Enrollment, the lifeblood of colleges, has been the subject of a steady stream of research briefs that have come out this fall. They’ve shown, month by month and in close to real time, a downward enrollment trend among colleges reporting to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. Now the full picture is in.
The latest survey, released on Thursday, shows that total enrollment across higher education is down 2.5 percent. The latest data release reflects virtually the entirety of the postsecondary institutions that report to the center, or about 3,600 colleges, representing 97 percent of the nation’s postsecondary enrollments in degree-granting institutions. But this top-line drop in enrollment masks a fair amount of variation, as some pockets of the sector have fared better than others. Here is a closer look at some of the diverging trajectories among institutions and students:
Undergraduates vs. graduates
The decrease in undergraduate enrollment was the primary driver of the overall decline across the sector. Enrollment among undergraduates dropped 3.6 percent, or by more than 560,000 students, from the fall of 2019. The most notable drop was among first-time freshmen, who declined 13.1 percent. Despite concerns about a slowing number of high-school graduates, that demographic trend was not a factor in college enrollment, according to Doug Shapiro, executive director of the center. “The recession did not affect high-school graduates at all this spring,” he said on a call with reporters, “but it did affect college-freshman enrollment.” While the latest report doesn’t disaggregate students by race and ethnicity, previous analyses by the center showed steep drops among first-time Black, Hispanic, and Native American students in particular.
Meanwhile, graduate enrollment went up by the same percentage, 3.6 percent, that undergraduate enrollment fell, but the actual growth in the number of students enrolled in graduate or professional programs, nearly 99,000, was smaller than the drop in the number of undergraduates. Public four-year institutions, which experienced a 4.6-percent increase in graduate enrollment, accounted for the majority of this growth.
Community colleges vs. for-profit institutions
Early indications were that community-college enrollment had taken a nosedive, which the latest report confirms. Public two-year colleges saw a 10.1-percent decline in enrollment, or more than 540,000 students. A 21-percent drop in freshman enrollment at these institutions contributed the most to the decline. Enrollment at for-profit four-year colleges, after fluctuating according to previous reports, rose 5.3 percent, though it reflected a smaller group of students overall — an increase to 789,888 from 749,885. Notably, the median age of undergraduates at for-profit colleges was 31, about a decade older than the median of students attending other types of institutions.
Men vs. women
The drop in enrollment of men was more than seven times that of women — 5.1 percent for men vs. 0.7 percent for women — continuing a long-running trend. At four-year public institutions, the difference was particularly striking: Nearly 57,000 fewer men were in class this year compared with last fall, but there were over 71,000 more women.
Drops by discipline
One of the most surprising findings in the data, said Shapiro, was the decline in enrollment in some high-demand fields in community colleges, perhaps because some of the courses in those fields may be difficult to teach online. Students majoring in precision production dropped more than 18 percent, for example, while those majoring in mechanic and repair technologies, and in homeland security, law enforcement, and firefighting, fell by about 15 percent. At four-year colleges, the numbers of students majoring in English literature and language and foreign languages also fell, by more than 7 percent and 8 percent, respectively. Still, the news wasn’t all negative; other areas reported an upswing: Computer science and psychology each increased, by more than 5 percent and nearly 7 percent, respectively.
