degree. Lewis got pregnant in high school and clearly remembers the moment those little pink lines on the pregnancy test hit her life like a lightning bolt.

“Particularly for teen parents,” she says, “you remember where you were, the circumstances and how you felt knowing you would be forever in a different category from what you had imagined for your life.”

Not every teen facing those circumstances uses that experience to create a national organization to address the needs of young people in the same situation. Lewis did.

“In that moment, if someone were to have told me I was going to be CEO and a founder of a nonprofit organization, I never would have believed them. As a high school student staring at a positive pregnancy test, I was overwhelmed even by what I might achieve in the near term.

“Would I be able to provide basic needs for this child? Was I going to be able to go to college myself? In the moment, I had no concept of what the future could hold for me.”

Going through college as a young mother, she found every day a 24-hour struggle to stay on top of her studies while paying the rent, putting food on the table and being the best mom she could be.

“When I got to the (William & Mary) graduation stage four years later, it was clear to me that I had made it for a reason,” she says. “I knew that my story was rare, but I didn’t know how rare. It wasn’t until I graduated from college and started looking into the statistics around how many teen moms actually get a college degree that I understood. And I knew that I had been through everything for a reason, that my story could benefit other people.”

Those statistics were daunting in the early 2000s when Lewis graduated, and they remain so now. Fewer than 2 percent of teen mothers earn a college degree before age 30, and more than half of all parenting college students leave school without a degree — but often with mountains of debt they incurred in their attempt to improve their lives.

Lewis began to realize that she might be the right person to launch an organization to turn her story into action. But first, she had some work to do.

“I didn’t have a playbook for starting a nonprofit organization, so I immersed myself in as much information as I could about the nuts and bolts of a nonprofit startup,” she says. “By this time, I had worked for several nonprofits so without doing so consciously, I had given myself a training ground on nonprofit work. I picked the brains of every founder I had met in my professional network, asking them what they wished they had known when they first got started, what lessons they had learned and what advice they had for me as I embarked on this adventure.”

Growing an Organization with Equity at Its Heart

Brick by brick, Lewis built Generation Hope, which works directly with young parents in college, surrounding these scholars with what Lewis knows is needed, based on her own experience. The organization provides mentoring, tuition assistance, a peer community and other wraparound services, as well as an early childhood program, Next Generation Academy, that provides literacy, academic and social-emotional supports that enable the scholars’ children to enter kindergarten ready to thrive.

Beyond providing support to individual families, however, Generation Hope works with higher education professionals, policymakers and practitioners to drive systemic change for the one in five college students today who are parents. Of those, 40 percent feel isolated on campus, which has a direct effect on their college completion rates. Many higher education institutions are not designed for students who are parents and many have an out-of-touch idea of the realities these students face.

“I talk to people every day who work in higher education,” Lewis says. “I share the statistic that one in five undergraduate students are parenting — almost a quarter of all undergraduate students are caring for dependents while going to school every day — and for many of these educators, it’s the first time they’ve heard this. It’s a significant population of our students, but an invisible one that has fallen under the radar of most people working in higher education.”

She adds, “When you think of the average college student, you’re not thinking about them having a little one that they’re caring for every day.”

Recognizing the need for data to help colleges and universities understand that parenting students are a substantial part of their student body, Generation Hope works with the institutions to establish methodologies for collecting the data on their students’ parenting status. Without this information, Lewis says, schools are flying blind to the lived experience and needs of their students.

“What we know is that data leads to investments, it leads to supports, it leads to services, it leads to policy. If we don’t measure this data, it’s easy to say, ‘Well, we don’t need that child care solution. We don’t need to ensure that we have lactation spaces that students and faculty can access. We don’t need policies that ensure that professors are supportive and inclusive of parenting students. So, one of the first things we have to do is make this population visible, and that happens with data.”

Generation Hope’s website offers for educators and advocates to support parenting students and eliminate barriers to opportunity for this population that is often so invisible in higher education.

Racial equity is at the heart of Generation Hope’s work as it champions antiracist strategies and policies aimed at the racial disparities that exist at all levels of American society. One arena where this disparity is particularly glaring is in the uneven representation of Black parents in the student loan debt crisis. Black parents hold more student debt than parents or nonparents in any other racial or ethnic group, Lewis says, borrowing an average of $18,100 for college compared with the $13,500 among all students. More than a third of Black college students are parents, and nearly half of all Black female undergraduates are mothers.

