In Brief:
This past spring, there were an estimated 9 million undergraduates enrolling in college. That may be the high point for a while. By 2029, the number of high school seniors entering college for the first time could see a drop of nine percent, for four-year schools, to 13 percent, for two-year institutions.
This year, smaller colleges have been closing at a rate of about one per week — up from once a month in 2023.
In large part, that’s due to the declining numbers of college-age kids. Birth rates started dropping with the recession in 2008 — making up the class that will be high school juniors in the fall — and have not fully recovered. Colleges and universities that were already nervous about this were dealt another blow this year, when problems with the federal financial aid form led to serious delays in applications and enrollments.
University enrollment also took a significant hit due to the pandemic, when enrollment dropped by 9.4 percent. “We lost 1.1 million students between 2019 and 2023,” says Doug Shapiro, vice president of research at the National Student Clearinghouse. “And we’ve only in the fall of 2023 seen any growth at all.”
There’s one more hurdle colleges and universities have to overcome. The current crop of teenagers are more likely than past generations to question the value of higher education. According to a recent Gallup poll, 74 percent of teens aged 13 to 17 plan on attending college. That’s an 11 percentage point drop over the past 20 years, which is largely due to the ever-increasing costs of tuition.
Are There Solutions?
All of this adds up to a cloudy future for higher ed. For the most part, the top schools will be fine. Even with projected overall declines in enrollment, “top-ranked schools will still have more enrolled students in 2029” than they had in 2020, according to the consulting firm McKinsey and Company.
For smaller universities, however, things won’t be as easy. Shapiro points out that “community colleges with an academic or transfer focus” have seen their enrollment rates drop by 20 percent since 2019.
There are some reasons for hope. Young people who are not currently enrolled make up the 15 percent of Americans who have some college but didn’t obtain a degree. That’s a big pool of people who’ve already demonstrated real interest in higher ed. Getting them back to finish the credits they need would help colleges increase their enrollment rates.
That’s easier said than done, of course. Once students leave college, returning becomes a distant dream for many of them. They prioritize work, while some have families. Colleges may have to offer more options for returning students — and keeping students who are considering dropping out.
That may look like offering even more flexibility in scheduling or figuring out how to offer more appealing courses online. Shapiro adds that returning students are looking for something pragmatic, being more likely to pursue courses that relate directly to their careers.
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