August 19, 2026
California’s community colleges have offered online courses for more than 20 years. But during the pandemic, these offerings scaled up significantly as educators scrambled to keep students engaged during a global emergency. In 2024, we conducted a survey tracking the use of pandemic recovery funds and found that colleges expected online learning to stick. Nearly 60% said they’d offer more than 40% of courses online going forward. What has happened since then, and where are colleges headed now?
During the pandemic, dollars from the Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund (HEERF) were used to support the shift to online instruction. Students, faculty, and staff benefited from access to hardware, high-speed internet, training opportunities, and other online services and supports—such as academic advising and tutoring—to make the transition to online environments smoother. Most colleges in our survey called this investment “very successful,” with seven in ten saying it helped to cover the cost of moving instruction online. In some cases, colleges indicated that the flexibility provided by online classes was key to support enrollment and predicted it would continue to play an important role in the future.