Community College Enrollment Beginning To Grow This Spring

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Community College Enrollment Beginning To Grow This Spring

Dual Enrollee and Freshman Growth Drive Community College Uptick

HERNDON, VA – (MARCH 29, 2023) – Enrollment at community colleges is beginning to grow this spring (+2.1% over last spring), according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. Stay Informed with the Latest Enrollment Information, the first-look spring 2023 enrollment report found that the trend is due to an accelerated increase in dual enrollees and spring freshmen. Freshmen increased across all institution types, with most attending a community college (58.8%).

“It’s encouraging to see this second straight year of growth in spring freshmen and dual-enrolled high school students,” said Doug Shapiro, Executive Director of the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. “However, community colleges still face significant declines in adult learners, who have been opting out of college in larger numbers since the start of the pandemic.”

Undergraduate enrollment remained steady this spring (+0.2%) following two straight years of steep pandemic-related losses. Only the public four-year sector continued to experience undergraduate enrollment declines (-0.9%). Total enrollment, including undergraduates and graduates, has remained unchanged since last spring (+0.0%).

Additional research highlights include:

Certificate program enrollment increased at both the undergraduate (+5.5%) and graduate (+4.6%) levels, continuing pre-pandemic trends. Associate degree-seeking students increased slightly (+0.3%) while bachelor’s seeking students continued to slide (-0.6%).
Undergraduate enrollment at rural and town campuses declined by nearly seven times the rate of urban settings for all four-year institutions (-2.7% for town/rural; -0.4% for urban). Conversely, community college enrollment grew across all campus settings.
Enrollment grew only among younger undergraduate students, while older age groups (21 or above) continued a downward trend, extending multi-year losses in adult enrollment.
Undergraduate men, who were hit harder at the beginning of the pandemic, saw slight growth in their enrollment (0.7%), whereas enrollment among women continued to decline (-0.9%).
Among undergraduate students, only Latinx students had enrollment gains this spring (+0.9%), while all other major race and ethnicity groups showed slowing declines or stabilization.
Undergraduate enrollment in the health field continues to decline across all credential levels. Among graduate students, health field enrollment grew only at the certificate and doctoral levels.

Results are preliminary as of February 23, 2023, capturing 8.5 million spring enrollments in a panel representing 54% of the Clearinghouse universe of institutions. Results are subject to change as more data are reported for the spring of 2023.

About the National Student Clearinghouse^® Research Center™

The National Student Clearinghouse Research Center is the research arm of the National Student Clearinghouse. The Research Center collaborates with higher education institutions, states, school districts, high schools, and educational organizations as part of a national effort to better inform education leaders and policymakers. Through accurate longitudinal data outcomes reporting, the Research Center enables better educational policy decisions leading to improved student outcomes. To learn more, visit nscresearchcenter.org.

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The National Student Clearinghouse Contracts with State of Rhode Island for its DiplomaVerify℠ High School Program

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The National Student Clearinghouse Contracts with State of Rhode Island for its DiplomaVerify℠ High School Program

State is the latest Clearinghouse customer of high school diploma verification service

HERNDON, VA – (MARCH 27, 2023) – The National Student Clearinghouse today announced that it has contracted with Rhode Island’s Department of Education to provide the Clearinghouse’s DiplomaVerify℠ high school diploma verification services to the 67 high schools statewide.

“The Clearinghouse is pleased to offer our verification services to Rhode Island to support their high schools and students,” said Phil Smith, Senior Manager, Secondary Education Business Development. “With DiplomaVerify’s immediate online and FERPA-compliant high school diploma verifications, Rhode Island schools will benefit from the reduction of manual work, which will free time for their counselors so they can spend it with students. Another benefit for the schools is that their graduates will qualify for jobs faster.”

Rhode Island’s Department of Education understood the benefits of a statewide contract due to its longstanding history with the Clearinghouse as a trusted partner for its student data and information services under a secure platform. Other benefits were the efficiency of the work that will be offloaded by the service to provide immediate online verifications.

DiplomaVerify uses data that a school, district, or consortium currently submits to the Clearinghouse to give employers 24-7 online access to diploma verifications. The service helps to reduce the time a school spends on verification work and is offered for those schools that have the StudentTracker^® for High Schools customers.

The DiplomaVerify is used to verify high school diplomas for high education institutions and many employers, including those in government, the military, healthcare, and retail.

About the National Student Clearinghouse^®

The National Student Clearinghouse, a nonprofit formed in 1993, is the trusted source for and leading provider of higher education verifications and electronic education record exchanges. Besides working with nearly 3,600 postsecondary institutions, the Clearinghouse also provides thousands of high schools and districts with continuing collegiate enrollment, progression, and completion statistics on their alumni. Education partners throughout the nation trust the National Student Clearinghouse because they know we take our commitment to student privacy very seriously. We focus on serving our customers with high-quality services that they expect from us. The Clearinghouse is scrupulous in its concern for student privacy and compliance with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), which protects students’ privacy rights in their education records. For more details, visit studentclearinghouse.org.

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Undergraduate Credential Earners Declined for the First Time in a Decade

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Undergraduate Credential Earners Declined for the First Time in a Decade

HERNDON, VA – (MARCH 16, 2023) – Undergraduate credential earners declined for the first time in a decade (-1.6% or -58,800 graduates from the previous year), according to a new report by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. A total of 3.6 million people earned an undergraduate-level credential during the 2021-22 academic year, a new low not seen in four years (see figure 1).

“The pandemic’s impact on higher education has gone beyond the declining numbers of current students and is now showing up as a drop in the annual number of new graduates as well, taking it all the way back to the level of 2016-17.” said Doug Shapiro, Executive Director of the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. “This is a setback to those seeking higher postsecondary attainment rates, leaving the nation and many states falling further behind on goals for a highly educated workforce.”

The Undergraduate Degree Earners report demonstrates that the drop was caused by an unprecedented one-year loss of first-time graduates (-1.9% or -50,700), accounting for 86.2% of the overall decline. This marks the largest decline in first-time graduates since 2012-13, for which we have the data available. Graduates with a prior award also fell but at a smaller rate than first-time graduates (-0.8% or -8,100). As a result, first-time graduates are a declining share of the overall undergraduate credential earners, comprising 72.9 percent in 2021-22.

Other key findings:

Among first-time graduates, associate degree completions fell sharply (-7.6% or -56,800), followed by baccalaureate recipients (-2.4% or -36,000). First-time bachelor’s degree earners fell for the first time in a decade. In contrast, first-time certificate completers grew considerably (+9.0% or +42,200).
Declines are particularly steep among first-time graduates 25 years and older (-4.1% or -30,600). Declines are smaller among graduates 24 years and younger (-1.0% or -19,100).
Baccalaureate earners who had a prior associate degree decreased (-2.5% or -11,600), after having steadily grown over the past eight years. It has caused the overall non-first-time graduate numbers to slide for the first time in a decade (-0.8% or -8,100).

The Undergraduate Degree Earners report series, published annually, provides demographic and educational profile data for all students graduating with an undergraduate credential each year. Undergraduate credentials may include associate and bachelor’s degrees and certificates. In the current report, we profile graduates in the 2021-22 academic year, with a focus on first-time versus non-first-time graduates, and changes in demographics and education credentials received since the 2012-13 academic year. The Appendix provides state-level and regional trends, in addition to the national graduate profiles by age and type of credential received.

About the National Student Clearinghouse^® Research Center™

The National Student Clearinghouse Research Center is the research arm of the National Student Clearinghouse. The Research Center collaborates with higher education institutions, states, school districts, high schools, and educational organizations as part of a national effort to better inform education leaders and policymakers. Through accurate longitudinal data outcomes reporting, the Research Center enables better educational policy decisions leading to improved student outcomes. To learn more, visit nscresearchcenter.org.

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Transfers from Community Colleges to Four-Year Colleges Drop Nearly 8% from Fall 2021 to Fall 2022

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Transfers from Community Colleges to Four-Year Colleges Drop Nearly 8% from Fall 2021 to Fall 2022

Overall Transfer Enrollment Declines 7% Since Fall 2020

HERNDON, VA – (MARCH 9, 2023) – Transfer enrollment from two-year colleges to four-year institutions, called upward transfer, fell nearly 8% in fall 2022 compared to the previous year, while reverse and lateral transfer began to rise, according to a new report by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. Upward transfer declines accounted for the majority of fall 2022’s transfer enrollment losses and deteriorated during the pandemic for students at all income levels.

The new, post-pandemic, report series Transfer and Progress: Fall 2022 Report reveals that baccalaureate degree programs appear increasingly out of reach for community college students, particularly those enrolled in urban and suburban community colleges, and in transfer-focused community colleges.

