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Dear Commons Community,
The Chronicle of Higher Education reported bad news and good news yesterday regarding enrollment in our country’s colleges and universities. First-time freshmen enrollment is down considerably while overall enrollment is up. Here is an excerpt courtesy of The Chronicle.
“Freshman enrollment declined 5 percent this fall, the first drop since the start of the pandemic in 2020, according to preliminary enrollment data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.
Four-year public and private nonprofit colleges saw the largest declines in first-year students (-8.5 percent and -6.5 percent, respectively) compared with the same time last fall. Meanwhile, freshman enrollment fell by 0.4 percent at community colleges.
The center’s data, released in a new report yesterday, provide a partial snapshot of an especially turbulent enrollment cycle defined by the disastrous rollout of the new Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). For months, technical errors with the form and numerous delays in the transmission of FAFSA data to colleges disrupted the admissions and financial-aid process at institutions nationwide.
The 2023-24 enrollment cycle was also the first since the U.S. Supreme Court banned the consideration of race in admissions, which injected further uncertainty into this fall’s enrollment equation. Demographic shifts continue to alter the racial and socioeconomic diversity of high-school graduates. And concerns about the cost of college and student debt remain top of mind for many lower-income students.
“It’s very hard to pinpoint any single cause of the changes, particularly in freshmen, this fall,” Doug Shapiro, the center’s executive director, said during a news conference on Tuesday. “There have been so many different headwinds, and so I hesitate to single any of these out.”
Despite the substantial decline in freshmen, the center’s new report reveals that overall enrollment is up 3 percent over all — the second straight year that higher education saw an increase (last year’s was up 2.1 percent). This fall’s uptick, Shapiro said, was driven by gains in non-freshman undergraduates and high-school students participating in dual-enrollment programs (who are counted as undergraduates but not as freshmen).
Both bachelor’s- and associate-degree programs saw enrollment growth (1.9 percent and 4.3 percent, respectively) this fall. There was a 2.1-percent uptick in enrollment in graduate programs. And more students are seeking shorter-term credentials: Enrollment in undergraduate certificate programs increased by 7.3 percent over last year.”
Bad news and good news indeed!
Tony
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