As the COVID-19 pandemic has all but surely lost its grip on the world, we have been transitioning our ways of life back to how things used to be pre-pandemic. One major aspect of life that’s slowly making this transition is education.

In the spring and fall 2019 semesters, Los Medanos College had a very low number of fully online and hybrid sections offered by the community college compared to the amount of face to face sections there were, as there was only 23 hybrid sections and 93 fully online during this time, while there was as many as 837 face to face sections. Enrollment was also high at 27,051, which is the highest it has been in the past three and a half years. This would completely change when the COVID-19 pandemic first hit the United States in 2020.

In both the spring and fall 2020 semesters the majority of sections were only offered online. Not only did the type of classes offered completely change, the amount of classes students were enrolled in plummeted by 3,509. The world was shut down, so naturally schools were essentially shut down too. 

During the spring 2021 semester, there were marginal changes in the kinds of sections offered, but things weren’t all too different from the prior year. However, things started looking up in the fall, which is when the climb back to normality in schooling had its very early beginnings.

In Fall 2021, enrollment in face to face sections jumped from 907 to 4,074 and enrollment in fully online classes dropped from 19,033 to 16,317. This time period also saw enrollment in hybrid sections rise, sections that are partially in-person and online, from 723 to 1,539. Although face to face enrollments would drop the following spring semester, things were still trending in the right direction.

Fall 2022 is when face to face enrollment really began to skyrocket. Face to face enrollment went all the way up to 5,375, a major increase from springs 3,440. Hybrid enrollment numbers went up by 1,000 and enrollment in fully online sections continued to trend downwards. 

As of spring 2023, enrollment in face to face sections and hybrid sections are seeing highs that haven’t been seen since before the pandemic. While things are not completely how they used to be, the plummet caused by the pandemic and the slow climb back to normality that followed it is clear.