Community college enrollment booms when the economy busts. That was an accepted fact, proven time and again during the cycles that characterize the U.S. economy. But the covid-19 pandemic, which sent the world into a series of lockdowns, shattered that pattern. Although the region’s community colleges were expecting an enrollment surge last fall, they saw just the opposite, as did community colleges across the country. While enrollment in postgraduate degree programs inched up sufficiently to offset undergraduate enrollment declines at many of the region’s four-year institutions, enrollment at community colleges, the two-year public institutions that are a gateway to higher education for hundreds of thousands of Americans, declined.