College Enrollment Trends and Statistics: 2024-2025

Millions of high school seniors apply to college every year— and they’re not the only ones. Older students, graduate students, remote learners, and career changers make up a diverse and changing student population.

This report covers the latest college enrollment estimates provided by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center (NSCRC) and also includes data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) and the U.S. Census Bureau.

Keep reading to learn about the number of college students in the U.S. and how it compares to previous years.

According to NSCRC estimates, during the spring 2025 academic term, about 18.4 million students were enrolled at a postsecondary institution, including over 15 million undergraduates and about 3.1 million graduate students.

Bachelor’s degree programs are the most popular programs by enrollment. Below are the NSCRC’s 2025 spring enrollment estimates for various degree and other credential-granting programs.

The greatest number of college students are enrolled at public four-year universities (7.4 million), followed by public two-year colleges (4.7 million) and private nonprofit four-year colleges (3.9 million).

One million students are enrolled at primarily associate-degree granting baccalaureate institutions (PABs). PABs mostly offer two-year programs but may have some bachelor’s degree programs, and include community colleges that grant bachelor’s degrees.

Around 900,000 students attend for-profit four-year colleges.

Spring enrollment in 2025 was up 3.2% compared to the previous academic year. It’s the greatest increase in college enrollment in the U.S. in recent years.

In the years following the COVID-19 pandemic, the country experienced a college enrollment decline and other pandemic-related challenges in higher education. This decline was mostly driven by undergraduate enrollment. Graduate student enrollment actually increased slightly in the years following the pandemic.

College enrollment trended up again for the first time in fall 2023.

New student enrollment can help predict future enrollment patterns, so sometimes we look specifically at first-year college student enrollment.

While there is not yet preliminary data for spring 2025, as recently as fall 2024, first-year student enrollment was up 5.5% compared to the previous year. Enrollment gains were stronger among older first-year students — aged 21-24 (+16.7%) and 25 and older (+19.7%) — than among traditionally aged first-year students (+3.4%).

NCES has projected that undergraduate enrollment levels will increase slightly through 2031.

Historical data shows a continuous rise in college enrollment from 1970-2010, followed by a gradual enrollment decline from 2010-2020 and a steeper drop after 2020. NCES accounted for the anticipated impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on enrollment to project future trends. The organization estimated a 9% increase in undergraduate enrollment from 2021-2031.

According to NCES projections for undergraduates in 2021-2031:

In the following sections, we’ll examine the demographic makeup of currently enrolled college students by gender, race, age, and income.

Women outnumber men in college and have since 1979.

In spring 2025, an estimated 8.3 million women and 6.1 million men were enrolled in undergraduate programs. About 1.8 million women and 1.1 million men were enrolled in graduate programs. Six percent of college students (roughly 1 million) did not disclose their gender.

Neither NCES nor NSCRC report on nonbinary students, transgender students, intersex students, or other students outside of the male/female or man/woman binary. However, in 2022, LGBTQ+ educator and expert Genny Beemyn, Ph.D., analyzed over 1.2 million college applications, and found that 2.15% of college applicants were trans or nonbinary.

According to NSCRC estimates, there’s no one racial majority in college enrollments. However, white students are the largest racial or ethnic group, comprising 39% of undergraduate students and 41% of graduate students. Hispanic students are the next largest group, comprising 18% of undergraduate students and 10% of graduate students.

It’s important to consider that a substantial number of students — 19% of undergraduate students and 21% of graduate students — did not report their race or ethnicity.

Research has linked racially diverse colleges with positive student outcomes. However, in the past year, an increasing number of states have passed anti-diversity, equity, and inclusion legislation impacting higher education. Such legislation threatens scholarships, research institutes, and student resources that promote diversity.

Learn more about the state of diversity in higher education. Find in-depth enrollment data in our reporting on Hispanic and Latino/a college students and Asian American and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander students.

About 66% of undergraduate students are aged 18-24. About 10% are 17 or younger, including dual-enrollment students, who take both high school and college classes.

Perhaps surprisingly, nearly 17% of undergraduates (about 2.6 million) are aged 30 or older.

Graduate students are generally older than undergraduate students. Even so, the majority of graduate students (56%) are under 30.

Between spring 2024 and spring 2025, college enrollment levels increased in nearly every U.S. state but six: Alaska, Idaho, Missouri, Nebraska, Oregon, and Vermont.

Utah saw the greatest increase in college enrollments — up 9% from 2024.

College enrollment rates generally correlate with a state’s population. Larger states have more college students. However, more college students are enrolled in online degree programs than in any one state other than Texas and California.