Colleges experience sharpest freshmen enrollment decline since start of pandemic, new data shows
New data shows this year’s college freshman figures represent the sharpest fall for first-year enrollment since the COVID-19 pandemic.
While overall undergraduate enrollment rose for the second year in a row, freshmen enrollment has dropped by 5 percent from last year.
The National Student Clearinghouse Research Center (NSCRC) has released new data that shows this year’s college freshman figures represent the sharpest fall for first-year enrollment since the COVID-19 pandemic.
While overall undergraduate enrollment rose for the second year in a row, freshmen enrollment has dropped by 5 percent from last year.
[RELATED: Education Department delays FAFSA for the second year in a row]
“It is startling to see such a substantial drop in freshmen, the first decline since the start of the pandemic in 2020 when they plunged nearly 10%,” NSCRC Executive Director Doug Shapiro stated in an Oct. 23 press release. “But the gains among students either continuing from last year or returning from prior stop outs are keeping overall undergraduate numbers growing, especially at community colleges, and that’s at least some good news for students and schools alike.”
“It takes the size of the incoming class back to pre-2022 levels,” Shapiro said of the first-year enrollment decline in comments made to Inside Higher Ed.
Shapiro also told Inside Higher Ed that the enrollment decline is particularly alarming for the future of higher education, noting that such trends tend to have staying power.
“The nearest precedent we have for this is fall 2020, when we saw a 7 percent plunge in freshmen,” he said. “We tracked them for the next two years and found an infinitesimal number of them coming back next year or the year after. Based on that, prospects of a rebound are low.”
As noted by the outlet, the enrollment decline seems primarily due to the U.S. Department of Education’s handling of FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) administration for the 2024-2025 cycle.
A significantly delayed application rollout led many students to adjust or even abandon their college plans altogether, prompting the House Committee on Education and the Workforce to subpoena Education Secretary Miguel Cardona in July.
“Instead of taking these concerns seriously,” Congresswoman Virginia Foxx wrote in an open letter to Cardona in May, “the Biden Administration proceeded to channel extensive resources away from congressionally mandated responsibilities, including the return to repayment and FAFSA simplification, and toward projects that were not sanctioned by Congress at all, including the Biden Administration’s illegal loan forgiveness scheme.”
Bill De Baun, senior director at the National College Attainment Network (NCAN), told Inside Higher Ed that the data on freshman enrollment closely aligns with year-over-year FAFSA completion rates.
“This really reconfirms the strong connection between FAFSA completion and enrollment,” De Baun said. “The reason we pay so much attention to FAFSA completion isn’t for its own sake—it’s because these numbers move so tightly in line with one another.”
FAFSA completion by high school seniors dropped by 8.8 percent from 2023 to 2024, NCAN data shows. Over the same period, freshman enrollment at public, four-year colleges and universities fell by 8.5 percent, according to NSCRC data.
Campus Reform has reached out to NSCRC and NCAN for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.