College enrollment shrinks by over 1 million students during pandemic, report say

Undergraduate enrollment in colleges and universities around the country dropped by 465,300 students in fall 2021, or by 3.1%, continuing a decline in enrollment during the COVID pandemic that has some experts alarmed.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, there’s been a 6.6% decline in undergraduate enrollment, amounting to a drop of over 1 million students since 2019, according to a report by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.

That drop continued well into 2021 despite the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccines, which allowed many students to return to campus for in-person learning. It could get even worse as the omicron variant of the coronavirus continues to spread, Inside Higher Ed reported.

“Think about the virus infection status right now — things are not really looking up,” Mikyung Ryu, analyst and director of research publications at the research center, told the outlet. “Campus leadership is struggling to retain students, let alone fill the empty seats from the pre-pandemic years.”

Public two-year colleges have been hit the hardest since the beginning of the pandemic, experiencing a 13.2% drop in enrollment since 2019, or a decrease of about 706,100 students, the report said. The number of students seeking associate’s degrees fell 6.2% this year and 14.1% during the entire pandemic, according to the report.

Students seeking bachelor’s degrees at four-year colleges and universities made up about half the decline in undergraduate enrollment overall in fall 2021, marking a shift from fall 2020, when the bulk of the decline was among students seeking associate’s degrees, the report said.

Freshman enrollment stabilized slightly last fall after experiencing a big drop in 2020, increasing by about 0.4%, or by 8,100 students, the report said. But those numbers are nowhere near high enough to match pre-pandemic levels — this fall’s freshman class was 9.2% smaller, or 213,400 fewer students, than that of fall 2019, according to the report.

Enrollment also fell in each of the five largest majors in the country — business, health, liberal arts, biology and engineering — with liberal arts being hit the hardest and experiencing a 7.6% decline from fall 2020 to fall 2021, the report said.

The drop in enrollment was clearly exacerbated by the pandemic and the challenges students face because of it, but college enrollment has been on the decline since 2012, likely due to factors like high tuition costs or immigration-related challenges for international students, according to The New York Times and NPR.

Experts think the existing decline, and the way it became substantially worse during the pandemic, could reflect shifting attitudes among a generation of Americans about the role of higher education in their lives.

“The phenomenon of students sitting out of college seems to be more widespread. It’s not just the community colleges anymore,” Doug Shapiro, who leads the research center, told NPR. “That could be the beginning of a whole generation of students rethinking the value of college itself. I think if that were the case, this is much more serious than just a temporary pandemic-related disruption.”

The pandemic may have also driven more would-be students toward the workforce instead, Shapiro said.

“It’s very tempting for high school graduates, but the fear is that they are trading a short-term gain for a long-term loss,” Shapiro told NPR. “And the longer they stay away from college, you know, life starts to happen and it becomes harder and harder to start thinking about yourself going back into a classroom.”

And according to early data, figures for enrollment in fall 2022 don’t look promising, either.

By Dec. 30, only around 29% of high school seniors around the country completed a Free Application for Federal Student Aid — or FAFSA — application, a 0% change from the year before, according to a National College Attainment Network analysis of FAFSA data.

“We know what a strong indicator FAFSA is of postsecondary enrollment, so this gives us a lot of concern, a lot of pause,” Kim Cook, CEO of the National College Attainment Network, told The Washington Post. “It is somewhat comforting to see that the numbers are holding steady with last year, which we attribute to the return to in-person learning and more access to in-person supports and resources. But we still have a way to go.”

This story was originally published January 13, 2022 at 5:38 PM with the headline "College enrollment shrinks by over 1 million students during pandemic, report say."