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The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is consuming all of us professionally and personally. In the midst of this crisis, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that other critically important activities are occurring —including the 2020 Census!

For college students, completing the decennial census form has always created confusion—and the COVID-19 pandemic has only exacerbated this confusion. You can help by informing students, colleagues, and administrators about the importance of not only responding, but also responding accurately. An accurate, inclusive census is essential to ensuring the production of reliable data about the nation’s changing demographics. Likewise, towns, cities, and counties where many PAA members live and work have high college student populations—these are areas that will not get their fair share of the $1.5 trillion in yearly federal funding if college students are undercounted.

Please remind college students, faculty, and administrators of the following:

• College students are supposed to be counted at their “normal” place of residence on April 1. For many students, this is the location of their college or university. Students should still be counted as residents at their “normal” address during the academic year even though they have left campus.
• Students who live in on-campus or college-owned housing are counted as part of the Census Bureau’s group quarters enumeration. However, university administrators should be working with the Census Bureau to ensure their group quarters are classified and residents counted appropriately. College administrators should have chosen earlier between providing the numbers for their housing units themselves or dropping off individual census forms for residents. If they chose dropping off individual questionnaires, it is now possible to change to the option of the administration providing the data.
• Students who live at home normally should be included in their household’s response form.

The Census Bureau has produced a short video and fact sheet to clarify how college students are to be counted in the 2020 Census.

Prominent demographer and PAA member Dudley Poston authored an article on this topic in a recent issue of The Conversation.

PAA members Reynolds Farley and Lisa Neidert have provided estimates of the percent of the total population who are enrolled in college for cities of 65,000 or more from the 2018 American Community Survey. This information may be useful for people living in those cities.

Please consider sharing these resources with your students, colleagues, and administrators. Be sure to remind everyone there are three ways to respond to the 2020 Census—by mail, phone, or online.