Preliminary Enrollment Data Shows Slower Growth

Undergraduate enrollment growth slowed this fall, according to preliminary data the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center released today.

After big dips during the pandemic, enrollment has risen over the past few years. Between fall 2024 and fall 2025, it increased 2.4 percent, but this fall it only climbed an additional 0.6 percent. While enrollment ticked up 1.2 percent at community colleges, public four-year institutions saw a 0.3 percent increase and private four-year institutions had no change.

“Enrollment is essentially flat, or growing by less than 1 percent across the board,” said Matthew Holsapple, senior director of research at the National Student Clearinghouse, on a call with reporters Wednesday. “I’m careful not to characterize what we’re seeing as an enrollment decline. Enrollment is still slightly higher than it was a year ago, but the important change this fall isn’t widespread decline; it’s the loss of that broad-based growth we saw last year and had been seeing since the pandemic.”

About 46 percent of institutions submitted data covering nearly eight million students to the Clearinghouse for the preliminary enrollment report, and the numbers will likely charge when the final fall numbers are released in January.

While the early data shows a slight increase in undergraduate enrollment, a 3.7 percent drop for master’s programs drove a 1.6 percent total decline in graduate enrollment, with doctoral program enrollment ticking down 0.5 percent. This is the first academic year that new caps on graduate student loans took effect, and several experts have warned the limits could hinder enrollment in those programs.

Holsapple said the data doesn’t currently shed light on whether or how the caps or other policy changes at the federal or institutional level are affecting program enrollments.

“All we can see is that those enrollments are changing,” he said. “We see different patterns for master’s and Ph.D. students, which might point to some differences there.”