Hoped-for gap year enrollment boom turns out to be a bust

Just 2% of students who graduated from high school in 2020 and didn’t immediately attend college ended up enrolling a year later this fall, dashing hopes that the large number of students who opted out of higher ed in the pandemic’s first year would enroll in 2021.
Those figures are according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, which found the overall gap year enrollment rate for the class of 2020 dropped slightly compared to previous classes, from 2.6% in 2018 and 2.2% in 2019.
The report also confirms preliminary research from March, which showed that lower shares of the 2020 high school graduating class immediately enrolled in college compared to the previous year’s cohort. Their enrollment rates dropped by 4 to 10 percentage points depending on high school type.