“We know that student parents as a group have higher amounts of debt than other student groups,” she says. “The cost of going to college is higher for this population, factoring in the cost of child care, the cost of living for not just the parent but a family. Many student parents can’t live on campus, so they pay for transportation that on-campus students don’t have to pay for.” A Generation Hope found that 82 percent of its student parents reported annual household incomes below $30,000.

Generation Hope provides each of its scholars with up to $2,400 in tuition assistance for up to six years, with an additional $1,000 available each year for emergencies such as car repair or groceries. It provides students with coaches who can help them understand and take advantage of financial aid and has developed relationships with the financial aid offices at more than 20 higher-education institutions in the Washington, DC, area that enable staff to advocate for Generation Hope’s scholars when the need arises. The organization also assists with child care costs, and covers fees and books for students as needed.

Community Support

Another remarkable way Generation Hope supports its students is by surrounding them with a readymade community that connects them with needed resources, and helps with basic needs such as diapers, school supplies, and gas cards. These Resource Families, which can be actual families or families created by a group of friends, coworkers, or colleagues — meet their scholar families throughout the year with group dinners (childcare provided) to break bread together, talk about parenting challenges, and provide a network of support for whatever the scholars are dealing with.

Now in its 13^th year, Generation Hope has demonstrated the practicality of its philosophy that student parents can make it—and alter both their own and their families’ futures—if they’re given what they need for success. The statistics speak volumes: 61 percent of Generation Hope Scholars earn a degree within 6 years, on par with all U.S. college students; 89 percent are employed full time and/or enrolled in a graduate studies program within six months of graduating; 100 percent of Next Generation Academy children scored “on track” on measures for social-emotional development after two years in the academy. Since its founding, Generation Hope has provided over $1 million in tuition assistance. Its six-year graduation rate for Black students is 52 percent — 8 percent higher than the national average.

The organization has now expanded to New Orleans, the next step in its strategic plan on its way to creating a world in which young parents, student parents and their children have every opportunity to succeed. Lewis said her vision is to create transformation across higher education but also to educate people to see this population differently and to create a mindset change regarding the issues they face.

Lewis points out that despite the barriers and challenges, student parents are highly motivated to earn college degrees and broaden the economic possibilities for their families. Her work has shown that they can do that if they have advocates and champions giving them the emotional and material support they need. Her life, as well as the organization she created, are living proof that it can be done. Her memoir, “,” tells the story. She now holds a bachelor’s, a master’s and an honorary doctorate, and sits on the board of trustees of Trinity Washington University. She is married, and together she and her husband are raising their five children.

It’s a life that could inspire big dreams for other young people staring at those two pink stripes—and a call to action for the rest of us to help them achieve those dreams.

Outcomes were significantly worse for minority groups, according to the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association and the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, which released the findings earlier this week. 

While 40.7% of white students who experienced an abrupt closure completed their studies at other locations, only 25.3% of Black students and 26.4% of Hispanic students did the same. Just 32.9% of American Indian and 36.4% of Asian students also met that goal. 

The findings were based on the records of 143,215 students at 467 institutions across the country, nearly half of which were in the private, for-profit, two-year sector. Nearly 55% were female, 25% were white and 34% were 30 or older at the time. Almost 83% experienced closures at for-profit institutions. 

“Less than half of those students — 47% — ever re-enrolled at another post-secondary institution,” said Doug Shapiro, the Research Center’s executive director, speaking of the students as a whole. “So, their school’s closing effectively closed the doors on the student’s educational dreams.”

Of those who did re-enroll only 36.8% earned a postsecondary credential: More than half left their new school without earning any credential, Shapiro said. 

Roughly 100,000 of the students in the study attended campuses that closed abruptly, leaving them to scramble for transcripts that were often unavailable, making it even more difficult for them to pursue their degrees. 

Researchers say states can play a greater role in preventing abrupt closures by enacting more stringent initial authorization practices for these colleges and by providing oversight in the years that follow, in part by monitoring student complaints and implementing a regular, more rigorous renewal process. 

Rachel Burns, a senior policy analyst with the State Higher Education group, acknowledged that it can be difficult for students to take a more proactive role around the issue. While private for-profit schools have for , ensnaring thousands, including minorities and , into expensive, worthless programs, many of these schools still have appeal. 

“There are already reasons to be skeptical of some of those institutions but sometimes those are the best options for students that need flexible schedules,” Burns noted, adding students would be wise to keep current copies of their transcripts and educate themselves about the transfer process. 

