Californians socked away more money for college at the start of pandemic. Will it continue?

The first five months of 2020 have featured record numbers: jobless claims, market crashes and — perhaps counterintuitively — college savings.

California’s state-sponsored college savings program, ScholarShare 529, reported a 17 percent increase in account contributions and a 24 percent increase in account openings this year as compared to the same timeframe in 2019.

The pandemic has depressed growth in recent weeks relative to first quarter numbers, but officials say that 2020 is still a record year for college investment.

“Every year we expect to grow more than the previous year,” said Julio Martinez, executive director of the ScholarShare Investment Board. “[But] we’ve never experienced something like this.”

Martinez noted that 2019 was a particularly low growth year for the program, which he attributed to the government shutdown and trade war, among other causes. Those low numbers — which include a decrease in new accounts from 2018 to 2019 — could magnify the year-to-year increase from last year to this one.

Still, Martinez said, the 2020 numbers indicate that parents are prioritizing college savings in their investment portfolios.

ScholarShare 529, which oversees tax-advantaged college savings plans, has over 330,000 investors, the majority of whom make under $100,000.

This year, the program saw its best March numbers since 2013. Board members expected that growth would hit a sharp decline when the COVID-19 economic crisis set in, but the increase has persisted through May.

Martinez ascribed the trend to families reevaluating spending priorities amid the pandemic.

He noted that some traditional expenditures — such as entertainment, transportation and extracurricular activities — are not an option at the moment, perhaps prompting parents to redirect their money toward higher education.

COVID-19’s disproportionate impact on non-college-educated workers — many of whom cannot work from home — could also have contributed to the uptick, Martinez suggested.

Some trends at ScholarShare are less encouraging.

ScholarShare’s matching grant program, designed in 2018 specifically for low-income families, usually sees 80 to 110 applications per month. February’s totals were “strong,” Martinez said. May saw just 20 applicants.

That figure reflects how COVID-19 has disproportionately impacted low-income families, Martinez said. Still, he noted that the matching grant program represents a small portion of total savings plans purchased by parents in lower income brackets.

A March-April survey of 1,000 California parents who plan to save $250 or more for college in the coming year indicated that the overwhelming majority of parents are both passionate and worried about paying for higher education. The questions did not address how COVID-19 has impacted savings plans.

The survey also revealed that families in Sacramento, Placer, Yolo and Nevada counties are slightly more passionate and concerned about college than other Californians and demonstrate greater knowledge of 529 plans.

Martinez credited those numbers in part to ScholarShare’s strong relationships with Sacramento, Yolo and Nevada counties through its workplace savings program, which unites employees — in this case, county workers — with savings resources.

This story was originally published May 30, 2020 at 5:00 AM.