College enrollment grew for the first time since the pandemic started

Colleges and universities are reporting an increase in people pursuing degrees this semester for the first time since the coronavirus pandemic disrupted higher education. But the number of freshmen is falling, and the gains come from elsewhere.

A snapshot of fall head counts released Thursday by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center shows undergraduate enrollment this fall is 2.1% higher than in fall 2022 and 1.2% higher than in fall 2021.

Growth at historically Black colleges and universities, up 6.1% from the previous fall, has outpaced the overall undergraduate enrollment growth. Black, Hispanic and Asian students accounted for most of the undergraduate and graduate enrollment growth this fall. Enrollment of White students continued to fall at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.

Community colleges accounted for nearly 60% of the growth in undergraduate enrollment. Dual-enrollment programs, which let high school students take college classes, continue to fuel the rise in head counts at community colleges. Dual-enrolled students account for 40% of the total increase in community college enrollments over the last two years, said Doug Shapiro, the research center’s executive director.

“This is good news for community colleges and for the growing numbers of continuing and returning students who had lost momentum from the start of the pandemic,” Shapiro said.

Yet freshmen enrollment declined by 3.6%, reversing fall 2022 gains. Bachelor’s programs at public and private nonprofit four-year institutions accounted for almost all the decline in first-year students.

Shapiro suspects that highly selective schools are returning to a more standard class size after lifting admission during the pandemic, but he said it was difficult to know for certain and it may also be that families are saying no thank you to high-priced schools. Meanwhile, community colleges largely stabilized their enrollment of freshmen.

“It’s hard to know what’s really driving this divergence between freshmen and continuing students, but it’s certainly counterintuitive,” Shapiro said on a call with reporters Wednesday. “It’s possible that some of this can be accounted for by … students staying in longer because they need more time to complete their degree.”

Graduate enrollment, the report found, increased slightly this fall, up 0.7%, with continued growth in graduate certificate programs. Students more broadly continue to gravitate toward shorter-term credentials, with enrollments in undergraduate certificate programs climbing 9.9%, compared to 3.6% for associate degrees and just 0.9% for bachelor’s degrees.

“What we’re seeing is a continuing trend of students electing to pursue shorter-term programs,” Shapiro said.

The data capture head counts through Sept. 28 at more than half of the institutions that report to the Clearinghouse, representing 9.6 million undergraduate and graduate students. While the report is a closely watched indicator of sector-wide trends, the estimates are based on preliminary and partial data. Still, Shapiro says the numbers are unlikely to change too much by the time the complete data are released in January.