Not only did closures disrupt or end students’ education, but it left them in debt. The federal Department of Education allows for the discharge of federal student loans for eligible students when their schools close, the report states, but not everyone qualifies or successfully completes the process.  

A Government Accountability Office report from 2021, researchers said, shows that of 246,000 who weathered school closures between 2010 and 2020, only 80,000, or 32.5%, had their . These students, the GAO reported, collectively owed $4 billion, with the median debt hovering around $9,500 per student. 

The study found, too, that private for-profit, two- and four-year institutions enroll a disproportionately large number of students of color: in 2018, 12% of all students of color enrolled in postsecondary institutions eligible for federal student aid attended for-profit institutions.

Re-enrollment rates overall were highest among women at 49%, white students  at 62.5%, and traditional college-age students with the youngest, those 18-20, fairing the best at 54%.  

Those who re-enrolled within one to four months were the most likely to earn a credential, coming in at 47.6%:  Those who waited a year or more were the least likely at 18.7%. 

In several ways, the long-term findings on college closures mirror the nearer-term impact of the pandemic when college enrollment plummeted, particularly at community colleges which serve many low-income students of color. 

Nearly 12,000 campuses of institutions of higher education closed during the years examined by the study — often because of loss of accreditation related to financial challenges — and more have been added to the list since then, including Lincoln College of Illinois. 

The 157-year-old school survived a major campus fire in 1912, the Spanish flu of 1918, the Great Depression, World War II, the 2008 global financial crisis, according to its announcement, but it and the impact of a crippling cyberattack.

 The school, many of them first-generation college-goers, shuttered in May. Roughly 44% of the student body was Black. 

Student Jaylah Bolden, who has since transferred to another school, earlier this month that many of her friends were not able to make that leap and now are not enrolled anywhere.

“They lost their faith,” she said. “We didn’t give up on school. School gave up on us.”

Researchers said abrupt closures in the private, for-profit four-year sector had the worst and most profound impact on re-enrollment rates.

This marks the first of three reports. The second, expected in early 2023, will quantify closures’ impact on students by comparing them to those whose schools did not shutter. The last will examine how state policies affect student outcomes, comparing students who experienced closures in states with stringent protections against those attending schools without such safeguards. No release date has been set for the final report.

Why are students of color and those from dropping out at ? 

Early in my career, I taught at one of the most exclusive private K-12 schools in the country. It wasn’t unusual to hear a student talk about a recent trip to Europe or reference private tutors. Most of these students were hardworking kids who were fortunate to have been born into wealth. While many had a certain awareness of their privilege, they were often completely unaware of just how much it afforded them. I wasn’t either, until I went to work at a very different school with a completely different population.

When I started at , a public charter school network in South Central Los Angeles serving mostly low-income students of color, I was immediately struck by the lack of access to the social capital that contributes to success in college and beyond — access to experiences and opportunities that wealthy, upper-middle-class and even middle-class students often take for granted. For example, learning how to network and build a resume from internships and being exposed to different cultures and customs from a travel experience. 

These experiences are no guarantee of success in college and beyond, but even before the pandemic, of the 1.3 million low-income or first-generation college students who enrolled each year graduated and secured a strong first job or entered graduate school. Now, that number is . A from the Journal of College Student Retention found that social capital significantly influences graduation rates, student debt level and loan default rates. Having taught at a school where social capital was omnipresent, followed by one where it barely existed, I was able to see just how crucial social capital is and how it helps develop the soft skills that many researchers suggest are the in college and the workplace. 

In 2015, I had the opportunity to start a network of public charter schools in New Jersey. I founded with the mission to see our scholars to and through college. It was clear that fulfilling our mission would take more than just rigorous academics. It required a school community that would introduce students to experiences and opportunities that would help them develop a cultural fluency that will empower them to thrive anywhere.

I’m proud of the work we are doing at CAPS to fulfill this mission: At our Paterson school, scholars are immersed in robotics competitions and podcast production. In Plainfield, our first senior class worked with college essay tutors to help them craft compelling applications; 100% were accepted. And at CAPS Asbury Park, we’ve partnered with local businesses to offer scholars summer job opportunities such as a management track summer internship at a popular restaurant and leadership roles at the Boys and Girls Club organization. Students also go skiing for six weeks every winter, taking lessons so they can learn a sport they likely wouldn’t experience if not for the school. 

