COVID-19 in California Community Colleges: College Responses, College Resources, and Student Outcomes

In Spring 2020, colleges across the nation swiftly transitioned their operations—including both classes and student support services—to remote delivery on an emergency basis in response to the crisis posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. While prior research has documented that the transition was associated with decrements in student outcomes, there remains limited understanding of the organizational factors that might have mitigated these negative associations during the pandemic. Drawing on administrative data from the California Community College system, along with a novel survey conducted among distance education leaders, our study reveals that the degree of declines in course completion and course passing rates varied based on pre-COVID online education resources (such as the ratio of distance education personnel to students and the availability of pre-COVID professional development programs in online learning): Colleges with greater pre-COVID online resources experienced more modest declines in student performance. To a lesser extent, we also found that declines in student performance during the onset of the pandemic varied depending on the responses implemented in reaction to the pandemic, such as the extent of technology delivery to students. The implications of our findings extend to the realm of planning for the continuity of operations in potential future crises.