Introduction

In March 2020, a thousand community colleges in the United States shifted to online instruction, which affected around 10 million students.¹ Many colleges moved all classes online in just a few days or used their spring breaks to make the pivot, telling students and faculty not to return to campus. It was a huge undertaking. The COVID-19 pandemic has generated an unprecedented wave of challenges for students, faculty, and staff.

Community colleges are used to responding to their communities during times of crisis. But individual colleges should not have to carry this weight alone. And they do not have to. Lessons from the last recession can show how to share the burden and improve online learning and simulation through collaboration.

This is not the first time that community colleges have faced a difficult time and shown that a group of institutions can improve access and instruction. During the Great Recession, Congress created the Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training (TAACCCT) program as part of a larger economic relief package to support innovation at community colleges, including in online learning and simulation. These grants were made to individual colleges or to a consortium of colleges.

The consortia built collaborative initiatives to grow and support online learning and simulation. Our research on the outcomes of these grants has shown that groups of institutions together often built programs better than each could have done on their own. These initiatives were both more efficient and better able to reach new students than many solo ventures.

As colleges move past the initial emergency responses to the coronavirus pandemic, they are looking for longer-term strategies to ensure high-quality learning. While the stress of the pandemic continues, colleges must establish sustainable ways to reach more students both now and after the pandemic. The structure and goals of each type of collaboration in the last recession empowered colleges in different ways. These strategies helped colleges reach more students during TAACCCT and, done sustainably, they can help colleges in the present environment and into the future.