American higher education enrollment decline returns to pre-pandemic level

How is higher education enrollment changing?

This week the invaluable National Student Clearinghouse Research Center published their latest data on American college and university enrollment.
Today I’ll summarize the findings, then point to implications for academia’s future.

tl;dr summary — the pandemic enrollment crisis is over, and now total enrollment has returned to its 2013–2019 level of gradual, albeit uneven decline.

Starting with the big picture, total American post-secondary enrollment dropped by 0.5% from spring 2022 to spring 2023, from 16,963,053 to 16,878,602. (For historical context, spring enrollment stood at 18,154,038 in 2019, 17,944,635 in 2020, and 17,511,906 in 2021.)

Broken down by institutional type, for-profits and community colleges enjoyed an uptick this past semester. Community colleges’ good fortune depends mostly on the rise of dual enrollment (i.e., high school) students. In contrast, public and private four-year institutions saw declines:

Separating out data by degree level, the Clearinghouse assessed that “overall undergraduate enrollment remained stable for the spring term,” dipping down only by 0.2%, or 25,000 students. In contrast, graduate schools saw their…