College Enrollments Decline For Third Straight Year Amid Strong Job Market, Student Debt Fears

College enrollment across the United States continues to decline, squashing higher education officials’ hopes of a post-Covid rebound in college-going rates, according to new data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.

Across the board undergraduate headcounts fell by 1.1% this fall—a softer decline than the 3.1% drop in the fall of 2021, but Doug Shapiro, vice president of research and executive director of the research center, is still troubled by the numbers. Between the fall of 2020 and 2022, undergraduate college enrollment has declined by 4.2%.

“I certainly wouldn’t call this a recovery,” Shapiro says. “We’re seeing smaller declines, but when you’re in a deep hole, the fact that you’re only digging a tiny bit further is not really good news.”

He suspects that concerns about college affordability and student debt, as well as a strong labor market, could be keeping would-be college students from pursuing higher education. College remains at its most expensive ever—tuition at private, nonprofit four-year colleges costs an average of $38,070 per year during the 2021-22 academic year, and public four-year colleges are charging an average of $10,740, according to the most recent Trends in College Pricing and Student Aid report. The Biden Administration announced in August a plan to forgive up to $20,000 in existing federal student debt per borrower, but that wouldn’t help those taking on new debt and public attention before and after that announcement has served to keep student debt—and the burdens it places on drop outs, graduates and their families—in the news cycle.

And the labor market for workers without a college degree is still strong. The unemployment rate in September fell to 3.5%, and the number of manufacturing and construction jobs is on the rise. (Construction as a college major saw a surge in interest this fall, with the number of students pursuing associates degrees in the field rising by 7.4%). High school graduates that opted not to go to college during the last two years have yet to enroll, the Clearinghouse data shows.

“It appears that there is some evidence for stopped-out students returning to their undergraduate programs,” Shapiro says, “but we’re not seeing a return of what we might call the lost freshman of fall 2020 and fall 2021. They’re not coming in as freshmen at this point.”

Freshman enrollment at public, four-year colleges dropped by 2.4% this fall compared with the year prior, and freshman enrollment at private, four-year colleges fell by 3.1%.

But community colleges did see an uptick in first-year student enrollments this fall. Freshman enrollment at public, two-year colleges increased by about 1 percent. And overall community college headcounts declined by only 0.4%—a much needed break from the steep enrollment drops earlier in the pandemic. Last fall, total community college enrollment fell by 5%.

Highly selective institutions (those that enroll fewer than one third of their applicants) welcomed more freshmen than usual last year as admitted students who had been given the option of deferring enrollment in the fall of 2020, during the height of the pandemic, showed up. These schools’ freshman enrollments fell back to more normal levels this semester, Shapiro says.

“They did have a significant gap year phenomenon,” he says. Freshman that did not enroll in the fall 2020 came back in 2021.

Student interests are changing. For the second year in a row, fewer students are pursuing degrees related to health professions, despite a small uptick in interest at the beginning of the pandemic. Computer and information science was popular this fall, with more students pursuing the degrees in this field at the associates, bachelor’s and masters levels.

The Clearinghouse research center, which collects enrollment data from institutions each semester, released its first look at fall enrollment numbers on Thursday. A more solid picture of fall 2022 enrollment will be available later this season after all 3,600-some colleges submit their information. So far, 62% of participating colleges—which represent about 10.3 million students—have reported.