College of DuPage prepares for mostly online spring semester
The state's largest community college will keep most classes online for the spring semester while administrators hope to stave off further enrollment declines during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Fall enrollment fell across the board at the College of DuPage in Glen Ellyn, mirroring a trend in higher education.
The college has about 21,000 for-credit students enrolled this fall. Latino student enrollment is down more than 17% compared to last fall. Among Black students, enrollment dipped 8%. COD also saw a 9% decline in enrollment among white students.
Community colleges have faced an enrollment slump as would-be students decide to take a gap year or put their education on hold because of pandemic concerns, challenges with remote learning and technology access or job obligations.
An October report from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center showed freshman student enrollment at community colleges fell 22.7%.
COD officials predicted an overall decline of 8.5% in fall enrollment after running through several scenarios. The school eventually saw a 9.4% drop.
COD President Brian Caputo strongly discouraged students from taking a gap year to avoid online instruction, calling it a "terrible idea" that pushes back career plans and could reduce future earning potential.
"What it does is it sets back the student's education and who knows how long it's going to be before we really get back to normal," Caputo said.
The college will open registration for spring courses to new and returning students Thursday as officials seek to maintain the enrollment level now.
"I think that's a reasonable expectation," Caputo said. "Usually our spring enrollment is pretty strong and flows from fall enrollment."
The vast majority of classes will be held online, but COD is adding nine sections of hybrid courses that combine some in-person and online instruction. The hybrid sections, mostly in the area of computer information technology, are expected to enroll about 75 students.
"These are small sections," Caputo said. "Because of the social distancing, there's not a lot of people that you put in those rooms."
The college has closed the campus to the general public as part of a series of COVID-19 precautions. Students' temperatures are checked. Hall monitors make sure people wear masks and don't congregate.
"What we've done is we're keeping the density of employees low. We're keeping the density of students low," Caputo said. "And the only students that are coming on campus are those that absolutely must come on campus to do labs and the like. We're relaxing that ever so slightly in the spring but not a great deal."
Beyond that, loosening restrictions would put the college at risk of becoming a hot spot, Caputo said. There have been two instances in which a class section temporarily closed for two weeks due to a COVID-19 case, he said.
"Setting up the precautions as we have, we give ourselves the best chance of being able to actually deliver the instruction and not have to close the institution down," he said.
To help with technology barriers, the college is loaning out laptops and individual Wi-Fi hot spots for students to take home in addition to providing hot spots on campus.
Some virtual classes are held in real-time, while online classes adhere to "instructor timelines," school officials say.
"We are reaching out and making sure all of these options are known by all students," Caputo said.
The spring semester catalog includes more than 3,400 courses. The new semester starts Jan. 25.
"We're just going to offer the full menu of course offerings that we have in the past," Caputo said. "The modes of delivery are different of course, but there's still an opportunity to keep the students' education moving forward and getting their educational goals accomplished."