The Road Ahead

Community colleges need to use evidence-based strategies to increase adult enrollment to both recover from the COVID-19 pandemic and to equitably serve their communities. While community colleges alone cannot solve the myriad challenges they face without additional state, federal, and local resources, they can make significant differences in the lives of adults in their communities by revising their policies to better meet students’ needs. This playbook offers many recommendations that they could incorporate into their institutions. However, it's critical that colleges prioritize their efforts to (1) align with their communities' needs and (2) fulfill their broader mission. While most colleges will not have the capacity to implement all of the recommendations throughout this playbook, colleges should assess how their institution currently serves adult students, to determine where they should focus their efforts. All colleges can improve their services for adult students, and doing so will benefit both the students and the institutions.

As community colleges continue to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic and the turmoil they’ve faced since the spring of 2020, they can also prepare to better weather future economic and public health downturns. The efforts outlined in this playbook are therefore broader than just recovering from the pandemic and can help community colleges build the capacity to sustainably increase enrollment for years to come. If colleges increase their capacity to better enroll, retain, graduate, and serve adults, they will be better equipped to manage enrollment downturns in the future, and they will be more connected pillars of their communities. There is no time to waste. Community colleges must prioritize bringing adults back to campus.