The Relationship Between Varying Levels of Online Enrollment and Degree Completion

Introduction

Community colleges provide access to higher education for many historically underrepresented and academically underprepared students who may not have attended college otherwise. Although community colleges can open doors to new opportunities, the majority of students who begin at a community college do not earn an associate or bachelor’s degree. Completion rates among community college students are stratified by race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status, with Black, Hispanic, and low-income students completing college at significantly lower rates than their White and higher-income peers (Bailey et al., 2015; Causey et al., 2022).

In response to lagging completion rates, a growing share of community colleges have increased their commitment to online education to accommodate time- or location-constrained students and offer additional pathways to degree completion. Specifically, the proportion of community college students who enrolled in at least one online course has increased from 5.9% in 2000 (Ortagus, 2017) to 42.6% in 2016 (author’s calculations using National Postsecondary Student Aid Study data). Online education has the potential to remove barriers and increase access to higher education, but previous studies typically report negative or mixed effects of online enrollment on community college students’ academic outcomes. Prior work on online education often confounds the student taking an online course or two with the exclusively online student, revealing the need to consider the proportion or “dosage” of online courses when seeking to examine the implications of online education on degree completion. Community college students who enroll exclusively in online courses may have to rely more on self-directed learning than their peers who take a mixture of face-to-face and online courses. These differences in course-taking patterns can affect specific subgroups of students in different ways given that White students and students with higher levels of educational attainment tend to have greater success with self-directed learning than Black students and students with lower levels of educational attainment (Xu & Xu, 2020).

Black, Hispanic, and low-income community college students, in particular, have been found to perform worse in online courses (e.g., exam scores and course grades) when compared to face-to-face courses (Xu & Jaggars, 2014; Xu & Xu, 2020). However, those same students may face significant time or location constraints and be able to benefit in the long term by taking online courses as a way to continue to make progress toward graduation in lieu of halting their academic momentum (Ortagus, 2018). Despite a growing body of literature focused on online education in higher education, researchers, practitioners, and policymakers lack nuanced evidence related to whether online enrollment helps or hinders the likelihood of degree completion for the students who are the most likely to drop out of college: racially minoritized or low-income students who begin at community colleges.

To examine the relationship between varying levels of online enrollment and degree completion, I address the following research questions:

Data

This study draws detailed administrative data from a high-enrollment community college, Sunshine Community College (SCC; pseudonym). Due to national data limitations, the only way to consider the influence of the proportion of online courses on students’ likelihood to graduate is to use institutional transcript data. The analytic data set covers 2009–2019 but only includes entering cohorts of SCC students between 2009 and 2015 to allow for the time required for community college students to make progress toward degree completion. By gaining access to 10 years of institutional transcript data from SCC, I am able to offer a nuanced analysis of the heterogeneous treatment effects of online enrollment behaviors and the extent to which the proportion of online courses influences various subgroups of community college students’ likelihood to complete an associate or bachelor’s degree.

The treatment variables of this study capture varying levels of online enrollment among SCC students, focusing specifically on the online proportion of all courses a student takes at SCC rather than course-taking during a single semester or academic year. To operationalize levels of online enrollment, I consider the impact of enrolling in 1% to 24%, 25% to 49%, 50% to 74%, and 75% to 99% of online courses in addition to all (100%) online courses. Among the 41,302 SCC students in the sample, 60.6% enrolled in at least one online course during the period of the study (2009–2019). More specifically, 16,293 students in the sample did not take online courses (reference group), 11,964 enrolled in 1% to 24% of online courses, 6,614 enrolled in 25% to 49% of online courses, 3,675 enrolled in 50% to 74% of online courses, 1,664 enrolled in 75% to 99% of online courses, and 1,092 enrolled in all (100%) online courses. Although 55.7% of SCC students in the sample were classified as Black, Hispanic, or low-income students, only 2.8% of SCC students were classified as any of the other non-White race/ethnicity categories. As a result, I was not able include subgroup analyses for Asian students, Native American students, and other race/ethnicity groups.

To account for SCC students who may have transferred and completed their degree elsewhere, I also use National Student Clearinghouse data to identify students who transferred vertically and completed their bachelor’s degree at another college or university. I account for systematic differences in precollege student characteristics and individuals’ conditional probability of receiving the treatments (levels of online enrollment) by employing a propensity score weighting (PSW) approach for each treatment variable. The pretreatment variables included in the PSW models include gender, age, race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, academic degree program, first-generation status, degree goal (associate or bachelor’s degree), veteran status, marital status, U.S. citizenship, and county of residence. The use of PSW should reduce selection bias and improve the balance between nonequivalent groups of data (see Figure 1). A full description of the methods used in this study can be found in the Online Methodological Appendix.

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Figure 1.

