The Enrollment Cliff Is Worse Than We Think
Beth Kania-Gosche
October 27, 2025
The challenge is far greater if we pay attention to college-readiness data.
These days, department chairs and faculty have to prove their “low enrollment” programs have a right to exist. The volume of data is overwhelming: yield rates, discount rates, retention risk scores, graduation rates, return on investment—all of which may be displayed in program viability dashboards. But higher education is largely missing the most crucial data—the current high school context. College freshmen are less prepared than they were last year, five years ago and even 30 years ago. The enrollment cliff is actually much worse than higher education acknowledges if declining college-readiness scores are taken into account.
Rarely do higher education administrators use information about K–12 schools for anything other than sorting high schools for admissions activities. But this crucial data tells the story of today’s high school students, not just the small subset competing for highly selective admission. Last year’s high school seniors scored the lowest in reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress since the assessment was started in 1992. Only 22 percent of 12th graders performed at the proficient level in math last year, the lowest level since that test started in 2005. The average ACT score has been dropping, down to 19.4 in 2024, while college admissions only becomes more competitive.
