Health Challenges and Community College Student Outcomes Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic

This study details the prevalence of community college students’ reports of serious health events both before and after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in spring 2020. Survey responses from a representative sample of students within the largest community college at the City University of New York highlighted serious health challenges. Findings indicated that serious health challenges (including illness/injury/disability/mental health) were a significant factor in predicting students’ outcomes during the spring 2020 term. However, health-related events that occurred prior to the onset of the pandemic had a substantially and significantly larger correlation with course outcomes than those that occurred after the onset of the pandemic. This suggests that serious health issues may be a major barrier to student progress at community colleges, even outside of the conditions of a global pandemic, and that the pandemic may have only exacerbated this significant but often overlooked preexisting issue.