Institutions See Record Enrollments, Big Turnarounds in 2026

It’s a weird time for higher education. Enrollment is increasing over all, with many flagship universities, highly selective colleges and community colleges appearing to have no difficulty filling seats.

Yet other institutions are struggling to meet their enrollment goals, especially as international student numbers continue to dip, potential students opt to enter the workforce or seek credentials outside higher ed, and the number of high school graduates begins to decrease each year.

Still, a slate of institutions reached new enrollment records this year, in some cases capitalizing on momentum while others reversed years of declines or stagnation. There is no one strategy that each institution employed, but many focused on strengthening local recruitment pathways, adding high-demand programs and launching unique recruitment efforts.

These six institutions are among the success stories of fall 2026: colleges and universities that have found ways to stand out from the crowd and attract new students.

Southern Illinois University Edwardsville

Located in the greater St. Louis area, SIUE had a long history as a commuter campus, which made expanding enrollment difficult. But 2026 marks the second fall in a row that it saw a major enrollment bump; combined, total enrollment has increased by almost 15 percent. First-year enrollment surged by 50 percent in that same span.

SIUE’s Students Taking Action for Registration and Transition program—SIUE START for short—provided a major pipeline to the institution from local high schools. Through the program, SIUE staff brought placement testing, academic advising and course registration directly into 10 nearby high schools, helping students overcome obstacles in the enrollment process.

“Students graduated with their college schedule, an early connection to their SIUE advising team, and a clearer understanding of what came next,” Nicole Franklin, the institution’s director of communications, wrote in an email. “It was a practical way to resolve challenges before they became barriers to enrollment.”

SIUE hopes to expand the program in the coming years. The college is also focused on improving sophomore retention by introducing interventions like tutoring and success coaching “earlier, more often, and more consistently into the student experience” so that students are familiar and comfortable with those offerings before they need them, according to Franklin. Also as part of the focus on retention, the institution’s student affairs team plans to expand “support to help students adjust to college, build relationships, and navigate personal, social, or financial challenges,” she wrote.

The other Southern Illinois University campus, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, also saw historic growth this year.

University of Alabama in Huntsville

UAH’s total enrollment had been declining for half a decade before its turnaround this fall, when it increased by about 2 percent, though numbers won’t be finalized until October. That growth is the result of years of administrative changes, according to Michael Poll, UAH’s inaugural vice provost for enrollment management. In early 2025, the institution created his division, bringing together seven other offices, including admissions and veterans’ services, and launched an enrollment road map to try to address falling head count.

As part of that division’s work, Poll said, the institution dug into its scholarship data to get a better sense of how awards correlate with yield and retention. The team found that yield was much lower for students who hadn’t submitted test scores, so they gave a slight boost to the aid awarded to those students, resulting in a 5 percent yield increase. They also offered new scholarships for some transfer students and loosened scholarship renewal requirements after noticing how many students transferred out when they were at risk of losing their scholarship.

Poll said the university has also begun leveraging its proximity to the U.S. Space & Rocket Center and Space Camp, a popular children’s astronomy and astrophysics camp, offering small scholarships to all who attended the program. To attract students beyond Huntsville, UAH now has four dedicated regional recruiters in other parts of the country.

Though UAH’s gains weren’t massive this year, Poll said he’s hopeful the institution will continue its upward trajectory over the next three years of the strategic enrollment plan.

“It takes time to turn the ship around,” he wrote in an email. “It starts with one positive new enrollment year.”

Edward Waters University

The Jacksonville, Fla., HBCU has been on a steady increase over the past decade plus, nearly doubling its enrollment from a low of 751 students in 2011. But this year marked an important milestone: the institution’s highest enrollment—1,281—in two decades.

The university has expanded its academic programs and online education offerings significantly in recent years, growing from seven majors to 18, all of which are offered entirely online to appeal to adult learners and individuals outside the North Florida region; to help find those students, the institution works with a recruitment and marketing firm, which has nearly quintupled the university’s application volume since 2018. The expanded offerings include EWU’s first master’s programs, which came alongside a name change from Edward Waters College.

