Students enrolled in suburban institutions in the 2022-23 academic year were most likely to have started as part-time students (74%), while students in institutions located in towns were least likely to have begun their enrollment part-time.
This is the second of two DataPoints that describe part-time student enrollments in community colleges, as reported in various sources. This installment explores the characteristics of part-time students and a variation on part-time enrollment across several institutional characteristics. The previous DataPoints examined enrollment trends for fall and full-year enrollment.
Student characteristics
Data for this DataPoints on part-time student characteristics comes from the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study of 2019-20 (NPSAS:20), a nationally representative sample of all students enrolled in postsecondary education. It is important to note, however, that the NPSAS:20 sample excludes students still enrolled in high school, so it is based on slightly different population than Integrated Postsecondary Education Data Surveys (IPEDS) data. The advantage of the NPSAS:20 data are that they provide student-level demographics and an ability to look at students whose attendance intensity varies over the course of an academic year.
For this analysis, student characteristics are broken down by three enrollment intensities: 1) students enrolled exclusively full-time while enrolled in the academic year; 2) students enrolled exclusively part-time while enrolled in the academic year; and 3) students with a mixed enrollment pattern while enrolled in the academic year.
During the 2019-20 academic year, more than a quarter (27.1%) of public community college students enrolled attended both full-time and part-time (See Figure 5). However, this includes roughly 10% of students who attended more than one institution during the academic year.
When the sample is limited only to students who enrolled only in a public community college, 24.5% of the students had a mixed enrollment pattern in the 2019-20 academic year. These data were collected during the start of the Covid pandemic, which may have affected the enrollment intensity for spring and summer 2020. One way to estimate the impact of the pandemic is to look at the NPSAS:16 data (2015-16 academic year) as a comparison. Figure 7 shows the distribution of attendance patterns for students who only attended a public community college in the 2015-16 or 2019-20 academic year. The percentage of students with a mixed enrollment pattern went from 20.1% in 2015-16, to 24.5% in 2016-20; however, the number of students enrolled exclusively full-time showed a significant increase from 2015-16 to 2019-20 (24.3% to 32.5%).
The data for community college students who attended multiple institutions (Figure 6) as well those who only attended a community college (Figure 5) in 2019-20 are made available for reference. This section will focus on those students who only attended a community college in 2019-20.
Similar to the findings in the enrollment data, female students were more likely to enroll exclusively part-time, however, the rate of mixed enrollment was similar. Black students (46.5%) and White students (43.4%) were more likely to be part-time exclusive, while Native American (33.8%) and Asian (35.1%) students were less likely. Students under age 24 were much less likely to enroll exclusively part-time (31.3%), while over half of the students 24 or older were enrolled exclusively part-time.
Dependent students were least likely to enroll exclusively part-time (30.6%), while more than half of independent students were exclusively part-time. Married independent students and independent students with dependents were most likely to enroll exclusively part-time. Single parents (54.5%) were basically the same rate of part-time exclusive as independent students with dependents (54.6%). U.S. citizens were most likely to enroll exclusively part-time, while foreign or international students were much less likely to enroll part-time, with over half enrolled exclusively full-time.
Many students attending community colleges have prior credentials, which are related to employment, and one would expect more part-time enrollment as prior level of educational attainment increases. This is born out in the data. More than three-fourths of students with a prior advanced degree (master’s or doctoral) were enrolled exclusively part-time, while only 38.8% of students with no prior credential since high school were.
Urbanicity of college
Community colleges serve different populations and different roles based on their location. IPEDS codes the urbanicity of the primary campus location for each community college. While this does not always map onto the service area for the college, it is a reasonable proxy for the urbanicity of the institution. This report looks at the percent of the full-year headcount who are part-time, disaggregated by the major urbanicity classifications (urban, suburban, town or rural) of the college.
Students enrolled in suburban institutions in the 2022-23 academic year were most likely to have started as part-time students (74%), while students in institutions located in towns were least likely to have begun their enrollment part-time (See Figure 8). Across all urbanicity locations, first-time-in-college students represented about 16% of all full-year enrollment; however, there were significant differences in how first-time students began based on the location of the college. Roughly half of the students in urban and suburban settings started their education as part-time students, while only one-third of students attending institutions in town settings did so.
Transfer-in students were a relatively small percentage of all students, ranging from 7.9% in town settings, to 9.9% of full-year students in suburban settings. The percentage of students enrolled part-time mirrored this, with colleges in towns having the lowest percent of transfer-in students starting part-time and the suburban college with the highest (58.0% and 74.0%, respectively).
Continuing degree-seeking students make up less than half of all full-year students in community colleges, ranging from 36.9% of students in town settings, to 46.3% of the students in urban colleges. There was less variation in part-time enrolment across the urbanicity of the colleges than other enrollment types, but the pattern was similar with colleges in towns lowest (57.6%) and suburban colleges highest (70.4%). Non-degree-seeking students were more likely to be in colleges located in towns (39.6%) or rural areas (37.2%) than in cities (28.3%) or suburbs (28.9%). However, in all settings, 90% or more of non-degree students began part-time and nearly 93% in rural or suburban colleges.
Institutional size
More students start their education part-time at larger institutions, with the percentage decreasing as enrollment size decreases (See Figure 9). For the 2022-23 academic year, roughly one-third of students initially enrolled part-time at community colleges with fewer than 3,000 students in that academic year, while nearly three-quarters of students did in institutions with 11,500 or more students.
For students who were first-time-in-college (after high school) in the 2022-23 academic year, the percent who started part-time ranged from 33.9% in smaller colleges, up to 51.6% in larger colleges. The pattern was similar for transfer-in students (53.9% in small colleges, to 74.8% in large colleges) and continuing students (57.0% in small colleges, to 71.2% in large colleges).
The pattern was slightly different for non-degree-seeking students, where there was the highest percentage of students (92.19%) who began part-time in the large colleges, followed by small colleges at 91.9%, and the two middle-size college categories had a slightly lower percent of students who began part-time (90.9% in colleges with 3,00 to 5,999 students and 90.4% in colleges with 6,000 to 11,499 students).
