Every November, the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center (NSCRC) publishes its preliminary report on Fall enrollments. And this year’s report is quite promising for brick-and-mortar colleges and universities…
Overall enrollments continue to rebound post pandemic and are up 2% over Fall 2024. Even more promising, undergrad enrollment is up 2.4%.[1]
Of course, while this is indeed good news, the demographic cliff is looming. See, this year’s high school graduation class is expected to be the last class before the total number of high school aged students begins to plummet.
More on this, and why it may not matter much if you operate a primarily online institution, in just a moment.
First, let’s dig into the numbers a little further.
While undergrad enrollments are up nicely, a higher percentage of students enrolled in community colleges (up 4%) and public 4-year schools (up 1.9%) than did for private, nonprofit four-year schools: with growth only coming in at 0.9%.
Graduate enrollment was relatively flat, coming in at 0.1% growth.
Interestingly, for 18 year olds, undergrad enrollments increased by 3.2%, Adult leaner enrollments also increased: 3.3% for 25-29 year olds, and 2.7% for those 30 and older.
Perhaps not so surprising, undergrad certificate program enrollments grew by 6.6% over Fall 2024, as many students are seeing a quicker pathway to gainful employment.
“With half of our institutions reporting so far, the number of undergrads in colleges and universities this fall is on track to grow for the third straight year. That’s good news all around, but especially for community colleges as students continue to gravitate towards vocational certificates and associate degrees, leaving less momentum for growth among bachelors’ seekers,” said NSCRC Executive Director, Doug Shapiro.[2]
But let’s not get overly excited. As Shapiro pointed out, this data comes from less than half of the schools that report (49.4%), meaning should the other half report, the actual enrollment data could, potentially be, well, not so great. We simply won’t know until we know.
And…
The majority of growth can be found in two-year community college and vocational programs.
And…
As previously mentioned, this may be the last year we see overall enrollment growth coming in at 2%, since we’re now staring over the edge of the demographic cliff.
Fewer kids = fewer future college students.
However, the data NSCRC show that for adult learners, the news is very, very promising. It may indicate that even though fewer high schoolers will be entering college in the coming years, more adults are enrolling.
Now, if you operate a primarily online college, this is particularly good news for you as the trend from this demo (your target demo), should it continue into the future, may spare you from the brunt of the cliff.
But even though the trend is your friend, and the adult learner demo is enrolling at a good clip, you still have to get them enrolled in your programs.
As you know, it’s not a simple task. Spending tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of dollars on TV ads may sound like a winning formula, but chances are you already know it’s not; TV simply lacks the true demographic targeting you’re looking for.
But if your school has extra cash to throw around, this may be fine. It’s not fine, however, if you’re trying to maximize your ad-spend to new student conversion ratio.
To enroll more students more efficiently, and in our opinion more cost effectively, you should consider using live transfer leads as a source to generate new enrollments.
Of course, Conversion Media Group is a national leader in live transfer leads for higher education, so we know all about our cost effectiveness…
And we’d love to discuss it with you.
You see, higher ed lead generation is all we do, and our methodologies are proven, efficient and yes, cost effective.
Give us a call at 1-800-419-3201 and we’ll explain our programs in detail.
[1] Clearinghouse Enrollment Insights Series: Preliminary Fall Enrollment Trends
[2] Report: College Enrollment On Track To Increase For 3rd Straight Year