“The graduate programs did more than increase enrollment,” EWU President A. Zachary Faison Jr. told Inside Higher Ed in an email. “They changed how external audiences perceive this institution, including audiences that had never seriously considered us.”

But the institution is equally focused on its residential experience. It is currently working on building a new residence hall and a new track on campus, Faison said. And many transfer students, who have made up a significant portion of the institution’s enrollment increases in recent years, choose EWU because they are interested in moving from another four-year institution to the “smaller, family-like experience this campus offers,” he added.

Faison also sees athletics as an enrollment strategy; in 2024, EWU joined the NCAA in Division II, making it the only D2 HBCU in Florida.

Cape Fear Community College

After a few years of stagnant enrollment, CFCC earned a unique honor this year; of all North Carolina’s community colleges, it saw the biggest enrollment boom, with an 18 percent increase in full-time equivalency.

Like several other institutions that saw enrollment increases this year, CFCC recently established a new team dedicated to analyzing enrollment trends and data. Their efforts included a new initiative to reach out to students who had planned their courses but not registered. The institution also tackled some other hurdles for students, working aggressively to increase FAFSA completions by 16 percent and massively decreasing the number of students stuck on wait lists for courses they needed. A new student services team launched last year also focused on providing individualized support to incoming students to help them overcome any challenges in the enrollment process.

On the workforce front, the college expanded its quickest-turnaround short-term credential programs that are designed to get students into jobs as soon as possible, such as health care, truck driving and construction. It also continued building out its online offerings, which allow students across 46 U.S. states to study at CFCC.

Arkansas Tech University–Ozark

ATU–Ozark, a two-year college that has served as a branch campus of four-year Arkansas Tech since 2004, is projected to reach a record-high enrollment of 2,669 this year—the largest since 2014, with the strongest growth in health sciences and welding programs. In the past two years, enrollment across skilled-trade programs has surged 75 percent as students and families increasingly see the value of such credentials, according to Jessica Spicer, associate director of admissions at ATU–Ozark.

Spicer attributed the growth primarily to collaboration among campus partners.

“Our response to [enrollment] challenges has been to recognize that enrollment is a campus-wide responsibility,” she wrote in an email. “We developed an enrollment plan about a decade ago and have continued to work it, adjust it and stay committed to it. When we haven’t met a goal, we haven’t abandoned it. We’ve adjusted and kept working. That consistency has made a difference. Our current record enrollment is a reflection of the teamwork and collaboration across the institution and with the communities we serve.”

She also cited growing recruitment pipelines and partnerships with K–12 schools; the college now partners with 20 different schools on dual-enrollment programs, and concurrent enrollment skyrocketed 223 percent this year. Concurrent enrollment allows ATU–Ozark to connect earlier and in a more personalized manner with prospective students, showing them how accessible higher education can be, Spicer said.

University of California, Merced

California public higher education is a crowded field. But this year, after years of uneven enrollment, UC Merced, one of the less selective University of California campuses, saw a major increase in new students. The number of first-year students jumped 36 percent and transfers surged by 66 percent, bringing total enrollment to a record high of 9,647. The increase comes after enrollment dipped in fall 2025.

Administrators attributed the growth to several factors, including a slate of new majors focused on meeting workforce needs, such as accounting and computer science. The institution has also worked in recent years to increase its enrollment pipelines through a guaranteed admissions program that offers a simplified application to students from dozens of local schools and districts, as well as a streamlined transfer program for students at 16 community colleges.

Those pathways are meaningful at UC Merced, where 98 percent of students are in-state and the portion who come from the state’s Central Valley region, where the university is located, is growing.

Scott Hagg, vice chancellor of enrollment management, told Inside Higher Ed in an email that the university has been working to emphasize the assets that have long characterized a UC Merced education, including affordability, “a student-centered educational experience, opportunities for undergraduates to engage in research alongside faculty, a vibrant residential campus community, and the value of a University of California degree.”