Furthermore, fall transfer enrollment slowed its decline in 2022, but still decreased at a faster rate than non-freshman undergraduates that did not transfer. Non-freshmen undergraduate enrollment declined at a slower rate in fall 2022 compared to the previous year (-1.5% vs. -4.1%) but declines continued to be steeper for transfers than non-transfers (-2.3% vs. -1.4%), resulting in a 6.9% decrease in transfer students since fall 2020 (see Figure 1).

“Unlike the stabilization that we saw in the general enrollment numbers last month, the number of students who transferred in fall 2022 is continuing the downward slide it has been on since the pandemic began in 2020, and this is especially true for upward transfers,” said Doug Shapiro, Executive Director of the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. “It is very encouraging, however, that among those who transferred from community colleges into four-year schools six years ago, students are now completing bachelor’s degrees at higher rates than before, despite the disruptions of the pandemic.”

Additional research highlights include:

Transfer pathways to highly selective public flagship and private institutions are dominated by students from the top 20% in the U.S. household income distribution.
Women fared worse than men in transfer enrollment overall, especially among continuing transfers.
Only younger (20 or younger) transfer students made gains in fall 2022.
For the first time since the pandemic, transfer increased among students returning from a stop out (+5.4% or an increase of 26,800 students over Fall 2021). Primarily online institutions accounted for nearly 40% of this growth.
The transfer-in population is a diminishing share of the four-year college student body for all races except Black students enrolled in private nonprofit four-years.
Baccalaureate degree attainment rates improved for the fall 2016 community college entering cohort even during their pandemic-impacted 5th and 6th years of enrollment.

Background Information

The Transfer and Progress report series is a redesign of the Research Center’s two primary transfer reports, combining the enrollment focus of the COVID-19 Transfer, Mobility, and Progress reports, which provides how many students enrolled as a transfer within a current term, with the outcomes focus of the Tracking Transfer reports, which provide what percent of entering community college students reach transfer and completion milestones within six years.

Included in this report is a new experimental analysis of students’ income to provide insights to how closely postsecondary transfer pathways track students’ socioeconomic circumstances before and after the pandemic began. This new income proxy measure matches students’ address data with U.S. Census Bureau data on the income profile of the census tract. Coming out of the pandemic, this report series aims to better serve the education community and policymakers with new, timely, and detailed data that are only available through the Clearinghouse.

This first report covers 11.5 million undergraduate students without a prior bachelor’s degree that were enrolled in fall 2022 in a three-year fixed panel of institutions (fall 2020 to 2022), representing approximately 89.0% of the Clearinghouse universe of institutions. Additionally, to establish the pre-pandemic baseline for all new analyses, an expanded five-year fixed panel of institutions (fall 2018 to fall 2022) was employed, that represents 11 million undergraduates without a prior bachelor’s degree and 83.8% of the Clearinghouse universe of institutions.

The new report series was created with support from the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through grant R305X220022 to Teachers College, Columbia University as part of the Accelerating Recovery in Community Colleges (ARCC) Network, for the expanded analyses on the pandemic recovery for community colleges; and Ascendium Education Group for student income analyses. The opinions expressed in this report are those of the authors and do not represent the views of the Institute or the U.S. Department of Education, nor Ascendium Education.

About the National Student Clearinghouse^® Research Center™

The National Student Clearinghouse Research Center is the research arm of the National Student Clearinghouse. The Research Center collaborates with higher education institutions, states, school districts, high schools, and educational organizations as part of a national effort to better inform education leaders and policymakers. Through accurate longitudinal data outcomes reporting, the Research Center enables better educational policy decisions leading to improved student outcomes. To learn more, visit nscresearchcenter.org.

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New Research: Fall Undergraduate Enrollment Stabilized In 2022

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New Research: Fall Undergraduate Enrollment Stabilized In 2022

Freshmen up 4.3%, including 6.1% at Community Colleges

HERNDON, VA – (FEBRUARY 2, 2023) – According to a new report by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, fall undergraduate enrollment has begun to stabilize in 2022, contracting only by 0.6% or about 94,000 students, compared to fall 2021. However, postsecondary enrollment remains well below pre-pandemic levels, down about 1.23 million undergraduates and 1.11 million total enrollment, both undergraduate and graduate, compared to fall 2019.

