Regaining Ground: Enrollment Trends in the Los Angeles Community College District in the Wake of COVID-19

Community colleges (CCs) play a vital role in the United States' higher education landscape, as gateways to four-year universities as well as offering career-focused degree and certificate programs tailored to specific vocational fields. A decline in community college enrollments represents diminished educational and economic prospects for a significant segment of the population.

The COVID-19 pandemic, however, disrupted traditional enrollment patterns, particularly among students facing financial constraints and family responsibilities.  A clear understanding of these losses is critical for driving institutional responses and allocation of scarce resources to recover enrollments in equitable ways. In this brief, we examine changes in enrollments at the Los Angeles Community College District (LACCD) between Fall 2017 and Summer 2023 to document the extent of pandemic-era enrollment declines overall and across student populations within one of the largest and most diverse CC systems in the country.