This summer, we teamed up with Princeton, Harvard, Oxford and other elite universities to offer a residential summer school program, giving scholars early access to college-level courses at the world’s leading academic institutions. They learned from tenured professors, explored the campuses and learned that they belong there just as much as any other student. We are also building strong relationships with diverse businesses to develop internships on Wall Street and at top-tier law firms and hospitals.

These activities are foreign to hundreds of thousands of students across the country. Yet these types of opportunities are what build social confidence and a sense of belonging that help students thrive. This is precisely what social capital is all about, and it matters.

We believe that if students from low-income families gain access to the same support and opportunities as their more affluent peers, they will excel. This is reflected not only in , but in the enthusiasm from our scholars as they embrace these opportunities. Schools must make building social capital a priority to close the opportunity gap, provide truly equitable outcomes and ensure long-term success in college and beyond. Students cannot get to and through college without it. 

Some public colleges and universities in metro Atlanta are offering extra help this summer to prep first year students for the fall semester amid concerns that the pandemic left many high school students unprepared for higher education. 

Georgia Gwinnett College is offering expanded orientation sessions to help students adjust to campus life. Kennesaw State University offers a two-week summer program so freshmen complete an economics class before the fall start. 

The pandemic “left an indelible mark,” according to Sonny Perdue, the University System of Georgia’s recently named chancellor. “Many of our students lost ground during the pandemic, and we are seeing the consequences of that in our entering classes,” he told faculty in a May letter. 

Michelle Rosemond, Georgia Gwinnett College’s vice president for student engagement and success, has read about falling test scores in high school English and math. 

“What I’m seeing is the probability that the first-year experience will be tougher than normal,” she said. 

Last school year’s scores on the state Milestones tests aren’t out yet, but the results from the 2020-21 school year were disappointing, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported last year. 

They fell from 2018-19, the last time the tests were given before a temporary stay during the pandemic. The percentage of failing students rose by 2 to 9 points, varying by grade level and subject, with the largest declines in high schools. Fewer students than normal took the tests, which might have affected the overall results. Milestones scores from the last school year show students improving but still behind where they were prior to the pandemic. 

This fall’s college freshmen were high school sophomores when classrooms closed for COVID-19 in spring 2020. Some, particularly students of color in big urban areas like metro Atlanta, continued to do school remotely into their junior and even senior years. 

The situation seemed dire in 2020 when McKinsey & Company, the global consultant, surveyed nearly 2,100 U.S. high school seniors. Nearly a third wondered whether they were ready academically for college. 

The University System of Georgia doesn’t have enough data yet to indicate whether the academic setbacks were as significant as some feared, but data suggests more students were quitting college after their freshman year. 

In the four years prior to the pandemic, between 78.2% and 80.1% of freshmen came back after their first year. But the first-year retention rate for freshmen who entered in fall 2020 slipped to 74.6%.

Other evidence suggests a softer impact of COVID-19. At Georgia State, last fall’s freshman class had a high school grade-point average of 3.6, an increase of 0.03. 

At Georgia Gwinnett College, the percentage of students withdrawing from all courses increased significantly but was a small proportion of overall enrollment. 

The rate was about 2% prior to the pandemic. It rose to a high of 3.5% in fall 2020, dropping just over a percentage point by the following spring, said Rosemond. She doesn’t have the fall 2021 figures yet but is optimistic they have continued to fall or flatten. 

Still, her college and others have been rolling out new programs to help students. 

One launched at Georgia State last summer lets them retake one course they failed or withdrew from. The opportunity comes with coaching and advising.

At Kennesaw State, the First Flight program allows freshmen to take a two-credit economics class before their fall semester. The class is required for graduation, so taking it in advance would lighten their fall load and give them more time to focus on other courses, said Alex Lyon, director of new student programs there. 

And Georgia Gwinnett College is offering expanded orientation sessions. The 2.5-hour sessions established last year — Summer Preparatory Academic Resource Camps, or SPARC — introduce students to advisers, faculty, tutors and peers, in hopes of building relationships they can tap if they need help. 

Trent Prince, 30, joined the military after graduating from high school in Walton County. He was planning to enroll in college in fall 2020, but delayed that for a year due to the pandemic. Once enrolled at Georgia Gwinnett last year, he worried he had forgotten too much high school material and would be unable to keep pace with younger students. 

Then, he attended a SPARC session last summer. 

Not only did he connect socially with peers and professors, but faculty members were able to point out a different academic track that he said suited him better. Prince, who is majoring in English with a focus on education, now tutors Gwinnett County grade school students in reading and helps peers on campus with biology, his minor. 

