Undergraduate-Enrollment Picture Worsens as Pandemic Drags On

The latest enrollment data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center show what is, by now, a familiar pattern in the wake of the pandemic: Undergraduate attendance is trending down.

The data, released on Thursday, reveal that undergraduate enrollment has slipped by 4.4 percent, compared with the same time last year. In the center’s last snapshot of enrollment, reported last month,undergraduate attendance was down 4 percent.

Graduate enrollment continues to be a bright spot. It’s up 2.9 percent over last fall, a rise from the 2.7-percent increase reported in October.

Although undergraduate enrollment is much better than what some observers expected in the pandemic’s early days, “the big picture remains the same,” said Doug Shapiro, executive director of the research center.

The dropoff in national freshman enrollment is still steep, at 13 percent, though slightly less than the 16-percent drop reported last month. And the downward trends in the enrollment of various demographic groups and at certain institution types continued.

The new data, which reflect enrollment as of October 22, are based on 13.6 million students at 76 percent of the nearly 3,600 institutions reporting to the organization.

Here are three takeaways from the center’s report on the data: