Dive Brief:
- Higher education enrollment continued to drop through the fall of 2015, led by losses at for-profit and community colleges and by students aged 24 and older with stable enrollments in the four-year public and private nonprofit sphere.
- Inside Higher Ed reports the total loss in students was 340,000 with just more than half of those enrollments coming from four-year, for-profit colleges and most of the remainder, 145,000, from community colleges.
- New Hampshire topped a group of only 4 states that saw enrollment increases from 2014 to 2015 of more than 2% — it reached 11% — and eight states saw declines of 4% or more: Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Montana, New Mexico, and West Virginia.
Dive Insight:
The National Student Clearinghouse Research Center releases its enrollment estimates twice per year. The drops at for-profit and community colleges as well as those among students aged 24 and older can largely be explained by an improving economy. Adults who left or were forced out of the workforce during the recession chose higher education, but there are fewer who need the same strategy as the unemployment rate continues to decline.
Tennessee, despite the Tennessee Promise initiative, saw an overall drop in enrollment of .5%. With Oregon set to enroll students for the first time through its statewide plan during the fall of 2016, it will be interesting to see whether its 3% drop in enrollment from 2014 to 2015 is reversed.