Two Online Strategies, Not One: What the Data Now Show About Community Colleges

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Each year Phil publishes an enrollment update based on the Fall IPEDS numbers. This includes a look at the growth of distance or online learning across U.S. higher education. As has become our tradition, it is also worth pausing to look specifically at community colleges. Not only do they make up a substantial share of U.S. higher education, they are currently among the most important drivers of enrollment change in the sector. According to the Fall 2024 IPEDS data, public two-year institutions were up 4.9% year-over-year compared to more modest growth among four-year public’s and flat enrollment among private four year institutions.

For several years, discussions of online learning in community colleges have treated online as a single trajectory - something institutions either expanded during the pandemic or pulled back from afterward. The Fall 2024 IPEDS data suggest a more nuanced reality. Rather than converging on one dominant approach, community colleges are now clearly following two distinct online strategies: a small but consequential group operating at scale through fully online programs, and a much larger set embedding online courses within mixed-modality institutional models. These are not transitional states; they reflect structurally different choices about mission, enrollment strategy, and capacity.

The big picture

Looking across all sectors, exclusive distance education (DE), also known as fully online enrollment continues to be dominated by large private and for-profit institutions, alongside a small number of large public providers such as Arizona State University and the University of Maryland Global Campus.

Note: No DE = students taking all on-campus courses; Some DE = students taking some but not all online courses in a term; Exclusive DE = students taking all online courses.

In the latter half of the overall rankings, however, several large community college systems begin to appear; Dallas College (at 16), the Lone Star College System (at 20), and large single institutions such as Valencia College (at 22). That raises a more focused question: what does online learning look like when we examine community colleges on their own terms?

Thinking in systems

When we isolate community colleges, a clear pattern emerges. Fully online enrollment at community colleges is increasingly concentrated in large, multi-campus public systems and districts. Nine of the top thirty institutions by exclusive distance education enrollment fall into this category.

This raises a legitimate question about scale: are these enrollments the result of genuine growth in fully online learning, or simply the aggregation of smaller numbers across campuses? Even with that caveat, the pattern suggests something important. Fully online community college enrollment is less about one-off experiments and increasingly about sustained operational capacity—the ability to coordinate scheduling, course design, student services, and faculty support across multiple campuses.

This distinction becomes even clearer when viewed historically. In previous years, Eastern Gateway Community College occupied a prominent position near the top of the fully online rankings. That growth was driven by a highly controversial program design and lack of internal financial controls, and ultimately EGCC collapsed under scrutiny and was shut down. With EGCC now absent from the chart, what we see instead is a more organic, and arguably more sustainable picture of online growth in the community college sector.

Mixed-modality Is the majority experience

If fully online enrollment tells one part of the story, mixed-modality enrollment tells another, and arguably more important, one. For the rest of my post I am going to refer to students taking some online and some on-campus courses as engaging in mixed-modality. I realize that risks confusion but Taking Some But Not All Online Courses is a mouthful.

Mixed-modality enrollment is now the dominant experience for many community college students. Rather than serving as a transitional state between face-to-face and fully online learning, taking a mix of online and in-person courses appears to be a structural enrollment pattern.

This matters because mixed-modality students are often invisible in institutional strategy. They are neither treated as online students nor fully served by traditional campus-based support models. Yet they represent a growing share of enrollment, particularly among commuter students, working adults, and dual-enrollment populations.

Two online strategies not one

Comparing the lists of the top thirty institutions by exclusive online enrollment and by mixed-modality enrollment reveals a striking divergence. In other words, online learning at community colleges is no longer a temporary response or a continuum - it has settled into two durable models, and most institutions are firmly committed to one or the other.

Fourteen institutions that rank among the top thirty for fully online enrollment do not appear in the top thirty for mixed-modality enrollment. These colleges appear to have made a strategic choice to focus on fully online students rather than on a broadly mix-and-match population. Many are located in California, and several, such as Rio Salado (AZ) and Coastline Community College (CA), have long-standing reputations for serving adult learners at scale through fully online models.

Conversely, eleven institutions with the largest mixed-modality populations do not appear among the top thirty fully online providers. These colleges seem to be serving large numbers of students who mix online and face-to-face coursework, without pushing strongly toward fully online programs. This pattern is consistent with institutions that are commuter-heavy or serve large numbers of workforce and part-time students.

Taken together, these differences suggest that community colleges are no longer converging on a single “online strategy.” Instead, we are seeing the emergence of two distinct models: fully online–dominant institutions and mixed-modality-dominant institutions. Importantly, mixed-modality does not appear to be a stepping stone to fully online learning. It looks increasingly like an endpoint.

This will be something to track over time and support with additional information based on strategic plans and interviews.

Student success

We have consistently raised questions about whether student support systems and institutional infrastructure are keeping pace with the growth of online learning. Especially in community colleges, where students are often juggling work, caregiving, and financial precarity. The emerging distinction between fully online and mixed-modality dominant institutions sharpens that concern.

It suggests that the student success challenge is no longer simply about the binary of “online versus face-to-face,” but about whether advising, onboarding, tutoring, and communication models are designed for how students actually attend college.

This raises several important questions:

• Do student success outcomes differ between fully online and mixed-modality models?

• Are advising and support structures intentionally designed around these different enrollment patterns, or are they still organized around legacy modality assumptions?

• Which model will prove more resilient under continued enrollment pressure and constrained public funding?

Parting thoughts

Community colleges occupy a distinctive position in the online learning landscape, one that differs in important ways from the four-year sector. What the latest data make clear is that online and mixed-modality education models are no longer peripheral or experimental. They are foundational to how many community colleges now operate.

These patterns have implications well beyond modality. They touch governance, budgeting, faculty workload, technology investment, and, most critically, student success. Institutions that continue to treat online learning as a scheduling convenience or a marginal strategy risk misaligning their support systems with the lived experience of their students.

If there is a takeaway from this year’s data, it is this: community colleges are addressing the problem of access through flexibility. The harder, and now unavoidable, task is ensuring that student success systems evolve at the same pace as enrollment patterns. How institutions respond to that challenge will shape not he future of online learning and community colleges themselves.

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