Dear Commons Community,
The National Student Clearinghouse Research Center issued its annual report this morning on college and university enrollments. In fall 2019, overall postsecondary enrollments decreased 1.3 percent or more than 231,000 students from the previous fall to 17.9 million students. All sectors experienced enrollment declines, with the largest drop in the private for-profit four-year sector (-2.1%), followed by the public two-year and four-year sectors (-1.4% and -1.2%, respectively) and the private nonprofit four-year sector (-0.6%). Public sector enrollment (two-year and four-year combined) declined by 1.3 percent (174,518 students) this fall.
However, the enrollment decreases were not uniform throughout the country. Utah, which experienced almost 5-percent growth, was one of 15 states that saw enrollments rise this fall relative to the fall of 2018. But Alaska had it the worst, with a dropoff of more than 10 percent. You can access the map below here and see the percentage change for each state.
Tony
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Small private colleges are already failing (College of New Rochelle, Dowling College) in part because of shrinking demographics. Many more will fail when the enrollment cliff arrives in 2026.
Brian,
Thank you for the comment. I too am concerned about small private not-for-profit colleges that are tuition driven.
Tony