Digging Into Enrollment Numbers for Higher Education: Fall 2022 and Spring 2023
Walter Pearson
September 7, 2023
The National Student Clearinghouse Research Center publishes regular updates on term enrollments. Those reports provide us with useful insights.
A few key trends:
Enrollments by adult undergraduates continue to drop.
Nonprofit four-year colleges have bucked the trend of declining adult student enrollment with growth in graduate programs.
An interesting category of public two-year colleges that offer BAs have fared well in associate enrollments but have fared poorly in BA enrollments.
Community colleges are continuing to face enrollment challenges.
The rate at which high school students take college classes continues to increase, and enrollment among non-degree and non-certificate students continues to be strong.
Adult Student Enrollment Continues to Drop
Enrollment among adults (ages 25 and up) in undergraduate programs continues on a decline that started years ago (peaking in 2012) and is most acute in the purely associate-level community colleges. Over the last five years, enrollment among adult undergraduates in these public two-year institutions has declined by 25%. The for-profit sector has gained 11% over this period.
