The Great Resignation at Community Colleges
Sara Weissman
January 4, 2023
Community colleges underwent major staffing losses during the pandemic. Now they’re suffering from the ripple effects, and campus leaders are trying desperately to recruit.
Community colleges across the country are struggling to recruit and hire new people after losing faculty and staff members in droves during the pandemic.
The institutions lost 13 percent of their employees nationally from January 2020 to April 2022, according to an estimate from EAB, a higher education consulting firm. A recent data analysis from EAB shows that four-year colleges mostly recouped their losses after also experiencing sharp declines in staff, unlike community colleges, which have lagged in their recovery.
These data points are part of an ongoing research effort to study attrition at community colleges and were shared late last month in a webinar hosted by EAB and the League for Innovation in the Community College, an organization dedicated to helping community colleges innovate to improve student success outcomes.
