New enrollment numbers: a mixed bag

How is higher education enrollment changing?

Today the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center published its first analysis of student numbers for fall 2024. This is important data, as ever, and I’ll dig into it with this post.

tl;dr version — it’s a mixed bag. Total enrollment rose, but a key indicator fell.

One caution: this is the first such report for the semester, representing just over one half of the Center’s respondents’ data. They’ll revise this over the next few months.

The good news: total post-secondary enrollment rose 2.9% compared to fall 2023, with undergrad numbers rising 3% and grad school up 2.1%. The heart of this growth is to be found in community colleges, who are using dual enrollment (teaching high school students) to rebuild their classes for the third year in a row. For-profit colleges are also doing very well, seeing their numbers up 5%.

The main degree growth is not from graduate or undergrad degrees (not the BA, BS, MA, PhD, and so on), but from undergrad certificate seekers (a 7.3% rise).

There are other positive findings. The sophomore retention rate (the proportion of first-year students who return for their second year) did better, as the drop out rate decreased. Returning student numbers were higher. In terms of…