Higher education enrollments declined again in fall 2022, according to new data: some observations

How is American higher education enrollment doing now, in fall 2022?

A few hours ago the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center published the first account of its enrollment data for this term. For some, perhaps many people, this is the first post-pandemic semester, and that gives rise to the question: did enrollment rebound after its COVID-19 drops? That had been a brutal period, overall, as colleges and universities suffered a more than 7% decline after 2019.

Here I’ll offer a summary of the new findings along with some reflections. For sources, I’m working from this web publication, in addition to a press release and news briefing.

tl;dr version — enrollment declined overall, again, this time by 1.1%. The good news: the rate of decline is less steep than it has been during the two prior COVID years.

Let’s break it down in detail.

Note: this is the Clearinghouse’s first release for fall data. They will add and refine data over the next two months. I’ll host their research lead on the Future Trends Forum to discuss it later this year.

Onward:

Undergraduate and graduate schools both saw declines. Grad schools experienced a 1% dip while undergraduates declined by 1.1%. While negative, these numbers are not so bad as the 2.1 and 3.4% drops during pandemic fall terms (2020 and 2021…