By Megan Anderson, Sarah Griffin, Serena C. Klempin, Elizabeth M. Kopko, and Tia Monahan
During the pandemic, Congress appropriated more than $25 billion in Higher Education Emergency Relief (HEER) Funds to help community colleges and their students cope with financial and other challenges brought on by COVID. How did colleges use these funds? What do they think were the results of their spending and associated efforts? What remaining needs do they have, if any? The ARCC Network’s Survey of Pandemic Relief Spending and Recovery Strategies seeks to answer these questions.
The institutional survey, administered at community colleges throughout six states, launched in early May and will be open until the end of June. With the deadline fast approaching, we want to thank the colleges that have already completed the survey and remind colleges about how their participation will contribute to this important research.
The information collected from this survey will provide valuable insights that federal and state policymakers can use to guide recovery efforts, including decisions related to future funding policies. Policymakers and practitioners may be particularly interested in how the funds were distributed to students and used to address institutional needs, whether funds were targeted to certain student groups, and whether college stakeholders believe the HEER dollars met student and institutional needs. In a webinar for survey colleges held on May 19, representatives from participating community college organizations spoke about the importance of the survey, highlighting their desire to learn about spending similarities across colleges, the impacts of the money on enrollment recovery and student success, and remaining unmet needs.
CCRC is surveying community colleges in Michigan, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas, and the State University of New York (SUNY) system in partnership with community college organizations from each state. The Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC), in collaboration with Wheelhouse: The Center for Community College Leadership and Research, is leading the survey in California community colleges. Together, these six states serve more than 40% of all community college students in the nation.
Erica Lee Orians, vice president and executive director of the Michigan Center for Student Success, which is partnering on the survey in Michigan, said that HEER funding was essential to the state’s colleges during the pandemic.
“In partnership with CCRC, we are especially interested in what we can learn from this experience and how future federal, state, or local funding priorities could be strategically leveraged to improve student success,” she said.
Using the data collected from this survey, CCRC will publish a report that highlights trends and variations in how different types of institutions used pandemic recovery funds, common challenges, and concerns about the end of recovery funds. In addition to the survey report, CCRC will release an analysis of federal data and an interactive dashboard to support further institutional research, allowing users to examine trends among colleges in states or regions. For colleges in the five states where CCRC is leading the survey, CCRC will also host state-specific webinars that will review key findings from the survey, including state and regional trends.
