Community colleges remain the strongest-performing sector in higher education enrollment, even as overall undergraduate growth appears to be slowing this fall, according to preliminary data released today by the National Student Clearinghouse (NSC) Research Center.
Overall, undergraduate enrollment grew just 0.6% this fall, down sharply from 2.4% growth a year ago, the report found. Community colleges were the only sector to post meaningful gains, with enrollment increasing 1.2%, while enrollment at public four-year institutions rose just 0.3% and private nonprofit four-year institutions were essentially flat. “Primarily associate-degree-granting baccalaureate institutions” (PABs) — which count as community colleges in the NSC data — are also seeing gains, with an increase of 1.7%.
“The important change this fall isn’t a widespread decline,” Matthew Holsapple, senior director of research at the Clearinghouse, said in a press briefing. “Enrollment is still slightly higher than it was a year ago. The important change is the loss of that broad-based growth we saw last year.”
The preliminary report is based on a panel of nearly 8 million enrollments representing about 46% of institutions reporting data to the Clearinghouse. The annual report provides an early look at enrollment patterns before the release of final enrollment data in January, which will include more complete institutional participation and additional data on student populations.
Dual enrollment again fuels growth
One of the strongest enrollment gains came among students age 17 and younger, whose enrollment increased 3.9% among all types of institutions. For community colleges, it’s higher, at 5.2%, compared to 4.0% last fall.
Holsapple noted that many of those students are participating in dual-enrollment programs and that the trend is helping sustain enrollment gains at community colleges.
“It’s the one place where the trend really has continued,” he said of younger students’ enrollment growth.
The continued strength of dual enrollment comes as colleges and universities begin confronting concerns about the long-anticipated demographic cliff and a shrinking pool of traditional-age college students.
Enrollment among 18-year-olds at all institutions declined -0.7% this fall, a potential early sign of the demographic pressures.
“This is the year that people have been looking to,” Holsapple said. “We do see, compared to last year, a small decline in those students. Whether we’re seeing a blip or the start of that enrollment cliff, we’ll want to see how those numbers hold up.”
At community colleges, the decline among students age 18 was also -0.7%. Students ages 19 to 20 enrolling at community college saw a 2.0% increase, while those ages 21 to 24 saw a -1.8% decline. Those 25 to 29 saw a 1.1% bump.
Workforce fields remain strong
The report indicates that enrollment growth in certificate programs has cooled. Certificate enrollment increased just 0.6% this fall, compared with 5.9% growth a year ago. However, Holsapple cautioned against reading too much into that slowdown.
“I think it’s probably more of a slowdown-enrollment story overall than specifically a concern about certificate programs,” he said.
Several workforce-oriented fields continue to attract students, particularly at community colleges. Healthcare professions (up 4.3%) and mechanic and repair technologies/technicians (up 6.1%) continued an upward swing in the sector.
In contrast, computer science continues to experience significant enrollment declines after years of rapid growth. At two-year colleges, enrollment this fall in computer and information sciences and support services slid -12.3%, following a -5.9% dip last fall.
Overall, undergraduate computer science enrollment is down -18.4% over two years at four-year institutions and -17.5% at two-year colleges. Graduate computer science enrollment has fallen an even more dramatic -27.1% over the same period.
“Those are just remarkable declines for a field that, until recently, had been one of the fastest-growing areas that we’ve seen in higher education,” Holsapple said.
Racial enrollment patterns
The report shows undergraduate enrollment increasing 2.7% among Black students and posting slight gains among Hispanic students, while enrollment declined among White students.
At community colleges, White student enrollment appears to continue to trend downward, with a -4.1% decrease, following a -0.3% drop last fall. Asian and Black students have seen an increase of 1.8% each, followed by multi-racial (1.1%) and Hispanic (0.9%) students.
However, Clearinghouse officials urged caution in interpreting those numbers because of a growing number of students whose race or ethnicity is categorized as missing or unknown. That group now represents about 15% of undergraduate enrollments in the preliminary sample. It’s larger at community colleges, 18.5%. Over a two-year period (fall 2024 to fall 2026), it is at more than half (52.1%) in the sector.
“We want to represent students in the data how they choose to be represented,” Holsapple said. “But with more students choosing not to identify race, it does make it harder to understand some of those smaller fluctuations in racial and ethnic enrollment patterns.”
The category includes students who don’t self-report their race/ethnicity and colleges that don’t report the information, Holsapple said. The preliminary report doesn’t break that down, but last year, students who didn’t report made up a quarter of the missing/unknown data, he said.
