A 5th Straight Semester of Enrollment Declines
Josh Moody
May 26, 2022
New data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center show total enrollment declined 4.1 percent since last spring. Community colleges are once again the sector hit the hardest.
Enrollment across all sectors of higher education continued to decline this past semester, extending a trend that began during the coronavirus pandemic, according to new data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. Total enrollment for spring 2022 fell by 4.1 percent.
The latest numbers mark the fifth semester in a row of declining overall enrollment. The report from spring 2020 counted 17.1 million students across all levels of higher education; that number is now 15.9 million.
The decline is even more marked at the undergraduate level, where NSC data show an enrollment drop of 4.7 percent for spring 2022. By the numbers, that means undergraduate enrollment fell by 662,000 students in spring 2022 and has dipped by around 1.4 million since the onset of the pandemic in 2020, according to the data released today.
