Colleges across the country and in California continue to lose undergraduate students, but the decline has slowed compared to the past two years, when the pandemic upended education, a national report shows.
According to preliminary fall 2022 data released Thursday by the National Student Research Center, California’s student enrollment is down 1.1 percent from last year.
Nationally, the undergraduate enrollment rate is also at 1.1 percent, a significant slowdown from the fall of 2021, when enrollment declined by 3.1 percent.
For the first time since the pandemic, the nationwide drop is steeper at four-year schools than at community colleges, which have benefited from a double-digit increase in the number of dual-enrollment high school students.
While highly selective colleges saw enrollment increases, less selective colleges saw larger losses.
“Enrollment continues to decline this semester. The rate of decline is slower than before, but after two consecutive years of historically large enrollment losses, it’s especially worrisome that the numbers aren’t bouncing back after that point, especially among freshmen,” said Doug Shapiro, National’s executive director. Clearinghouse Student Research Center.
“Even though the decline has slowed and there are some bright spots, the path to pre-pandemic enrollment levels is becoming increasingly elusive,” he said.
The number of freshmen in the country decreased by 1.5 percent.
California State Bakersfield did not have final enrollment numbers for the fall at the time of this story. In a recent newsletter, BC President Zav Dadaboy announced that after two years of declines during the pandemic — 1 percent and 9 percent in 2020 and 2021, respectively — enrollment is up 12.8 percent in the fall of 2022.
Although the decline in higher education enrollment has begun to slow during the pandemic, it has not returned to pre-pandemic levels.
Data for 2022 shows that four-year institutions were hit the hardest, with a 3.1 percent drop among private nonprofit institutions, a 2.4 percent drop at public institutions and a 0.9 percent drop at for-profit institutions.
An 11.5 percent jump in the number of dual-enrollment high school students helped offset a 0.4 percent decline in community college enrollment, the report noted. Community colleges also saw a 1.4% increase in 18- to 20-year-old students. Freshman enrollment rose 0.9 percent, which the report called a sign that numbers are stabilizing at community colleges for the first time since the pandemic began in spring 2020.
“Many four-year institutions are still below their freshmen numbers from last year, much less returning to their freshman numbers from 2019, which is a big concern,” Shapiro said. “And I think even the increase in community college freshmen is still small and far from recovering from the huge decline in community college freshmen that we saw in fall 2020 and fall 2021.”
The fact that freshman enrollment is increasing at low-cost community colleges and decreasing at four-year colleges suggests that cost plays a role, Shapiro said.
“It’s very suggestive to me that affordability is part of the equation,” Shapiro said.
The number of students aged 18 to 20, most of whom are not freshmen, increased by 0.5 percent. That suggests some traditional-age students are coming back after dropping out, Shapiro said.
“There is some evidence that students who have dropped out are returning to their undergraduate programs,” he said. “But we don’t see the return of what we might call the lost freshmen in the fall of 2020 and the fall of 2021. So, at this point, they’re not coming in as freshmen.”
White students had the steepest drop in undergraduate enrollment, down 3.6 percent from last year. The number of black students decreased by 1.6 percent. The number of Asian and Native American students decreased by 0.8 percent. The number of Hispanics increased by 1.2 percent.
The number of undergraduate students decreased by 2.1 percent, and the number of undergraduate students decreased by 0.7 percent.
The center’s data come from 63 percent of the degree-granting institutions that receive federal funds and represent 10.3 million undergraduate and graduate students in the nation. California results are based on 47 percent of institutions.
Some other highlights of the study:
The number of students enrolled at historically black colleges and universities rose 2.5 percent this fall, driven by a 6.6 percent increase in freshmen on those campuses. That reversed a 1.7 percent drop in fall 2021. However, the report notes that data from these institutions is based on a small base.
Enrollment at Spanish-language institutions continues to decline, falling 1.2 percent this fall, compared to a 4.8 percent decline last year.
The number of computer and information science majors has increased across the board since last fall: 10.1 percent for associate’s degrees, 9.5 percent for bachelor’s degrees and 21.4 percent for master’s degrees. At the associate level, construction trades grew by 7.4 percent and fine and performing arts by 6.3 percent. At the bachelor’s certificate level, business and management grew by 6.9 percent, mechanics and repair technology by 3.3 percent, and precision manufacturing by 7.2 percent.
After seeing a small bump at the start of the pandemic, the number of people studying health has fallen at all levels, including a 5.4 percent drop among undergraduates. Enrollment in master’s degrees in education decreased by 6.1 percent.
The number of students enrolled in post-secondary institutions, mostly online, increased by 3.2 percent. It is led by students aged 18-20, whose number in these institutions has increased by 23.4 percent over the past two years. The report notes that data from these institutions is small and subject to change.
The number of graduate students is down 1 percent this fall, but remains higher than it was in the 2019 pre-pandemic period. In the fall of 2021, the number of graduates increased by 2.7 percent. California is among 26 states that saw a 4 percent decline in graduate enrollment this fall compared to 2021.
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