Undergraduate enrollment was essentially flat at community colleges (+0.4%, +16,700 students) and private nonprofit four-years (-0.1% or -2,500 students), following the previous year’s declines (-6.7% and -1.6%, respectively). Fall enrollment declines in the public four-year sector were larger, dropping another 1.4%, or 88,000 students. Private for-profit four-year institutions added 29,000 more students or +5.0% from fall 2021.

Meanwhile, graduate enrollment has fared more poorly. Fall graduate enrollment decreased by 39,000 students or 1.2% after two consecutive years of strong growth (+3.0% in 2020; +2.4% in 2021). This suggests that the pandemic-led influxes of post-baccalaureate enrollment has ended.

“It is encouraging to start seeing signs of a recovery in the numbers of new freshmen,” said Doug Shapiro, Executive Director, National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. “Although freshmen classes are still well below pre-pandemic levels, especially at Community Colleges, the fact that they are swinging upward in all sectors is a positive indicator for the future.”

In addition, the Fall 2022 Current Term Enrollment Estimates Expanded Edition (CTEE) showed:

Fall freshman enrollment has begun to rise, increasing by about 97,000 (+4.3%) compared to the previous fall. However, freshman enrollment remains down 150,000 compared to 2019.
The Northeast and Midwest undergraduate enrollments declined at about double the national rate, losing 24,000 (-1.1%) and 34,000 (-1.2%) undergraduates, respectively. Enrollment grew slightly in the West and the South (+0.5%, 20,000 students and +0.2%, 8,000 students, respectively).
Male undergraduate enrollments were stable (+0.2%, +15,000 students) while female enrollment continued declines from 2021 (-1.5%, -122,000 students). This extended the trend of improved enrollment patterns for men relative to women first seen in fall 2021.
Latinx and Asian students bucked the slight national decline, with their undergraduate enrollment rising 1.6% and 1.8%, respectively.
Enrollment in health sciences programs declined across all degree levels.
Undergraduate business programs grew from 2021 (+1.2%, +19,000 students) and computer and information sciences gained more than 10% or 54,000 students in fall 2022.
Business, health professions and education—three of the five most popular graduate programs—posted headcount declines in fall 2022.
Computer science graduate program enrollment growth accelerated in fall 2022, increasing by 18.4 percent or 30,000 students. Since fall 2017, graduate Computer sciences programs have increased 74.1% or 82,000 more students.

New in This Expanded Edition:

Race and Ethnicity: the Research Center is now including race and ethnicity breakouts in most national-level analyses.
Institutional Selectivity: For the first time in the CTEE series, viewers can examine changes in undergraduate enrollment and freshman enrollment by institutional selectivity across approximately 1,000 public and private nonprofit four-year institutions.
Primarily Associate Degree Granting Baccalaureate Institutions: Given the increasing number of two-year institutions with an associate degree focus that have begun to offer bachelor’s degree programs, these institutions have been placed in the new category PABs throughout this report.
State Data: In addition to state enrollment by sector, we are now detailing enrollment by major field of study at the state level. Full major field data by state are available in Data Appendices. Also, primarily online institutions that conventionally operate across state lines are now removed from enrollment counts for individual states and are grouped together with other brick-and-mortar multistate institutions.
Dashboard Report: The CTEE report is now presented as a data dashboard, allowing viewers to analyze, visualize, and interact with the longitudinal data quickly. While a PDF report is no longer published, the underlying data for the dashboard and other full details are available in Data Appendices for download as an Excel file.

The CTEE Report Series provides national enrollment estimates by institutional sector, enrollment intensity, age group, gender, major field, and state. See the report’s Methodological Notes for more details, which can be downloaded from the website on the day of release.

The CTEE Expanded Edition report is supported in part by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through grant R305X220022 to Teachers College, Columbia University. This project is part of the Accelerating Recovery in Community Colleges (ARCC) Network. The opinions expressed in this report are those of the authors and do not represent the views of the Institute or the U.S. Department of Education.

About the National Student Clearinghouse^® Research Center™

The National Student Clearinghouse Research Center is the research arm of the National Student Clearinghouse. The Research Center collaborates with higher education institutions, states, school districts, high schools, and educational organizations as part of a national effort to better inform education leaders and policymakers. Through accurate longitudinal data outcomes reporting, the Research Center enables better educational policy decisions leading to improved student outcomes. To learn more, visit nscresearchcenter.org.