Dive Brief:
- An analysis of projections by for-profit colleges and analysts of the sector shows that student enrollment is expected to increase after 2015.
- The analysis by the Chronicle of Higher Education looked at 14 publicly traded higher ed companies that have about half of the 2 million students in the for-profit sector.
- If the projections are true, they would be reversing an overall enrollment decline for for-profit colleges that started in 2010.
Dive Insight:
Positive enrollment expectations by for-profit colleges should be taken with a grain of salt, considering that chief executives in the sector could hardly be expected to report that their efforts to reverse enrollment declines are expected to fail. The Chronicle points out that for some colleges, the added students are coming from non-U.S. enrollment. One of the big unknowns is how much regulation the for-profits will face going forward and how that regulation will affect student numbers.