A recent report from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center shows that undergraduate enrollment at primarily online institutions, where more than 90 percent of students enrolled exclusively online before the pandemic, increased by 4.9 percent, mainly due to the growth in the number of part-time students.
However, community colleges are showing the steepest decline (-18.9%) followed by public four-year institutions (-10.5%), and private nonprofit four-year institutions (-8.5%). The large declines in community college freshmen are concentrated among Native Americans, Blacks, Hispanics, the report said.
“The big picture remains the same after the inclusion of data for an additional 4.4 million students,” Doug Shapiro, executive director of the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, said in a statement. “The latest data update shows community colleges and freshmen continuing to show the steepest drops in enrollment, while the declines among undergraduates generally have deepened.”
Fall 2019’s upward enrollment trend among Hispanic students is now reversed, largely due to a double-digit drop at community colleges, the report said.
Roughly two months into the fall semester, drawing data from 76.0 percent of institutions and 13.6 million students reported as of Oct 22, the report finds that undergraduate enrollment has slipped further in all types of institutions. Undergraduate enrollment is down 4.4 percent while graduate enrollment is up 2.9 percent.
Among undergraduate students, Native Americans continue to see the steepest decline overall (-9.6%), followed by Blacks (-7.5%), Whites (-6.6%), Hispanics (-5.4%), and Asians (-3.1%).
Out of all 50 states, only five states (Idaho, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Utah, and West Virginia) have seen more undergraduate students this fall than last fall. The steepest decline was seen in South Dakota (-12.4%), followed by New Mexico (-9.7%) and Alaska and Indiana (-9.2% each).
International students decreased severely at the undergraduate level (-14.9%) and were still the only student group that experienced declines in graduate enrollment (-7.8%).
The Research Center currently collects data from nearly 3,600 postsecondary institutions, which represent 97% of the nation’s postsecondary enrollments in degree-granting institutions, as of 2018. Clearinghouse data track enrollments nationally and are not limited by institutional and state boundaries
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