By Bill DeBaun, Senior Director, Data and Strategic Initiatives
Reading time: Five minutes
Important Update: In January 2025, the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center (NSCRC) announced a methodological error in its Fall 2024 semester "Stay Informed Report and Special Analysis of 18-Year-old Freshmen Report." Data from these reports showed declines in 18-year-old freshman postsecondary enrollment in the fall 2024 semester, but the NSCRC now notes that “subsequent research finds freshmen enrollment increased this fall.”
Consequently, the below analysis is now inaccurate and should not be used in any publication reflecting fall 2024 enrollment.
Have questions? Contact Bill DeBaun, Senior Director, at debaunb@ncan.org.
College enrollment for freshman 18-year-olds declined 5% year-over-year this fall according to new data released
today by the National College Attainment Network (NCAN). This signals a reversal from the fall 2023 semester, in which 18-year-old freshman enrollment increased 3% over the fall 2022 semester. With the 2025-26 Free Application for Federal Student
Aid (FAFSA) cycle now open, it’s important to stop this enrollment slide and open up more postsecondary pathways to more students.
“This semester’s enrollment numbers for high school graduates should be frightening for practitioners, policymakers, and the public alike,” said NCAN CEO Kim Cook. “Our progress toward increasing college enrollment coming out of the pandemic has been
stymied, and we will have to work much harder to help many of these students to rediscover college pathways in the future.”
The new special analysis, conducted by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center (NSCRC) and commissioned by NCAN, includes postsecondary enrollment data through October
31 from about 80% of institutions that cover about 82.3% students enrolled nationally. Beyond the decline noted above, the analysis also finds:
18-year-old freshman enrollment declined in 46 states, and the average decline was 7.1% year-over-year.
White students’ freshman enrollment declined the most sharply (-10%), but multiracial (-8.3%) and Black (-8.2%) also saw precipitous drops. Asian (-5.7%) and Latino/a (-2.1%) saw shallower declines.
By institutional selectivity, “very competitive” and “competitive” institutions saw the steepest declines while “highly selective” Institutions were relatively more insulated. Given completion rates at more selective institutions, steeper enrollment
declines in these groups of colleges and universities may portend lower levels of educational attainment for the class of 2024 in the long run.
Declines were also pronounced at colleges serving the most students from low-income backgrounds (i.e., Pell Grant recipients). Without knowing if these students instead matriculated to other institutions, it may be that these students did not enroll
at all and may never do so in the future.
Enrollment declines at both public and private, nonprofit four-year institutions were more than three times as large as those at public two-year institutions. This sector experienced steep declines during the pandemic but has seen a strong upswing
over the past two falls; between fall 2022 and fall 2024 public two-year institutions’ 18-year-old freshman enrollment increased 3.3%.
The analysis exclusively considers the enrollment outcomes of 18-year-old freshmen, overall and disaggregated by institutional sector, percentage of Pell Grant recipients enrolled, admissions selectivity, neighborhood income, race/ethnicity, and gender.
The report follows up in part on the NSCRC’s “First Look at Fall 2024 Highlights” which included enrollments from about 50% of institutions nationally through September 26,
2024. In the “First Look” report, 18-year-old freshman enrollment had declined 6%.
These declines took place in the context of a semester following the disastrous rollout of the 2024-25 FAFSA, which opened late
and then experienced many technical difficulties throughout the past spring. The delayed FAFSA opening set off a chain reaction that fouled up the entire college application process and resulted in award letter delivery being late or occurring after
decision deadlines.
The FAFSA cycle overshadowed this semester, but it was not the only contextual factor. These findings come during the first admissions cycle following the Students for Fair Admissions Supreme Court decisions.
Notably, Black 18-year-old freshmen saw their enrollment at the most highly selective public four-year institutions decline by 19.6%, by far the largest decrease of any race/ethnicity by selectivity combination. These students also saw their enrollments
at the most highly selective private four-year institutions decline by 13.8%. Additionally, although Latino/a freshman enrollment only declined 5.6% at public four-year institutions, at the most highly selective institutions that decline was 8.9%.
Meanwhile, although white freshman enrollment declined 10% overall, at the most highly selective public institutions that figure was just 4.7%.
There could be many reasons for this shift, none of them universal or definitive. It may be that these numbers represent students downshifting from more- to less-selective four-year public institutions because the most selective institutions are also
often the most expensive. While students of color may not have financial aid packages in time to decide to matriculate to these, white students, whose families have more wealth on average, may have been able to keep their options open longer until
an award letter could arrive. A growing percentage of students who decline to share their race or ethnicity with their postsecondary institution is another likely factor.
All postsecondary sectors see enrollment declines for 18-year-old freshmen this fall. Four-year public and private, nonprofit institutions have experienced declines of 6.4% and 6.2% respectively while community colleges saw a smaller 1.7% decline.
This fall the NSCRC considered enrollment by a new institutional category, the percentage of Pell Grant recipients served. Among public four-year institutions, all three categories of Pell-Serving declined by about 6%. High-Pell-Serving four-year private
nonprofit institutions saw enrollment decline 10.1% compared to 5.5% and 5.8% respectively for moderate and low Pell-Serving categories. Public two-year and Primarily Associate Degree Granting Baccalaureate Institutions (PABs) saw declines ranging
from 0.9% (high) to 2.7% (low).
The myriad red and orange hues on the NSCRC’s dashboard boil down to a concerning reality: too many students missed a college transition this fall. Past research has
shown that students who delay entry to college have a decreased likelihood of future degree attainment. More recently, NSCRC research showed
that among high school graduates from the class of 2020, just 2% of students followed a “gap year” enrollment pattern where they enrolled for the first time more than a year after high school graduation.
Given that there have been disruptions to both FAFSA completion and enrollment for three of the last five graduating high school classes, getting the class of 2025 back on track for enrollment next fall is critical. The stakes for students and their families
and communities, as well as states and the United States overall, are very high. It is important that the enrollment declines resulting from these disruptions not become our new national normal.
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