I was afraid this might happen during the pandemic, and apparently it has.

According to The Hechinger Report, job-focused education degree and certificate programs have seen a 15 to 20 percent drop in enrollment this fall compared to 2019. It’s not hard to see why this would happen, given the economic and logistical duress so many people are facing these days. 

It is imperative that local, state, and national policymakers step up to provide the kinds of supports people need so that they can avail themselves of opportunities that otherwise would be readily available, primarily at community colleges. I’ll get to possible solutions in a moment. First, let’s examine the magnitude of the problem.

According to Hechinger, enrollment in programs like precision production, engineering technology, and mechanic and repair technician has plunged, along with programs that provide a pipeline for “hands-on fields, from homeland security to firefighting.”

Why has this happened during the benighted year of 2020? It’s all about the pandemic, but, unlike the K-12 education world, “colleges are continuing in-person instruction in their welding, building and computer-controlled machine labs,” Hechinger says. Many of the offerings are hybrid — part online, part in-person, but still, students aren’t coming.  

Why are they staying away? There may be some health worries, but I doubt that’s the gist of it. As the article points out, “there are many issues with our population being able to justify going to school with taking care of their families. Their older relatives are stuck at home, laid off from hospitality jobs. And our students are picking up the slack, working full-time instead of going to college.”

Unmentioned in the story but equally important is the childcare issue raised by so many Pre-K-12 schools being closed to in-person instruction. Any aspiring student or trainee with a child faces the daunting challenge of finding affordable childcare if they wish to attend classes themselves. In many cases, it’s simpler to forego community college or training, at least in the short-term, to manage the logistics of helping your children with schoolwork and keeping them safe at home while also holding down a job.

In an era of partisan legislative gridlock, there is no easy way out of this. But the health of our economy depends on producing qualified workers for essential jobs, so we have to muster the collective will to find solutions.

One idea is for training centers, be they community colleges or employer-based, to explore providing onsite childcare and, during the pandemic especially, learning pods where children can learn, or at least be supervised while they do their remote learning. 

Community-based organizations could do this as well, if funding were available. A nonprofit in Aurora, Colo., the African Leadership Group, has started just such a schooling/tutoring program for its community.

We have to build our way out of the pandemic recession, and one way to do that is to remove roadblocks keeping people who want to bolster their credentials from doing so. There must be a sense of urgency about getting this done.