Undergraduate Enrollment Stayed Steady This Spring. It’s Still 1 Million Students Below Pre-Pandemic Levels.

Undergraduate enrollment for the spring of 2023 remained stable from a year ago, according to new data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.

Undergraduate enrollment fell 0.2 percent, or 25,000 students, this spring compared to a year ago.

“We’re stabilizing at a level that’s still far below where we were before the pandemic,” said Doug Shapiro, executive director of the Research Center, in a call to the media.

The total number of undergraduates is nearly 1.2 million fewer than there were in the spring of 2020.

A bright spot in undergraduate enrollment occurred at community colleges, which was the hardest-hit sector over the past two years. Attendance at two-year institutions was up 0.5 percent this spring from a year ago. The growth was fueled by two trends among students under age 24 — an 8-percent increase in dual-enrolled high-school students and a 12.4-percent spike in freshmen, the data showed.

“The encouraging signs that we can see pointing toward recovery today, such as they are, are highly concentrated among high-school and traditional-age college students,” Shapiro said. “Older students continue to disappear from campuses across all sectors.”

Also on the decline were the number of students seeking bachelor’s degrees, the Clearinghouse said. Enrollments in bachelor’s-degree programs fell more sharply than those in associate-degree programs, while shorter-term certificate programs saw growth.

Shapiro said colleges are competing with the pull of the labor market and are up against the narrative surrounding college costs and student debt, particularly when it comes to enrolling older students. Yet students over age 24 — especially those with some college but no degree — could be a key demographic that colleges with flagging enrollments want to attract.

“Colleges and universities really need to think differently about the types of students that they can enroll and the types of programs and services that they can offer to bring those students in,” Shapiro said. “If we want to make progress on the credentials and skills that employers are looking for, that’s going to rely on older students coming back.”