AT ROXBURY COMMUNITY COLLEGE – where attendees are predominantly low-income students of color – enrollment was down by 20 to 25 percent last year. The college’s president, Valerie Roberson, wasn’t surprised.

According to data from the Department of Higher Education, as the COVID-19 pandemic raged, enrollment was down last year across higher education and across all demographics. But the declines were sharpest at the state’s community colleges and among Black and Latinx students. The overlap is not coincidental, since community colleges serve large numbers of students of color.

The average age of a Roxbury Community College student is 30, and many students have children at home, so they were affected by school closures. Some students had family members who were immunocompromised, so they were cautious about going out. Others were essential workers, and fluctuations in work schedules made it hard for them to attend school.

Despite the big enrollment falloff, Roberson is optimistic. While it is too early to gauge enrollment for next year, Roberson said she anticipates many students who interrupted their education during the pandemic will return.

“They are resilient,” Roberson said. “They are going to keep trying to persist. The more support we can give them, I think we’ll be able to help more students than in the past.”

Community colleges throughout Massachusetts saw staggering drops in the number of students of color, likely driven by a mix of financial and health challenges. Heading into next year, state and college officials say they are making renewed efforts to reverse that trend and get current and new students enrolled. Many are hopeful that the year off was only temporary and many students were deferring college rather than dropping out altogether. The ability of students to attend and complete college has lifelong ramifications, since studies have shown that the ability to earn a good wage is closely tied to college completion.

“I’ve referred to it as a lost generation, but I’m starting to reassess whether that’s the case,” said Higher Education Commissioner Carlos Santiago. “I think we’ll get more and more of those students back.”

While some continuing students left school, the biggest drops were among first-time freshmen. The number of Black students entering community colleges as first-years declined by 33 percent in 2020 compared to 2019, or nearly 650 students. The number of first-year Latinx students declined by 25 percent, or 930 students. In comparison, there were 18 percent fewer White students entering community college for the first time. The drop was larger among men than women.

Santiago said the drop in enrollment correlated with the communities where COVID-19 hit hardest – low-income communities of color. Community college students tend to be older than students at other colleges, and many are working. Santiago said some students likely worried whether they could afford college if they lost jobs. Others worried about jeopardizing their families by going to school. Some may have lost childcare. “We suspected that going to college was not going to be the highest priority given the other demands they felt in their life and their communities,” Santiago said.

It is too early to tell if the numbers will rebound this year, since enrollment occurs throughout the summer. But there are signs enrollment may be increasing. The state launched a campaign to encourage students to fill out financial aid applications, sending out letters to students and working with school guidance counselors. As of the end of May, the Department of Higher Education had received 60,529 applications for financial aid from first-year students, which is more than the 58,932 received at the same time last year amid the pandemic, though it remains below the 61,280 received in May 2019, before the pandemic started.

Santiago said the Department of Higher Education is currently in the midst of reviewing its policies through an equity lens, a review that started pre-pandemic.

One existing program, 100 Males to College, created a network of mentors and supportive services to help targeted groups of high school students – primarily low-income men of color – enroll in college. But the program only serves a small number of students in five cities. The Department of Higher Education provided some start-up money, but has not funded the programs since 2019. Santiago said state officials are currently debating whether to continue the program at all, how to fund it, and whether to incorporate it into a larger initiative.

Santiago said his goal is to have a “broader conversation around equity and how we promote equity from a systemwide perspective.” For example, even before COVID-19 hit, the department overhauled the remediation process for students who entered community college without the skills needed for college-level studies. In 2014, community colleges had 9,000 students who failed an entrance exam and were deemed to require remediation before they could start taking college courses for credit. The students then had to pay for courses they did not get credit for, and most ended up dropping out. State officials have since revamped the process to let these students take courses for credit immediately, with extra support services.

The pandemic – and a national reckoning on race – has also provided an impetus for individual colleges to enhance programs meant to help students, particularly students of color, succeed.

At Roxbury Community College, the school began issuing laptops and internet hotspots to students who needed them for remote learning, an initiative Roberson said will continue once the pandemic abates. The college began offering grocery store gift cards to students struggling with food insecurity, which it will also plan continue. School officials also committed to offering more scholarships and job placement services, and tapping into a new state fund to increase the number of student advisors.

Darcey Kemp, vice president of student affairs at Springfield Technical Community College, said that school saw a 26 percent drop in new students last year, with the biggest declines among men as well as Black and  Latinx students. Kemp said it is too early to tell what next year will look like, but she is beginning to see increased interest as students have a better sense of what their work and family life will look like this fall.

In response to the enrollment drop, STCC created a “Roadmap to STCC” program, where the admissions office works with local public high schools, offering webinars and online tools to guidance counselors and students to provide more information about how to enroll in the college, obtain financial aid, and register for classes.

Several years ago, STCC created an informal program dedicated to providing support and mentoring to Black and Latino males to help them graduate. This year, the college plans to turn it into a more official program, with its own office space, a new director, and a mission to provide academic support and other services to Black and Latino men. The program is also offering a free summer start, where participating students can take courses for credit this summer, while meeting mentors and other students, and adjusting to college life.

STCC faculty are calling continuing students who have not yet reenrolled in courses to see if they need help. While most classes were online last year, the school next year plans to offer a mix of remote, hybrid, and in-person classes, with the breakdown depending on student interest. “We’re responding to students and what they want to see,” Kemp said.

Dave Koffman, government affairs director for the Massachusetts Association of Community Colleges, said the state data make clear that policymakers need to invest in things like financial aid and support for community college students. “It’s going to require a state policy initiative to invest in institutions and mitigate barriers to entry to post-secondary education,” Koffman said.

Sen. Anne Gobi, a Spencer Democrat, and Rep. David Rogers, a Cambridge Democrat, who co-chair the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Higher Education, both said they are aware of the issue and committed to addressing it.

“The pandemic, as we’ve all learned, exposed a lot of inequities in our society,” Rogers said. “And just like communities of color and low-income communities were hit harder in health outcomes and also in jobs and employment, we’ve seen they’ve been disproportionately impacted in their ability to seek and obtain higher education.”

Gobi filed an amendment to the Senate version of the fiscal 2022 budget to create a higher education task force, which would look at issues related to public higher education. Gobi said the task force is necessary not only because of the pandemic, but because of a national trend of declining undergraduate enrollment. Some of this is likely due to declining birth rates. But there could be other contributing factors, like cost. Gobi said the task force would look at a host of issues, including affordability, racial disparities, and what areas of the higher education system need more money. “What I envision is that we’ll have an opportunity to look at all issues, especially issues that seem to affect people of color more,” Gobi said.

Rogers said lawmakers increased funding to community colleges over the past few years and have also created the SUCCESS program, which offers extra services like counseling to community college students. Lawmakers funded the STEM Starter Academy, aimed at recruiting and retaining community college students studying science and math, as well as a job training program run through community colleges.

“I think a lot of us want to make sure as we come through the pandemic, we learn from it and we address some of the problems that have been exposed,” Rogers said. “I think that’s going to happen in a broad range of ways, and certainly helping our community colleges is one of those ways.”