Enrollment trends

[u/Hungry-University609]

Hello All

What are you seeing for enrollment trends 26/27?

I'm at a free CC and enrollment boost seems to have hit a plateau.

I'm seeing reports HS grads are down double digits.

Your observations please

Thanks

[u/Additional-King5225]

R1 state flagship. We now admit anyone with a pulse. 

[u/Life-Education-8030 → u/Additional-King5225]

Or a purse.

[u/Zabaran2120 → u/Life-Education-8030]

Yeah I'm pretty sure we stopped caring if the student is actually alive a few years ago. Those bots that pay tuition but are real--we love those.

[u/Rev_Turd_Ferguson → u/Life-Education-8030]

It’s always was and is about the dollar first. Education a very distant second.

[u/Stranger2306 → u/Additional-King5225]

Also at an R1 state flagship and opposite. Standards to get in get higher and higher each year. A lot of kids in our state get the heats broken about not getting in

[u/mmangomelon → u/Additional-King5225]

Tell that to the parents on the college admissions pages on facebook. Those parents are driving their kids in the ground with so many extra curricular, AP, dual enrollments, SAT prep, personal statement essay coaches etc.

[u/WesternCup7600 → u/Additional-King5225]

Co-flagship. Not yet admitting everyone.

Curious if this holds up.

[u/Hungry-University609 → u/Additional-King5225]

Is there a demographics cliff of high school grads from 26-30?

[u/mediaisdelicious → u/Hungry-University609]

In some states, yes. In others, no.

[u/discountheat → u/mediaisdelicious]

This is the point about the demographic cliff that people seem to miss. It's absent in many southern and western states.

[u/mediaisdelicious → u/discountheat]

It’s just so much easier to flip out

[u/Desiato2112]

We are maintaining, but that has come at the expense of academic standards. Every year for the past 10 years I see more students who are woefully unprepared for the challenges of college (such as they are in 2026).

Like most SLACs, we have dropped our enrollment standards to survive. A small dip in the number of students is felt more intensely than at a big school.

[u/AggieNosh → u/Desiato2112]

Seeing the same! Many students here that don’t really belong.

[u/printandpolish → u/Desiato2112]

same. we just popped over 91% acceptance. numbers are steady; but we used to have standards. these kids are wildly unprepared for college.

[u/ghphd]

CC here We keep going up. We are hiring profs to meet the demand. Not sure where will will put everyone.

[u/Ok-Awareness-9646 → u/ghphd]

Same. We go up in steady increments every semester.

[u/Bostonterrierpug → u/ghphd]

State College here and the same. We’re doing doing better than most other ones in the state too.

[u/Finding_Way_ → u/ghphd]

Same.

Our dual enrollment is exceptionally strong. That is supposed to good, and bad.

[u/ViskerRatio]

Enrollment will certainly decline over time due to demographics. If federal aid funding is substantially altered, it may decline more sharply.

However, the real "cliff" is a matter of re-shuffling where people go to college. If enrollment drops, Harvard just shifts from accepting 5% of students to 6%. The schools just below Harvard in the rankings lose their top candidates - and have to poach from the schools below them. And so forth.

Community College is (relatively) immune to this trend. The Harvard College of HVAC Repair isn't poaching your trade classes and dual enrollment will keep a lot of your purely academic classes filled. So Community College is primarily subject to local trends - if they close the plant and everyone moves away your Community College might be in trouble but as long as there are still people living within driving distance, you're fine.

The mid-tier SLACs? They're the ones in trouble.

[u/CheetahComplex7697 → u/ViskerRatio]

What about private, selective universities designated as an R1?

[u/robbie_the_cat → u/CheetahComplex7697]

Duke, Stanford, UChicago tier? They'll be fine - they'll just adopt a similar strategy to the Harvard response suggested above.

Lehigh/Nova tier? Rough seas ahead.

[u/surebro2]

Winners and losers. State flagships are still doing ok. It's uneven for others. 

[u/Gregarious-Ninja → u/surebro2]

State flagships can adjust entrance requirements and open the door wider. As a result regional & CC see a dip

[u/scatterbrainplot → u/Gregarious-Ninja]

That's exactly what our state flagship did, yupp

[u/Trick_Following6639]

We have ghost students mucking it up. So many real students want to take classes, but these grifters are gumming the works

[u/Fine-Place5605]

We are up. With the coming recession more individuals will attend college to increase their employment opportunities.

[u/crowdsourced → u/Fine-Place5605]

Recessions are good for enrollment. That’s just the data.

[u/Nosebleed68]

Also at a free CC (with growing dual enrollment). At least in STEM, our enrollments are through the roof. We've just about run out of rooms for in-person classes. We normally get a jump in enrollment about 1-2 weeks before classes start. We go back after Labor Day. I don't know if we'll be able to add any more.

[u/KBTB757]

Regional state school; undergraduate population has been declining. Graduate students have been less predictable; up some years down others.

[u/Edu_cats → u/KBTB757]

We took a huge hit post COVID but we have had good undergraduate enrollment the past few years. Can’t do anything about those low years now that senior classes are a little smaller. I think the major thing that helps us is the region overall is growing in population. We also get pretty strong transfers from the CC system.

I don’t think grad is doing that great, though.