“Without that program, life would just be very different,” Prince said. “College would not be as great and as exciting as it is now because it gave me an opportunity to connect with other students, to reengage with the classroom, to connect with faculty and the professors, and to really get to know the school before I started.” 

More Details

Last school year’s scores on the state Milestones tests aren’t out yet, but the results from the 2020-21 school year were disappointing, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported last year. They fell from 2018- 19, the last time the tests were given before a temporary stay during the pandemic.

The percentage of failing students rose by 2 to 9 points, varying by grade level and subject, with the largest declines in high schools. 

Fewer students than normal took the tests, which might have affected the overall results. 

This story comes from our partners at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. For more on the news and events in metro-Atlanta and Georgia, visit .

“I think that the responsibility to provide access to care increases with this reversal… especially in banned states,” said Tamara Marzouk, director of abortion access at Advocates for Youth, a national nonprofit supporting students’ sexual health and rights.

For some schools in the 21 states where abortion is still protected, expanding access to procedural and medication abortion — via oral mifepristone and misoprostol — is well underway. 

Regardless of state policy, advocates contend higher education institutions can better support pregnant and parenting students through a variety of . Failure to do so could prove disastrous for enrollment — particularly for low-income and Black students, underrepresented in higher education and most likely to have compounding barriers to abortion care.

Below are eight examples of how colleges are supporting students’ ability to continue attending school while navigating pregnancy:

1. Where still protected, providing on-campus abortions

Given the Dobbs ruling, clinics have already begun to see an overwhelming with people traveling for care — which has always impacted students whose campuses are at times dozens of miles from the nearest service provider. 

“Colleges and universities really have a responsibility to provide abortion on campus to alleviate that burden on clinics, and to cut down travel time for students,” Marzouk added. “When a person has to travel for an abortion, and really no matter how far, they’re often missing classes, unable to complete schoolwork, missing their jobs or internships.”

The University of Illinois – Chicago has offered students access to medication abortions since 2006; by next January, every public university in California must legally provide the same. A replication bill in has been introduced; interest is growing in New York and Washington state as well, said Marzouk. 

At the University of Massachusetts – Amherst, the system’s largest where students would travel one-way by transit to reach the nearest facility, access to medication abortions will . 

2. Reforming attendance policies

Though schools are required under federal Title IX regulations to excuse “medically necessary” pregnancy-related absences, including abortion and miscarriage, recovery may well last longer. 

Some schools, such as , offer transparent and flexible attendance and leave policies. Having such school-wide policies and staff who advocate on students’ behalf with professors keeps them informed of their rights and prevents students from being arbitrarily . 

3. Establishing emergency funds for travel, care 

Aboritions are expensive: The average cost of medication ranges from $300 to $750; during the first trimester, the cost of procedural abortions can reach up to $1,500 without insurance. These estimates do not include any visits with a provider, travel or lodging costs. 

Given that about 59% of people seeking abortions already have children and are balancing financial obligations, the cost is prohibitive.  

Advocates recommend schools establish — at times used to support young people to travel after the death of a family member or purchase necessities — or expand existing funds to support students seeking to terminate pregnancy. 

4. Expanding on-campus reproductive healthcare services

Activists contend expanding free and affordable on-campus healthcare  to include prenatal care, birthing services, STI screening and emergency contraceptives can help support students navigating barriers to care in a post-Roe world. 

The , for example, offers discounted contraceptives and Plan B without prescription for all students. 

Additionally, schools can tap into peer networks as part of their services, said Marzouk. Advocates for Youth offers six-week abortion doula training — where students learn to provide emotional or physical support to others seeking abortion care.

5. Reforming exclusionary housing policies 

Roe’s reversal means some students may be be forced to become parents. Yet college housing policies are not always inclusive to family living. In 2015, at least in their first year. , where abortions will be banned after six weeks, is one of them. 

Campuses like Pennsylvania State have adapted policies to better meet needs of parenting students by offering and free or subsidized . The University of Rhode Island also offers parenting undergrads the option to live in graduate, suite-like housing. 

6. Formally recognizing reproductive rights groups 

In some southern and midwestern states, campuses “have not been friendly” to reproductive justice or pro-abortion organizations, said Marzouk. Student activists in Texas and Ohio sometimes operate externally, but that means they may not be able to access the same buildings or funding that other student groups can. 

“We also know that young people go to each other,” Marzouk added. “Even if a smaller group of students knows exactly what services are available on campus, [they’re] ensuring that campuses are facilitating that communication within the student body.” 

