Dive Brief:
- College enrollment rose 3.2% year over year in spring 2025, increasing by 562,000 students and inching closer to pre-pandemic levels, according to new data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.
- Total enrollment reached 18.4 million students. Undergraduate enrollment increased 3.5% to 15.3 million, while graduate enrollment rose 1.5% to 3.1 million.
- Community colleges again drove much of the growth in the sector, with a 5.4% increase in undergraduate enrollment at public two-year institutions. Among community colleges focused on vocations, enrollment rose 11.7%, a gain of about 91,000 students.
Dive Insight:
Colleges are continuing to make up ground lost during the pandemic, according to the clearinghouse’s latest report. While undergraduate enrollment this spring remained 2.4% lower than pre-pandemic levels, graduate enrollment grew 7.2% higher than in 2020. Spring enrollment at trade-focused colleges was up a whopping 20% since 2020, an increase of 871,000 students.
Historically Black colleges and universities saw their highest upticks since the pandemic, with year-over-year growth of 4.6% for undergraduates and 7.7% for graduate students, according to the clearinghouse.
Undergraduate enrollment grew among students in their 20s for the first time since the pandemic, with headcounts up 3.2% among students aged 21 to 24 and 5.9% for students aged 25 to 29.
Every kind of higher ed institution saw enrollment growth this semester, with community colleges taking center stage.
Public two-year institutions accounted for a little over half of the sector's undergraduate growth in spring 2024 while making up slightly more than a third of the total undergraduate population, Doug Shapiro, executive director of the clearinghouse's research center, noted during a media briefing Wednesday. However, community college enrollment is still “well below pre-pandemic numbers,” he noted.
At about 4.7 million students, public two-year college enrollment this spring is still nearly 350,000 students under its 2020 high, according to the clearinghouse report.
Along with two-year program enrollment increases, community colleges drove 4.8% enrollment growth in undergraduate certificate programs.
“Students are voting with their feet in favor of shorter-term credentials at lower costs and with more direct job-related skills,” Shapiro said.
Four-year institutions also made progress this spring. Total spring enrollment was up 2.5% in public four-year colleges — compared to 1.7% growth in spring 2024. And private four-year nonprofits saw headcounts rise 1.4% — a slight deceleration from last spring’s 1.7% growth but still another mark of progress since the pandemic-era declines.
Most states in the U.S. experienced enrollment growth, with a handful of exceptions: Enrollment dropped 6.2% in Idaho, 3% in Alaska, 2% in Vermont, 1.6% in Oregon, 1% in Nebraska and 0.7% in Missouri.
The clearinghouse prefaced that the decline in Idaho, the biggest drop seen among the states, was largely driven by one college's decision to stop reporting dual enrollment numbers, which include high school students taking college classes.
Earlier this year, the clearinghouse found that fall 2024 enrollment grew 4.5%, with first-year student headcounts rising 5.5% annually.
“College student attendance patterns this spring compared to spring 2024 are reinforcing and building on the growth that we saw in the fall,” Shapiro said Wednesday.
