Rising college tuition costs, the COVID-19 pandemic, and a bungled FASFA rollout have impacted the financial circumstances of many prospective college students. After several years of declining enrollment, the numbers spiked up about 1.2% in the 2023-2024 academic year, the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center reported. Enrollment numbers remained below pre-pandemic levels of 16 million.
While it’s too early to track the impact tuition costs will have on enrollment numbers for the upcoming semester, some students have already said they’re opting out of college due to the financial aid fiasco.
USA TODAY identified undergraduate enrollment trends from the past decade to see who is attending college, the most common fields of study and how the pandemic impacted enrollment.
Here’s what you need to know about changes in college enrollment:
College enrollment upticks in 2023
Undergraduate enrollment increased by about 176,000 students in fall 2023, according to a report published earlier this year by the National Student Clearinghouse. That’s a spike of about 1.2% from the previous fall.
About 15.2 million undergraduate students enrolled in college for the 2023-2024 academic year. The biggest growth came at community colleges, which gained 118,000 students this fall. Private, for-profit colleges also experienced an uptick in enrollments.
The Department of Education has not yet published their data on total undergraduate enrollment for Fall 2023.
Four-year universities and two-year colleges experienced dramatic declines in enrollment since the COVID-19 pandemic hit in March of 2020. Undergraduate numbers fell by 15% between 2010 and 2021, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
Who is most likely to enroll in college?
Women made up nearly 60% of all college students enrolling in Fall of 2022, the Education Department found, up from 56.6% eight years earlier. For several decades women have outnumbered men as college enrollees and attendees, but the gender gap has only widened.
FASFA fiasco:For low-income students, FAFSA can be a lifeline. When it didn’t work, they were hardest hit.
College enrollment by major
For students graduating with an associate degree or bachelor’s degree, business and health professions and related programs were the top three most common fields of study, the Education Department said.
For the past decade, business has been the most common degree granted to graduating students.
In the 2021-2022 academic year, these were the top five most common bachelor degrees granted by field of study:
- 18.2% in business
- 12.9% in health professions and related studies
- 7.7% in social sciences and history
- 6.1% in psychology
- 6.3% in biological and biomedical sciences
Graphics explain:How are college costs adding up these days and how much has tuition risen?
Why is college enrollment declining?
College tuition has become unaffordable for many prospective students. For those who do pursue higher education, many will be paying nearly two-fold what their parents paid for an undergraduate education 20 years earlier.
According to the Education Data Initiative, the average cost of college tuition and fees at public four-year institutions has risen 179.2% over the last two decades.
At the same time, difficulty applying for financial aid upended the college decision-making process, and disrupted the lives of many students. USA TODAY previously reported that delays and technical problems with the FASFA form left many economically disadvantaged students scrambling for financial aid, jeopardizing their college aspirations.
Contributing: Zachary Schermele, USA TODAY
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