7. Ensuring inclusivity & privacy 

Any student, regardless of their gender, may need to access an abortion. Abortion activists encourage the use of inclusive language so as to not repeat the transphobic and homophobic rhetoric often adopted by politicians and service providers who exclusively use “women” in materials, or seek out a “husband’s” for a hysterectomy, for example. 

Colleges can also ensure confidentiality and privacy policies are well-known, so that students know what to expect if they ask for temporary leave, Marzouk said. 

8. Freely publicizing information 

“It’s one thing for a service to be … offered very quietly and privately and it’s another thing for a service to be out there in the community known about and really inclusive of all students,” Marzouk added. 

For example, the fact that Plan B, used as an emergency contraceptive and offered at school health centers, may lose effectiveness for people weighing over 165 pounds is commonly ignored — students may use it unknowingly unless informed otherwise. 

And where campuses do not yet offer medication, students are able to manage their abortion on their own through — which pills to residences. Yet awareness for this option is still growing. ����Ӱ�� was unable to find a university health page that communicated this mail-in service as an option.

At higher education institutions, students may find it difficult to find what services are available to them on-campus in an online search. Utilizing social media, emails, student groups, and orientation to include reproductive healthcare information, activists say, is key to expanding access right now.

But early fall undergraduate enrollment suggest “no signs of recovery”, with the nation’s public universities hit hardest, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. 

Across 2- and 4-year public and private nonprofit institutions, numbers continue to decline nationwide, now 6.5 percent below pre-pandemic 2019 levels. 

And key public institutions, such as , Universities, and the , are experiencing the worst declines.

First-year enrollment at community colleges for the 2021-22 academic year is 20.9 percent behind fall 2019. Total undergraduate enrollment at community colleges is 14.1 percent behind. In contrast, 4-year private nonprofit colleges experienced a 1.2 percent drop from 2019 to 2021.

Highly selective, elite schools are the only ones to rebound, netting gains in undergrad enrollment about 1.4 percent above fall 2019 levels. 

Roughly 8.4 million students and 50 percent of higher education institutions are reflected in the National Student Clearinghouse’s report, which includes data collected through September 23. While subgroup trends may change as more institutions report, . 

Here are five key findings from the October report:

1. There are 6.5% fewer undergraduates enrolled this year than in 2019.

The declines seen last year have persisted. Overall enrollment has dropped 3.2 percent, following 2020’s 3.3 percent drop. 

Four states saw declines higher than two times this national average: California, Indiana, Mississippi and West Virginia. New Hampshire saw more gains than any other state — the outlier now has 7.9 percent more undergraduates enrolled than in 2019.

2. 22.3% fewer Black first-years are enrolled than in 2019, the biggest decline of any ethnic/racial group.

When looking at total undergraduate enrollment, beyond just first-years, there are 11 percent fewer Black students enrolled than the year prior to the pandemic.

White and Native American or Indigenous students experienced the second and third highest declines.

12.7 percent fewer Native American or Indigenous undergraduate students are enrolled overall. However there are 21 percent more Native students, and 1 percent more Latino students, enrolled at private nonprofit universities than in 2019.

3. First-year classes are 12.3% smaller than pre-pandemic levels, and at community colleges, 20.8% smaller.

Public community colleges experienced the worst declines in freshman enrollment. Compared to all other institutions, they remain the most impacted sector, with overall enrollment declining 14.1 percent since the pandemic began. Their highest drops were from Black students (33.4 percent) and students aged 21-24 (21.4 percent).

4. Undergraduate programs have lost more men (9.3%) than women (5.3%) since 2019.

These declines have not been consistent across institution types — community colleges’ first-year classes saw women’s enrollment drop almost five times the rate of men, at a total of 10 percent. 

Overall analysis from 2019 to 2021 shows more men have not enrolled in undergrad programs than women.

5. Less selective, public schools had higher declines than any other sector: 5.2% since last fall and 7.9% since the pandemic began.

More selective, private schools have been able to retain and recruit more students than their public, less selective peers. Many have also discussed some elite during the pandemic, making the institutions more wealthy. 

Public institutions’ starker declines may suggest barriers to college have been exacerbated by the pandemic, like financial and familial stressors.

InsideTrack coaches, many of whom are former social workers and teachers, will serve as virtual mentors throughout the academic year. They will support students in addressing barriers to college completion — developing plans for everything from employment and financing car repairs to communicating academic or mental health needs to professors.