Probability densities for students’ varying levels of online enrollment.

Results

Table 1 shows the influence of the proportion of online courses on degree completion. The aggregated results show that community college students who enrolled in some, but not all, online courses were more likely to earn their associate degree and bachelor’s degree, but students who enrolled in all online courses were less likely to earn their associate degree and bachelor’s degree. Specifically, students who enrolled exclusively in online courses were 15.8 percentage points less likely to obtain their associate degree and 8.6 percentage points less likely to complete their bachelor’s degree.

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Table 1

The Influence of the Proportion of Online Courses on Degree Completion

Variables	All online	Online: 1% to 24%	Online: 25% to 49%	Online: 50% to 74%	Online: 75% to 99%
Panel A: Pooled sample (N = 41,302)
Associate degree	−.158***	.207***	.151***	.063***	.067***
	(.011)	(.005)	(.006)	(.008)	(.013)
Bachelor’s degree	−.086***	.112***	.098***	.061***	.091***
	(.009)	(.005)	(.006)	(.008)	(.012)
Panel B: Black students only (N = 8,691)
Associate degree	−.181***	.230***	.166***	.032	.041
	(.014)	(.011)	(.014)	(.018)	(.028)
Bachelor’s degree	−.080***	.124***	.116***	.039	.043
	(.019)	(.011)	(.013)	(.022)	(.024)
Panel C: Hispanic students only (N = 6,824)
Associate degree	−.178***	.224***	.127***	.078**	.047
	(.023)	(.013)	(.016)	(.023)	(.039)
Bachelor’s degree	−.053*	.108***	.062***	.060**	.102**
	(.023)	(.013)	(.015)	(.020)	(.033)
Panel D: Low-income students only (N = 13,919)
Associate degree	−.168***	.185***	.135***	.054***	.013
	(.022)	(.009)	(.011)	(.014)	(.021)
Bachelor’s degree	−.105***	.099***	.094***	.059***	.051**
	(.017)	(.009)	(.010)	(.013)	(.019)

Note. Standard errors are in parentheses.

*

p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

Table 1 also provides the heterogenous effects of the proportion of online courses on degree completion, focusing specifically on Black, Hispanic, and low-income students. For Black community college students, enrolling in some online courses (fewer than 50% of total courses) was related to a greater likelihood of completing their associate and bachelor’s degree, but enrolling in all online courses had a negative influence on their likelihood of attaining an associate degree (18.1 percentage points) and bachelor’s degree (8.0 percentage points). Hispanic community college students who enrolled in lower proportions of online courses had higher likelihoods of earning an associate degree (between 7.8 and 22.4 percentage points). Hispanic students who enrolled in some online courses (1%–99%), but not all online courses, had a greater likelihood of transferring to a 4-year university and earning their bachelor’s degree (between 6.0 and 10.8 percentage points). Similar to the pooled sample and subgroup of Black students, Hispanic students who enrolled in all online courses were less likely to obtain their associate degree (17.8 percentage points) or bachelor’s degree (5.3 percentage points).

For low-income community college students, lower levels of online enrollment (fewer than 75% of total courses) had a positive influence on the probability of associate degree completion (between 5.4 and 18.5 percentage points). Similar to Hispanic students, enrolling in some online courses (1%–99%) had a positive influence on students’ likelihood of transferring to a 4-year university and earning their bachelor’s degree (between 5.1 and 9.9 percentage points). Low-income community college students who enrolled in all online courses had a lower likelihood of obtaining their associate degree (16.8 percentage points) or bachelor’s degree (10.5 percentage points) at any point during the time period of this study.

Discussion

Online education at community colleges can either open doors to new opportunities by improving educational access or constrain opportunities by hindering students from achieving their educational aspiration of completing their degree. Prior work related to the effectiveness of online education typically focuses extensively on short-term academic outcomes and confounds the online learner taking an online course or two with the exclusively online student. This study represents the first empirical examination of the extent to which the proportion of online courses affects the probability of degree completion across different student subgroups.

For any practitioner or policymaker seeking to better understand the extent to which community colleges should engage online education as a medium of instruction, I show that enrolling in some online courses, particularly lower levels of online enrollment, has a positive relationship with the likelihood of degree completion for Black, Hispanic, and low-income students, but enrolling in all online courses has a negative influence on the likelihood of degree completion for those same students. This study advances our understanding of the implications of varying levels of online enrollment and shows the value of online education as a supplement to face-to-face education for community colleges seeking to identify ways to improve students’ likelihood of degree completion. For policymakers, these findings highlight the harmful impact of enrolling in all online courses on degree attainment among community college students. Policymakers can respond to these findings by requiring transparent reporting of completion rates by medium of instruction and enhancing accountability efforts for exclusively online degree programs.

Supplemental Material