The media spotlight has zeroed in on trade-focused workforce development when it comes to community colleges. But the vast majority of students still attend public two-year colleges that are transfer-focused.
This fall, nearly 2.2 million students enrolled in high-transfer public two-year colleges, compared to 950,906 who enrolled in high-vocational two-year colleges and 1.7 million who attended mixed-transfer institutions, according to a new enrollment report from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. All three program focuses have seen steady increases since the Covid pandemic, but the number of students enrolling in high-transfer colleges hasn’t reached pre-Covid figures.
Still, the data show the percentage of students attending the type of two-year college has shifted since the pandemic. Vocational-focused public two-year colleges now comprise 19.7% of enrollment in the sector, up from 15% in 2020. Meanwhile, transfer-focused colleges have seen their enrollment percentage drop from 50.2% in 2020 to 45.4% this fall. Mixed-transfer colleges have held steady over the same period at about 35%.