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“We know, during this particular period, there’s a lot of challenges that have been exacerbated for students. We want the coaching to help students develop critical, non-academic skills to be able to finish their degrees,” said Dennis Olson, commissioner of Minnesota’s higher education office, citing time management and the ability to balance academics with family commitments.

“When we’re on the other side of this pandemic, in economic recovery, we know we’re going to need students to have those skills into the future.”

The partnership comes at a time when, nationwide, students are and changing their enrollment plans at rates intensified by the pandemic.

With sustainability in mind, the nonprofit will also coach state employees on how to use their mentorship and success model. In two to three years, Minnesota’s Office of Higher Education hopes to run and expand the coaching program in-house to support more than just first-time borrowers, encompassing those who may be nearer to graduation or who have re-enrolled years after their initial loan.

Olson said that the coaching initiative will help the state reach its of having 70 percent of the state’s population aged 25-44 completing some level of higher education or credential by 2025. Minnesota faces education opportunity gaps along race and income lines.

The state’s 2020 estimates show that almost 69 percent of white Minnesotans have earned higher education credentials, while 37 percent of Black Minnesotans and 28 percent of Hispanic/Latino adults have done so.

For years, higher education institutions in Minnesota have offered financial counseling for their students and resources for first-generation students, but “we wanted more”, Olson told ����Ӱ��.

“This isn’t just another form of student loan counseling, we wanted students to really have access to student success coaches at the state level. This is important — that the state agency be the one leading this effort and providing the service. We want students to have an opportunity to achieve their goals to make sure they understand how to navigate all those obstacles they may encounter,” he said.

In the 2021-22 academic year, $25,000 in emergency funds will also be available for students involved with the InsideTrack partnership facing urgent circumstances that could derail their college careers, like car breakdowns, child care needs or food insecurity. This funding is in addition to .

While InsideTrack also supports Indiana by providing residents with career coaching, the scope and scale of its Minnesota work is a first for the organization, founded in 2001. Historically, they’ve maintained relationships with institutions directly, including California State Universities.

“Institutions have 100 things going on and things that they’re trying to prioritize every day for their students. It can be hard to take an issue like their students’ progress towards graduation over something like student safety,” said Ruth Bauer White, InsideTrack’s president. “[State-level partnerships] are a way for us to have access to students and to prioritize that aid without an individual institution having to make that decision.”

InsideTrack’s coaches walk through “focus wheel” areas with students to understand their daily needs and what plans should be put in place to stay on-track for graduation. Some topic areas are managing commitments, mental and physical health, financial security and motivation for, or belief in, completion.

Mental health has been the most common focus area for InsideTrack nationally this year, according to Bauer White. The organization developed a crisis response team that Minnesota college students can be referred to for more resources and support.

Quantitative and qualitative data will be routinely shared with Minnesota’s higher education office, including which focus areas students cite most often with their coaches.

“Those are the things that we can bring to life for the state of Minnesota in a way that you can’t do if you’re not having that daily contact with students,” Bauer White said.

The program’s impact will be evaluated by University of Minnesota researchers, who will compare student success measures for the 1,500 randomly selected coached students to those of first-time loan borrowers in a similarly sized control group who did not receive coaching.

“[Data] will help inform particular asks, legislative initiatives and priorities,” said Thomas Sanford, the higher education office’s assistant commissioner for operations. “It’s a feedback loop that we can utilize to help support all of Minnesota.”

In the third and final survey of young people during the pandemic by the national nonprofit YouthTruth, 49 percent of students talked about the detrimental effects of growing mental and emotional issues while just 39 percent said they had an adult at school to whom they could turn for support. The gap in access to social and emotional help has widened even from fall 2020 survey data, at the start of students’ first full pandemic school year.

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YouthTruth Executive Director Jen Wilka said adult connection was actually at its highest at the start of emergency distance learning in spring 2020. Those interactions and energy, which students say is key to learning, are not as strong now a year and a half later, evidenced by the declining number of young people who say they have a supportive adult in their school orbit.

“Students really felt that increase in their teachers making an effort to sort of reach outside and beyond those virtual walls and understand what it is like,” Wilka said. “That has now waned, and is closer to normal, maybe a little bit higher than normal. We saw that really peak in spring 2020.”

One aspect of student-adult relationships in school that has improved over time is respect. Some 70 percent of students said they think adults treat youth with respect — up significantly from the 57 percent who believed that pre-pandemic.

