Does Axing Testing Hurt Rural Colleges?

Welcome to Mile Markers, a bimonthly newsletter about rural higher education. I’m Nick Fouriezos, an Open Campus national reporter who grew up at the crossroads of suburban Atlanta and the foothills of Appalachia.

The lake is sparkling on a mid-seventies November day at East Georgia State University in Swainsboro. In the past, that surprisingly sunny weather might have meant coeds sprawled across the tree-lined quad, playing volleyball or studying for approaching exams. But campus is noticeably quiet, the only activity occurring between bells, as a few students shuffle between classes.

Two weeks before, the University System of Georgia released a report revealing East Georgia suffered the worst enrollment decline in the state, a 16.2% drop, with South Georgia State, another rural two-year college, experiencing the only other double-digit drop. 

Visiting East Georgia, I assumed, like others might, that such losses could be chalked up to economic scarcity as a result of the pandemic. In the wake of the Great Recession in 2008, college enrollment surged, though, with most of that growth driven by older students — looking to upskill or shift careers — opting for more affordable two-year colleges. 

That hasn’t happened this time around. The last two years have seen the largest national enrollment drop in at least half a century. And that drop has been mostly driven by losses at community colleges, which are more likely to enroll first-gen, low-income and minority students. 

I asked marketing coordinator Katelyn Moore what had changed at East Georgia, which went from 2,741 students in Fall 2020 to 2,415 students in Fall 2021 across its three campuses. The college serves a predominantly rural region of 24 counties, and is a majority-minority institution: 41% Black, 7.3% Hispanic, and 4.8% multiracial. 

Two years into the pandemic, few current students remember what Moore says used to be a lively campus in Swainsboro. “We’ve been going through COVID long enough that everybody who was here is gone,” Moore said. 

For seven years, the college’s president and top school officials led a two-week bus tour visiting 25 local high schools. But that annual event, which spread awareness about attending college to thousands of students — some of whom would likely have attended East Georgia — also was shuttered by pandemic closures and a thinner budget.

Those trends have hurt East Georgia. But in Moore’s opinion, the biggest culprit for its enrollment collapse was clear: the University System of Georgia’s decision to waive ACT and SAT requirements for the 2021 academic year.

“That really hurt us. It allowed students who would have come to us, or another access institution, to get into bigger colleges,” Moore said. “The test exemptions created a huge ripple effect. Not just for us, but for all community access colleges.”

If ending SAT and ACT testing requirements leads some to skip smaller rural colleges altogether, then that could be a promising development for students from those areas —who maybe once wouldn’t have considered themselves UGA or Georgia Tech material but feel confident applying there now.

However, that creates a complicating issue for two-year “access” colleges like East Georgia, which often pitch themselves as ways for undergrads to eventually get to their first-choice four-year universities — and are now stumbling upon an unintended consequence of the shift against testing …

The anti-testing movement exploded during the pandemic, from 1,070 test-optional schools before 2020 to 1,815 not requiring the ACT or SAT for the fall 2022 class. Harvard recently made headlines for announcing it wouldn’t require the SAT or ACT through 2026. 

More importantly, more accessible institutions are rethinking tests too. The City University of New York system, which includes more than a quarter million students, is test-blind until at least 2023. The University of California has already banned the tests permanently, while the California State system is expected to soon follow suit.

Going test-optional or test-blind has undeniably gained steam, as decades of research suggests such tests favor affluent white and Asian students. But if that shift leads to significant student declines at smaller colleges, many rural communities could take a hit.

Across Georgia, 21 of 26 state public schools saw losses, although overall enrollment was down just 851 students (or 0.2%).  The biggest dips were at state colleges like East Georgia, where enrollments dropped almost 7%. Meanwhile, large research universities grew by 2.6%, with highly selective Georgia Tech up more than 10%.

For most schools, fewer students means fewer dollars (whether in tuition or in state funding), at a time when many rural colleges were already reeling during the pandemic. Still, those students may benefit from the new opportunities. And is that enrollment transfer even because of waived tests, as Moore suggested?

We don’t know … yet. There are places like Florida, which didn’t waive its test requirements but still saw a 5.5% drop at its community colleges. As Leslie Daugherty of the nonprofit Education Design Lab notes, the theory of a test-related dip assumes the majority of lost students are traditional 18-year-old students.

That may be a faulty assumption. California’s community colleges saw a 15% drop to fall below 2 million students for the first time in three decades in 2021 — but nearly one-third of the enrollment decline came from students 40 and older, the community college system’s vice chancellor told California legislators.

Compared with past recessions, the biggest difference for those nontraditional students was that the pandemic forced kids home from school.

“The working adult, the single mom, the ‘new majority learners,’ as we call them: They faced a choice, but for them, it wasn’t really a choice  — your kids are home now, so their education comes first,” Daugherty says.

In general, data suggests that colleges that went test optional got more diverse and more prepared candidates, says Bob Schaeffer, executive director of the National Center for Fair & Open Testing: “There are a lot of factors. Attributing one year of change to any variable is a little dicey.”

Still, it’s worth watching the continued move toward going test-free for its effect on rural enrollment. And we might not have to wait long to start getting answers. 

Georgia has already announced it will return to including SATs and ACTs in admissions beginning with the fall 2022 class — a trend some states will likely follow, even as others move away from testing for good.

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