After a methodological error led to an incorrect report that colleges’ freshman enrollment declined last fall, the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center released a full update on Thursday — showing that the number of first-time first-year students actually increased by 5.5 percent.
Total postsecondary enrollment also increased by 4.5 percent, rebounding to pre-pandemic levels for the first time. Undergraduate enrollment, up 4.7 percent, still lingered slightly behind 2019 levels.
Doug Shapiro, the research center’s executive director, said the 5-percent decline — the figure from the preliminary report — would normally have surprised researchers and merited further scrutiny. But last year’s botched FAFSA rollout, shifts in the economy and labor market, and mounting student debt all made an enrollment decline more expected, Shapiro said.
“Our sensitivity to abnormally large changes was somewhat reduced because we had a host of ready explanations for why we might be seeing these declines,” Shapiro said.
The supposed drop in freshmen was used as the basis for widespread media coverage about the grim state of higher ed and fueled predictions about more financial turmoil and campus closures, including in The Chronicle.
Freshman enrollment growth was driven by students over age 21, who enrolled at higher rates than 18-year-olds, a cohort that is still lagging at pre-pandemic numbers. Community colleges saw the highest growth rate among freshmen.
All racial and ethnic groups saw increases among first-year students. White students increased slightly, by 1 percent, but it was the group’s first uptick after declining for four consecutive years. Researchers cautioned that 50 percent more students this year than last year did not disclose their race and ethnicity.
Among traditional-age students over all, students in the lowest income bracket showed the highest rate of growth. As income increased, the rate of enrollment growth declined steadily.
Career-focused training programs in particular attracted more students this year. Enrollment in certificate programs was up by about 10 percent, outpacing enrollment increases for bachelor’s-degree (about 3 percent) and associate-degree (about 6 percent) programs. Certificate-program enrollments, typically highest at community colleges, made gains at for-profit and four-year institutions this year. For the second year in a row, public two-year colleges that focus on vocational programs saw double-digit growth.
Higher-education observers breathed a sigh of relief last week when the National Student Clearinghouse announced that its initial finding of a sharp decline in freshman enrollment was a mistake. In the preliminary report, a methodological error caused the mislabeling of certain students as dual-enrolled rather than as freshmen, which led freshmen totals to be undercounted and the number of dual-enrolled students to be overcounted.
Colleges are certainly facing headwinds: After 2025, the enrollment cliff — actually more of a gradual contraction — will begin as the number of high-school graduates declines nationally, driven by a lower birth rate since the 2008 economic recession. But we’re not quite there yet.
