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Limited Supply and Lagging Enrollment: Production Technologies and Enrollment Changes at Community Colleges during the Pandemic
Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach, Margaret Walker Alexander Professor of Human Development and Social Policy, Northwestern University
Abstract: Weak labor markets typically lead young workers to invest in skills. High unemployment during COVID diverged from prior downturns: enrollment at community colleges dropped by 9.5 percent between 2019 and 2020, with the drop larger among men. COVID disruptions generated supply-side impacts on courses of study requiring significant capital and “hands on” experiential learning, particularly programs that deliver of assembly, repair and maintenance (ARM) skills. Community colleges that had relative concentrations of credentials in ARM fields pre-pandemic experienced relatively large enrollment declines. The decline in ARM enrollment explains nearly all the difference in enrollment declines by gender during COVID.
Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach is director of the Institute for Policy Research and the Margaret Walker Alexander Professor in the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University. She is also a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. Schanzenbach, who was elected to the National Academy of Education in 2019, is a labor economist who studies policies aimed at improving the lives of children in poverty, including education, health, and income support policies. Her recent work has focused on tracing the impact of major public policies such as SNAP (formerly the Food Stamp Program) and early childhood education on children’s long-term outcomes.
Schanzenbach was formerly director of the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution, an economic policy initiative that promotes policies to enhance broad-based economic growth. She has testified before both the Senate and the House of Representatives on her research. Her research has received financial support from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the U.S. Department of Education, the Spencer Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Smith-Richardson Foundation. Her research has been published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, American Economic Review, American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, and the Review of Economics and Statistics, among other outlets. She graduated magna cum laude from Wellesley College with a BA in economics and religion, and received a PhD in economics from Princeton University.
