No surprise: graduating into an economic downturn hurts your career and personal finances

Community college may be a counter-cyclical in demand in that during economic downturns, more unemployed people look to community colleges for education to prepare to switch careers into something that may have better job prospects (or figure that completing an unfinished degree while the job market is bad makes more sense than when the job market is good).

Of course state budget issues as they relate to funding (or lack thereof) can affect how much can be supplied.