Correction: On January 13, 2025, the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center announced that it has found a methodological error affecting the first-year enrollment data in its October report. The center stated: “The error in research methodology caused the mislabeling of certain students as dual-enrolled rather than as freshmen and, as a result, the number of freshmen was undercounted, and the number of dual-enrolled was overcounted. ... Our subsequent research finds freshman enrollment increased this fall." The center plans to release updated enrollment estimates on January 23 – AAU will correct the post below once the data has been issued.
Correction: A new post based on the corrected data is now available.
New data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center show that first-year enrollment of undergraduate students at nation’s universities in fall 2024 is down 5% compared to last year. Despite the decline in freshman enrollment – which is the steepest since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 – overall undergraduate enrollment is up 3%.
The NSCRC suggests several reasons for the discrepancy in freshman enrollment vs. overall enrollment. The data show that the number of 18-year-old freshmen (“a proxy for those enrolling immediately after high school graduation”) declined by almost 6%. Similarly, the number of 19-20-year-old freshmen declined by 8.6%.
Overall student enrollment numbers, on the other hand, appear to have been helped by an increase in students 17 years or younger in dual enrollment programs (+7.2%) and continuing students (+4.7%). In a call with reporters, NSCRC Executive Director Doug Shapiro noted that it is difficult to “pinpoint any single cause of the changes, particularly in freshmen this fall.”
Additional highlights from the NSCRC data include:
-
Four-year public (-8.5%) and private nonprofit (-6.5%) institutions saw the biggest declines in freshman enrollment. Four-year public and private nonprofit institutions “that serve the highest proportion of Pell Grant students” saw freshman enrollment decline by more than 10%.
-
First-year enrollment “is declining among students of all races and ethnicities, with notable losses among White (-11.4%), Black (-6.1%) and Multiracial (-6.6%)” students. The number of total white undergraduate students declined by 0.6%, while overall undergraduate enrollment for Hispanic (+6%), Black (+4.2%), Asian (+4.7%), and multiracial (+4.0%) students went up.
-
Enrollment in undergraduate certificate programs, which usually focus on vocational or technical skills training, is up 7.3% compared to fall 2023.
-
Overall enrollment in bachelor’s degree programs went up 1.9%, while enrollment in associate degree programs went up 4.3%.
-
Overall enrollment in science and engineering programs, including at the bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral levels, went up 2.6% compared to last year.
According to NSCRC, the data are preliminary and drawn from reports of fall 2024 enrollment from 51.9% of institutions who participate in NSCRC. The final report on enrollment estimates will be released in January 2025.
Kritika Agarwal is senior editorial officer at AAU.