HEER Funding Kept Community Colleges Open and Students Enrolled

Community colleges were able to persevere through the pandemic thanks to the emergency relief funding passed through Congress.

That’s the conclusion of the latest research from the Accelerating Recovery in Community Colleges Network at the Community College Research Center (CCRC) at Columbia University. Without Higher Education Emergency Relief (HEER) funding, experts say many community college programs would have closed, faculty and staff laid off, and more students forced to stop out on their pathways towards accreditation. Some colleges might have even shut their doors permanently.

“We began to see early on [in the pandemic] many students were not enrolling, and community colleges are largely funded on the basis of enrollment,” said Dr. Thomas Brock, director of the CCRC. “Early predictions were quite dire, but the quick action by Congress to create HEER would have a major role in keeping community colleges whole and giving them additional money, flex money, to help students stay in school during this very difficult time.”

Community colleges lost a shocking 15% of their annual enrollments because of the pandemic, a huge difference from the usual plus or minus 2% enrollment seen year to year. But HEER funding, the report said, “more than made up for tuition losses.”

HEER funds totaled over $75 billion, with $25 billion going directly to community colleges. The funds came with very little restrictions for their implementation except that one portion was designated to support the institutions themselves and the rest targeted direct student support.

Dr. Karen A. Stout, president and CEO of Achieving the Dream.“What I think was really brilliant about the way the community colleges used the resources was they put students first,” said Dr. Karen A. Stout, president and CEO of Achieving the Dream, a network of over 300 community colleges dedicated to addressing educational inequities. “Going into COVID was an emerging big need around basic needs, tech access, food insecurity, housing insecurity, and they really stepped up and made emergency student aid an agenda.”

Stout said that colleges with strategic financial plans were more easily able to invest HEER funds into long-term projects. But now that the emergency funding has come to an end, she said some colleges have found themselves struggling.