Study Shows Limit to Benefits of Online Classes for Community College Students

After the COVID-19 pandemic forced an emergency switch to online learning, students have embraced  the modality for its flexibility and convenience. This is particularly true of community college students, who are more likely than others to have jobs and family commitments that make coming to a campus tough. In a recent report by Bay View Analytics, 94% of community college students gave their online courses a passing grade, and 58% expressed a desire for more. However, a new study offers a reason for caution: for Black, Hispanic, and low-income community college students, online courses only increase degree attainment when taken in relatively low proportions.

Dr. Justin Ortagus, associate professor of higher education administration and policy and the director of the Institute of Higher Education at the University of FloridaThe study, conducted by Dr. Justin Ortagus, an associate professor of higher education administration and policy and the director of the Institute of Higher Education at the University of Florida, examined over 40,000 student transcripts from a diverse, high-enrollment community college from between 2009 and 2019. He found that students who enrolled in relatively few online classes (1-24% of their courseloads) were nearly 21 percentage points more likely to attain an associate degree, and 11 percentage points more likely to attain a bachelor’s. But students enrolled exclusively in online classes were nearly 16 percentage points less likely to get an associate and nearly nine percentage points less likely to obtain a bachelor’s degree.

Ortagus believes that the results fit with what we know about the lives of community college students and the limits of virtual interaction.

“It makes sense that a flexible course schedule allows community college students to be more likely to make progress towards a degree and ultimately graduate,” he said. “But all those positive things about face-to-face education, a sense of belonging, community engagement, interacting with faculty members and advisors, those things can be harmed if [students] are left to be self-directed learners who are only learning in an online environment.”

Dr. Shanna Smith Jaggars, assistant vice provost and director of the Student Success Research Lab at the Ohio State UniversityAccording to Dr. Shanna Smith Jaggars, assistant vice provost and director of the Student Success Research Lab at the Ohio State University, studies have shown that online learners make strategic choices about which courses to take virtually, typically saving more challenging ones for in-person, where accessing support might be easier. But if a student has to take all their classes online, they miss out on this support, which might set back their progress.

The effects—both positive and negative—were particularly strong for minoritized and low-income students. Black students who took a low proportion of online classes were 23 percentage points likelier to earn an associate, but Black students who took all online classes were over 18 percentage points less likely to earn that degree. The numbers for Hispanic students were nearly the same. Low-income students who took few online classes were nearly 19 points likelier to earn an associate, but those who took all online classes were nearly 17 points less likely to do so.

Black, Hispanic, and low-income students may have more competing priorities, which would explain the particular benefit that they get from taking a few online classes. However, the study cites evidence that Black, Hispanic, and low-income community college students perform worse in online courses than face-to-face ones, which may explain the especially strong negative effect of an all-online curriculum.