Fall 2025 enrollment data: uneven growth, emerging trends

How is college and university enrollment changing?

I’ve been tracking this vital question for years. Today I wanted to share some new data then reflect on it.

The National Student Clearinghouse Research Center just posted their Final Fall Enrollment Trends for fall 2025.  What follows is based on a pre-release briefing, several emailed announcements, the current release, and also years of previous publications.

The tl;dr version is that the total number of students attending American post-secondary institutions in fall 2025 rose by 1%, unevenly across programs, degrees, and institutional types.

Clearinghouse numbers, based on data from 97% of participants, showed undergrad enrollment rising by 1.2%, while graduate school numbers declined by .3%. (There are many more undergrads than grad students in American colleges and universities, which is why the combined number isn’t .6%: “16.2 million undergraduate and 3.2 million graduate students,” according to the report.)

Types of degrees experienced very different patterns.  Certificates soared by 28% and associates’ degrees also did well.  In contrast masters degrees went down 1.2%, driven by private college numbers declining, while doctoral enrollments held steady.  

In terms of institutional type there were strong differences. According to Matthew Holsapple, Senior Director of Research at the Clearinghouse Research Center, who led our briefing: “Community colleges and public universities are gaining ground, while private colleges are down – a clear departure from the broad-based growth of recent years.” 

From the report:

Growth in undergraduate enrollment was driven by a 3.0 percent increase in community college enrollment, compared to a 1.4 percent increase at public 4-year colleges. Private 4-year institutions saw declines in undergraduate enrollment this fall (-1.6% at nonprofit and -2.0% at for-profit institutions).

 A key point about community colleges (whose enrollment rose 3%) is the vital importance of dual enrollment (teaching high school students), which constituted 38.4% of their total increase.  Interestingly, primarily online institutions saw an unusual decline of 1.6%, or 25,000 fewer students. 

The report offers this useful illustration of the relative sizes of each sector as they changed over the past five years:

The center offered some disciplinary breakouts of the data, that computer science is shrinking fast.  CS enrollment dropped down by 14% in grad level programs, following exceptional growth for years.  Undergrad numbers in that field dipped by 3.6%.  Overall, business and health care continue to be – by far – the most popular courses of study.

Overall international enrollment saw strikingly different results.  The numbers of foreign undergrads rose up 3.2%, while grad students from outside the US sank down by 6%.  (There have been several reports on this over the past few months with significantly varying data; I hope to assemble a blog post on them.)

The report broke out some demographics.  The age gap is fascinating, with adult learners falling, as per the Inside Higher Ed summary:

New undergraduate students over the age of 25 decreased by 15.5 percent this fall compared to last year, representing over 35,000 students, while enrollment of students in the 21-to-24 age group fell by a more modest 5.2 percent. While all types of institutions saw some decline along those lines, the dip was the largest at private four-year institutions, where new undergraduate enrollment of those over 25 decreased by a whopping 28 percent.

In terms of race, enrollment rose among all ethnic groups except whites, whose numbers declined: down 2.5% among undergrads, -.5% in grad schools.  In terms of gender women continue the current trend of significantly outnumbering men:

During our briefing, Clearinghouse representatives observed some macro trends through their data.  They were interested in how American higher ed recovered five years after the COVID epidemic began, and determined that total enrollment has now returned to a pre-pandemic level.  Undergrad enrollment in fall 2025 stands about  where things were in 2019.  Graduate enrollment is higher and for-profits even more so.  Yet community colleges are down by 250,000 students, compared to the prepandemic year, despite their recent growth. Overall, said the center team, the American academic system has regained its pre-COVID size, “but not regained its shape.” 

Some notes:

To reprise, enrollment numbers matter for several reasons.  Most colleges and universities depend on student tuition and fees for most of their budgets, so declining enrollment threatens their financial sustainability. And to the extent that America remains committed to “college for all” or at least “getting more people more university experience is a fine thing,” declining students numbers is a problem.

The decline of international student numbers shows the Trump administration’s impact.  These Clearinghouse numbers weren’t broken out by sending nation; I’m very curious to see any specific geopolitical angles, as in which countries sent fewer students and which more.

Short-term programs and degrees are roaring along, although they receive little attention.  As the report states, “Enrollment in undergraduate certificate and associate degree programs continues to grow at a faster pace than bachelor’s program enrollment (+1.9% and +2.2% compared to +0.9%).” The desire for short-term credentials (i.e., certificates) is much stronger than it used to be, and that has substantially driven growth.  We should pay more attention to this.

The transformation of community colleges is noteworthy.  They haven’t regained their peak numbers yet, despite recent growth.  Dual enrollment is what’s keeping them going in a real sense, representing an unheralded and major innovation in the post-secondary space.

I wonder about the primarily online numbers, declining after years of serious growth. Is this a check to that sector?

What about my peak higher education scenario?  Don’t these numbers prove it’s now incorrect? That 1% gain does go against the peak model and suggests a rebound, so either peak is wrong or only lasted for around a dozen years.  Perhaps the post-peak decline was temporary, in other words, and we’re busily bursting past it.

Yet we still have not returned to the actual peak circa 2011-2013. Yes, we’ve recovered from COVID, but recall that there was nearly a decade of decline prior to the pandemic.  From around 2012-2019 total enrollment declined slightly every year.  Remember that that’s a major reversal from decades of growth dating back to the early 1980s.

I asked Clearinghouse staff about this, and in their data they identified 2011 as the year of peak American enrollment with 20.1 million students taking classes then.  The fall 2025 number came close to that older statistic with 19.4 million.   In a followup email to me, the Clearinghouse expanded on the point:

In this report we see a peak total higher education enrollment in fall 2011 at 20.1 million students. There were declines in total enrollment from 2012 until 2023. Though total enrollment has recovered from the steep declines due to the pandemic (19.4M in fall 2025), it has not reached the 2011 peak.

So we’re still below peak.  But if (and it’s a big “if”) total American enrollment growth holds at 1% per year, we might, by my rough calculations, expect to regain peak in about three years (fall 2026: 19.59 million; 2027: 19.79; 2028: 19.99; 2029: 20.19).  By 2030 we will have reached a new and historic peak in total postsecondary enrollment. That’s assuming everything stays steady and no extra pressure exerts itself on student numbers. That means not including a forecast decline in high school graduates, Trump administration effects on international enrollment, Nathan Grawe’s demographic cliff, a souring public attitude towards college and universities, the broader demographic transition, possible AI impacts, and many other factors.

Looked at another way, hitting almost 20.2 million in 2029 would represent a student body constituting a smaller proportion of the American population than it did in 2011, since the nation’s total population grew during those years, thanks mostly to immigration  If we approach 20.2 million students in 2029 that’s 5.89% of the total population, versus 6.46% of 2011’s total, according to my back of the envelope estimate. This matters in terms of the drive to get as many people as possible some post-secondary education.  Put another way, we could reach a new numerical peak by the start of the twenty-first century’s fourth decade, yet fail to return to the historical peak in terms of population proportionality.

Overall, I’m struck by the Clearinghouse’s point about the post-secondary sector not having regained its pre-pandemic shape. Dual enrollment and fewer adults; public sector doing better than private; certificates over macro degrees; more women than men; nonwhite populations growing past the white one; computer science dropping while health care and business rule; undergrads growing while grad students decline – it’s quite an emerging picture.

My thanks to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center team for sharing this research and for generously engaging with my questions.