College Enrollment Continues to Rebound, but Slowly

• A new report shows that undergraduate enrollment rose 2.5% in spring 2024.
• This follows a 1.2% increase last fall.
• Overall, enrollment numbers still fall far below pre-pandemic totals.
• HBCUs continue to gain students, as do STEM and vocational fields.

Finally some good news for an industry desperate for it: Higher education enrollment is up.

According to a new report from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, undergraduate enrollment rose 2.5% in spring 2024, adding some 359,000 students. This upward trajectory marks the second consecutive semester of enrollment growth following last fall's 1.2% increase.

Still, overall enrollment lags behind pre-pandemic figures and falls well short of the totals in 2011, when the downward trend began.

Community Colleges Lead Enrollment Growth

More than half of the enrollment growth (55.7%) occurred among community colleges, which gained over 200,000 students since spring 2023, an increase of 4.7%.

That's certainly welcome news for a sector ravaged by the pandemic. Yet here again, even as community college enrollment continues to claw back, it remains far shy of figures from its peak more than a decade ago. In 2010, community colleges enrolled about 11 million students. By 2021, that number had dropped to 6.7 million.

Even with these recent gains, community college enrollment remains 12.4% below spring 2020 numbers, the report points out.

What's more, some of this growth within community colleges comes from dual enrollment. The number of high school students dually enrolled in community colleges increased by 10%, accounting for more than 28% of the overall undergraduate increases.

At the same time, the number of adult students at community colleges also grew, by 3.8%, for the first time since 2020.

Across higher education, enrollment growth constitutes a tide lifting all boats. Every sector of the system experienced increases. Four-year publics saw a 1.2% increase; privates, a 1.9% bump. Graduate enrollment rose by 3%.

And undergraduate certificate programs grew their enrollment numbers by 3.6%, continuing an upward trend.

Nontraditional student enrollment also rose last spring: The number of adult students (21 and older) attending community colleges increased for the first time since 2020, by 3.8%.

Among first-year students, enrollment grew by 3.9%, a figure once again driven largely by community colleges (6.2%). In fact, private four-year nonprofit colleges saw a 1.5% drop in first-year students.

Gender balance continues to elude higher education, however. The growth rate of first-year female students (3.2%) outpaced that of male students (2.2%).

Historically Black College Enrollments Top Pre-Pandemic Levels

Historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) continue to enjoy a renaissance that's helping to boost enrollments.

Last spring, enrollments across these institutions grew by 3.5%, or 9,000 students. Most of that increase occurred at the undergraduate level.

Thanks to this recent surge, HBCU enrollments now stand 3% above pre-pandemic spring 2020 levels.

More broadly, college attendance is up across much of the nation. All told, 44 states experienced enrollment growth, led by Georgia at 6.1%.

Not surprisingly, given demographic trends over the past generation, undergraduate enrollment increases in the South (3.3%) and West (3.4%) outpaced those in the Northeast and Midwest (both 1.2%).

STEM and Trade Fields Continue Rapid Growth

Another unsurprising trend is the continued ascension of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields. Among majors at the baccalaureate level, computer and information science led the pack with an almost 10% growth rate over one year.

Engineering posted a 6.1% increase, while agriculture (7.6%), business management (3.2%), and health professions (3.4%) also experienced significant growth.

At the community college level, vocational fields continued to gain popularity. Mechanic and repair technologies grew by 14.2% over last year, and precision production (10.2%) and construction trades (8.1%) also spiked.

Good news for foodies, too: Culinary services enrollments grew by 7.7%.

On the other end of the scale, general studies in the liberal arts and humanities grew by only 0.8%.

It might be tempting to conclude that the enrollment growth across higher education is a result of the student market slowly right-sizing itself following the pandemic interruptions, but colleges will no doubt take this as a positive sign and perhaps a promise of more good things to come.

Despite surveys continuing to reveal waning confidence in higher education and qualms about value and returns on investment, students are beginning to return to college.