The Higher Education Emergency Relief (HEER) Fund had two main purposes: (1) to ensure that colleges could continue to provide education to students in the wake of the pandemic and (2) to provide emergency financial assistance through colleges directly to students. Four years after the onset of the pandemic, this ARCC Network brief uses college financial data—including data recently released for fiscal year 2022—to look at what happened to college finances and to assess the importance of HEER funding for the financial solvency of community colleges over the course of the pandemic. The authors find that during the peak years of the pandemic (2020–2022), community colleges lost huge numbers of students: On average, colleges lost 580 full-time-equivalent (FTE) students or 15% of pre-pandemic year-on-year enrollment, whereas college enrollments typically fluctuate by +/-2% each year. The authors also find that federal HEER funding saved community colleges from massive losses in tuition revenue during the pandemic. Instead of losing revenue, HEER funding increased total revenue per college from $81 million to $84 million, covering lost tuition and offsetting new costs associated with the pandemic. HEER funding also provided $4 million in student aid per college, on average, making up for lost resources students experienced during the pandemic.
The authors—who also wrote an associated blog post that includes an interactive dashboard on this topic—contend that community colleges are confronting new fiscal challenges post-pandemic. As HEER funding has ended, many community colleges are faced with a difficult fiscal outlook, with increased costs due to inflation and decreased overall enrollments relative to pre-pandemic levels. Navigating these new fiscal realities will be extremely challenging for community colleges, raising new concerns about the viability of many colleges in the post-pandemic era.