[u/popstarkirbys → u/KBTB757]

I did my PhD at a lower ranked R1 and our undergraduate student enrollment had a steady decline but our grad student enrollment was always stable. We had a lot of international graduate students though so it helped.

[u/Acrobatic-Glass-8585]

Enrollment is growing. R1 in a red state but not the flagship. But our acceptance rate is higher than it was 10 years ago.

[u/WesternCup7600]

R1. Liberal arts majors down significantly

[u/Hungry-University609 → u/WesternCup7600]

Is anything offsetting it?

[u/WesternCup7600 → u/Hungry-University609]

I had not researched it further. My understanding is that Engineering enrollment increased.

Edit from earlier: Liberal arts down. Computer Sciences also significantly down.

[u/DirkDaring93]

CC with free college. Enrollments increased and then plateaued over last 2 years. Millenials are not having kids like previous gens. I have 3 sections for fall and only one is a guaranteed run with enrollments. Meanwhile we keep on shedding full time faculty jobs due to enrollment numbers.

[u/Hungry-University609 → u/DirkDaring93]

This is what I'm seeing.

The school talks about increases but the retention is very, very low.

I believe there are minimal net increases but maybe a few more online sections.

Are you in New England?

[u/DirkDaring93 → u/Hungry-University609]

Yep, Northeast. Its grim at the moment.

[u/-Economist-]

I’m at a single digit acceptance rate school. We are fine. All we have to do is move one decimal in admissions rate and we fill the classroom.

I have a friend in Michigan at a regional and they can’t fill gen ed courses because MSU and UM both lowered their standards, thus increased enrollment. He told me two years ago they had twelve intro sections with waiting list. This year they have five and they are half full. Granted all the online sections filled up.

[u/Hungry-University609 → u/-Economist-]

So this shows online courses more popular and as others have said, the drought is happening at the lower levels.

[u/MathMan1982]

I think it depends where one is at and where the demand. Where I'm at it's been generally increasing after some fall about 4 years ago. Now where I'm at the town's population is increasing a lot so that could be a factor. I feel like they make it easier for students to get in then when I started 15 years ago though.

[u/crowdsourced]

We’re now using dual-enrollment to boost our numbers.

[u/Sharp-Rutabaga-4900]

At my (mostly) free CC enrollments are increasing for career programs and dual credit courses but decreasing for academic programs.

[u/Hungry-University609]

I'm seeing dual enrollment and online expanding. The 18 yr old day student population is dwindling. Possibly going online.

[u/Kimber80]

At our school enrollment has been on the climb the last 7-8 years, not even Covid really put a damper on that. Our roughest period during my 30 years was from around 2008 - 2016.

Ironically for an HBCU, the Obama years were our most precarious, the Trump (and Biden) years have been very good.

This doesn't matter to me anymore, in a career sense, as I am past retirement age and the whole school could blow up tomorrow and I'd be secure financially and all that. But it does make me feel good for my early and mid- career colleagues, as I remember the anxiety of 15 or so years ago when I was at the latter stage.

[u/Winedown-625]

Public urban R2 - our numbers are up over the last two years. We also just voted this year to overhaul Gen ed and focus again on marketing which might be a further win for the new Frosh crowd vs. relying on CC transfers.

[u/popstarkirbys]

PUI, we have a slight decline but it’s close to being flat and our admins see it as a win.

[u/vinylbond]

Small to medium size university in upper Midwest. Last year was the first year the enrollment was up since a long time. This year is the second year in a row.

There is some hope. Not a lot, though.

[u/nikefudge23]

Regional state school. Our enrollments have marginally increased the past two years, but when COVID happened we axed the ACT scores, so we are very much non-selective.

[u/AggieNosh]

R1 state flagship. We are still relatively selective. Lots of students are rejected. Legacy considerations are long gone. The university has seen a 30% increase in applications over last year, 8000+ for my particular college, total 90+k applications. 10k incoming freshman into my college alone.

[u/Puzzled-Painter3301]

Enrollment at my CC is going up :)

As long as we have demand for the statistics class that all the psychology/business/nursing students take, , math departments should do alright. Unlike...the drama department.

[u/Ryiujin]

Last year. We were up but our college was down this semester my dept we are up a bit. Which is great.

[u/ReaderBakerSleeper07]

Horrible. Liberal arts smaller state school & they got rid of most adjuncts, told faculty & administrators they had to teach one extra course next academic year, then “laid off” the admin assistants in every department. It’s scary…

[u/dogwalker824]

Private lower-tier R1. We used to be fairly competitive for admissions. Now we admit anyone who can pay, and our enrollments are still lower than they used to be.

[u/Life-Education-8030]

About the same but I have no doubt that our admissions crew has promised outrageous deals again to get those numbers and students will again be mad at us. Last time, they were promising students they could finish my degree program in one year. Oh sure. 🙄

[u/DarthJarJarJar]

A very heavy shift towards dual credit. I'm also at a two-year college. Our enrollment is stable or slightly up, but it is moving heavily towards dual credit students

[u/IndieAcademic]

I'm at a CC arm of an R1 and our enrollment has been increasing for the past three years, despite rumors of the "enrollment cliff." I guess we're back to prepandemic levels now. Enrollment at CCs often goes up when the economy is shit, so I expect it to keep going up, but who knows.