Bouncing Back: First-Year Success and Pandemic Recovery at Tennessee Community Colleges

By Amy Moreland

Tennessee community colleges are bouncing back after three years of declines in enrollment and student success.

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the path to postsecondary enrollment and success for many young adults in Tennessee. These disruptions decreased first-time enrollment at the state’s 13 open-access community colleges. Even among students who overcame barriers and enrolled in college during the pandemic, we saw significant declines in key measures of students’ momentum during their first year of college.

From fall 2019 (before the pandemic) to fall 2020 (after the onset of the pandemic), first-time enrollment at community colleges in Tennessee declined by 11%. First-time enrollment continued to decline in fall 2021 and fall 2022, resulting in an overall 21% decline from 2019 to 2022. These declines were even steeper for some student groups, with Black students’ enrollment falling by 34% from 2019 to 2022.

Student success rates also declined during the pandemic, especially the important indicators of student momentum during the first year of college. While the decline in the college-going rate received significant attention across the state, the notable declines in student success during the pandemic received less attention. For example:

• After the onset of the pandemic, fewer students persisted beyond their first semester of college. Before the pandemic, 77% of students returned for their second semester of college. In the first year of the pandemic, fall-to-spring persistence rates fell 8 percentage points, as only 69% of students persisted.
• Fewer students earned credit in their first semester. After the onset of the pandemic, credit attainment rates fell 9 percentage points, from 84% in fall 2019 to 75% in fall 2020. This decline was even more significant among Black students, as credit attainment rates in the first semester fell 17 percentage points from 2019 to 2020.
• Fewer students completed important gateway courses in math and writing during their first year. Among students who enrolled in 2020, the declines were especially steep for students deemed academically underprepared. Gateway writing course success rates fell 14 percentage points from 2019 to 2020.

Some of these pandemic impacts on first-year student success continued for students who enrolled for the first time in 2021, during the second year of the pandemic. We also began to see declines in second-year outcomes such as fall-to-fall persistence and completion rates.

However, success rates began bouncing back by fall 2022 and spring 2023. While enrollment declines continued, first-year student success rates began to improve. Even when we account for the impact of enrollment declines on the makeup of the recent freshman cohorts, outcomes such as credit attainment and fall-to-spring persistence returned to pre-pandemic levels. Student success rates in gateway math and writing courses also appear to be returning to pre-pandemic rates.

Yet, some measures of student success have not bounced back. For example, among Black students, early indicators of success such as credit attainment and gateway course success still lag behind pre-pandemic trends, which has widened equity gaps between White and Black students. While overall persistence rates began to rise in 2021, Black students’ persistence rates fell another 5 percentage points that year. These trends also differ across the state’s 13 community colleges, as some regions have bounced back more quickly than others.

TBR—The College System of Tennessee serves as the governing board and comprehensive college system for the state’s community colleges and colleges of applied technology. To help shed light on the pandemic impact and recovery, TBR released two new tools in 2023:

• First, TBR published an interactive policy brief called Bouncing Back: Examining the Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Young Adults at Tennessee Community Colleges. This policy brief explores pandemic-era trends in community college enrollment and success. The report features early indicators of success for Black students, low-income students, and academically underprepared students.
• Second, TBR released a new interactive dashboard that allows colleges and K-12 districts to examine early outcomes at community colleges for students in their region. The dashboard—The High School to College Pathway—allows users to view enrollment trends, first-year student success, and longer term outcomes for young adults at community colleges before and after the pandemic. The tool also allows users to filter the data to see granular information by the district or high school where students graduated.

This project is supported by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through Grant R305S220005 to the Tennessee Board of Regents.

Amy Moreland is the assistant vice chancellor for policy & strategy at TBR—The College System of Tennessee.