A narrative animation compiles student write-in responses on stress, anxiety, and depression and how it affected their learning in 2020-21. (YouthTruth)

YouthTruth, which solicits student, family, and educator feedback, analyzed data from 206,950 third- through 12th-grade students across 19 states and 585 urban, suburban and rural schools. Open-ended and choice responses were solicited via anonymous 15-minute surveys from January through May 2021.

Previous pandemic-era surveys were conducted in 2020 by YouthTruth from (20,000 students) and (85,170 students). Mental health concerns have consistently been a barrier to learning, and high school seniors’ plans post-graduation continue to be affected by the pandemic. Students have been vocal about the importance of building relationships with their teachers, and their sense of belonging within their school community peaked in fall 2020.

Twenty-one percent of those most recently surveyed attend high-poverty schools, similar to the national average of 25 percent, and students’ racial identities mirror national averages.

For students of all gender identities, depression, stress, and anxiety has become more prevalent as a barrier to learning since fall 2020. For female- and non-binary identifying students, the rates are much higher, 60 and 83 percent, respectively.

Youth cite overwhelming workloads with assignments that lack relevance to their daily life and futures, according to write-in responses and qualitative analysis.

“School restricts me from being content with who I am,” one high school upperclassman shared. “We need to radically change the education system, it’s way overdue for that and it needs to right now. I cannot get out of bed anymore. I hate school more than how I used to. I’m mentally strained because of distance learning […] However, an English assignment and 11 other assignments are due by 11:59pm tonight because grades are so important – more important than surviving and finding new healthy coping mechanisms after all.”

Education leaders across the country are seeking ways to ameliorate growing concerns for students’ emotional and social well-being; a number of states plan to utilize American Rescue Plan funds to bolster mental health access.

In the North Clackamas School District, serving the greater Portland, Oregon area, social and mental health services were established pre-COVID yet leaders saw emotional needs grow during the pandemic. In response to the changing ways students needed access to adults and sought connection, the district partnered with providers and nonprofits to offer telehealth services, devices, and hotspots to youth and their families districtwide.

Through the pandemic, the district sought to make “sure that we had established pathways that were normalized, made very typical and open for families to access a mental health therapist,” Dr. Shelly Reggiani, the district’s director of equity and instruction, told ����Ӱ�� during a YouthTruth press call last week.

In sharing other ways to remove learning barriers and improve engagement, youth said they’d like to see more real-world topics, like applying for higher education, financial aid, and jobs and learning personal finance.

Survey results show that fewer seniors surveyed this spring will head to four-year institutions this fall, a trend also reflected by declining enrollment rates, which saw the worst single-year decline since 2011. And though more will enroll in two-year colleges than in fall 2020 — about 20 percent of those surveyed — the proportion hasn’t yet rebounded to pre-pandemic levels.

Qualitative survey data revealed some of the barriers that persist for high schoolers looking to access higher education. Students recognized “the need for social capital (like from a teacher or sibling) as part of college access,” the confusing nature of the application process, which is typically formally taught during the school day, and felt that finding information and choosing to apply came “too late,” YouthTruth researchers told ����Ӱ��.

“The school is pushing students to go to a four-year college and for most students they don’t want to go to a four-year college because they don’t want to go into debt,” one student said.

“Give us Pathways for the Future,” one of four video animations depicting trends from 480,000 open-ended responses and reflections on the 2020-21 academic year. (YouthTruth)

“They’re really searching for meaning in learning, and that’s an opportunity for us as educators to connect learning, and real life, and relevance to help address students’ needs here,” Sonya Heisters, YouthTruth’s deputy director, said.

Other notable findings

• Secondary school students’ perceptions of learning and belonging returned to pre-pandemic levels
• Many Spanish-speaking students detailed how language barriers became an additional obstacle to their learning during virtual and hybrid environments, and 21 percent of Hispanic/Latino students cited lack of teacher support as an obstacle to learning compared to just 14 percent of other students.
• Providing inclusive curricula, adopting anti-racist policies, and treating students fairly are common recommendations found among data from 5,000 Black / African-American students.
• Many students enjoyed paper-free learning, and hope to maintain access to online materials with the return to in-person school
• Black/African-American and Hispanic/Latino students report feeling unsafe in school at higher rates than their peers, at 11 and 16 percent respectively vs. 9 percent for non-Black, non-Hispanic students.
• 65 percent of students report that their teachers give extra help when needed, but this is more common among students who receive high academic grades

Disclosure: The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation provides financial support to YouthTruth and ����Ӱ��.