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After correcting for an earlier data error, the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center (NSCRC) reported last week that college freshman enrollment increased by 5.5% last fall. The new figures are a reversal of the center’s preliminary results released in October 2024, which indicated a decline in college freshman enrollment.

Key Takeaways

• Initial estimates reported by the NSCRC in the fall report indicated that enrollment of college freshmen had declined by 5% last year, with especially concerning drops at four-year colleges that serve low-income students. The report projected the largest drop in freshman enrollment since 2020. 
• The NSCRC announced a significant correction to that report earlier this month, stating that it had been based on a “methodological error” that “caused the mislabeling of certain students as dual enrolled rather than as freshmen,” which skewed the research group’s preliminary enrollment figures.
• The NSCRC’s subsequent research, reported in its recently released Current Term Enrollment Estimates, found that freshman enrollment grew by 5.5% in fall 2024 compared to 2023, representing an increase of about 130,000 freshmen. The growth is driven by older first-year students; enrollment of 18-year-old freshmen is still below  pre-pandemic 2019 levels, the NSCRC said.
• Overall college enrollment grew 4.5% in fall 2024 compared to the previous year, a gain of about 817,000 post-secondary students. Total college enrollment is now about 0.4% above 2019’s pre-pandemic levels, with undergraduate enrollment at nearly 16 million students and graduate enrollment at 3.2 million students, the report found.

In his statement about the error, NSCRC Executive Director Doug Shapiro said the Current Term Enrollment Estimates report published in January provides a more comprehensive view of enrollment trends based on data from nearly all higher education institutions and uses different methodologies to determine freshman enrollees. The “Stay Informed” preliminary enrollment report published in October 2024 was based on data from half of the colleges and universities that submit data to the organization. 

“The National Student Clearinghouse Research Center acknowledges the importance and significance of its role in providing accurate and reliable research to the higher education community,” Shapiro said in a statement. He added that the center deeply regrets the error and is conducting a thorough review to discover its source. 

Inside Higher Ed reported that the error came to light as researchers were preparing the center’s January report and noted the sharp contrast between preliminary estimates and the final numbers, prompting a retroactive review of the October report and the center’s November special analysis on 18-year-old freshmen. 

The research center created the Stay Informed report in the summer of 2020 to provide “early and real-time enrollment information” to meet the needs of the higher education community at the height of the COVID pandemic. It has continued to produce these preliminary reports each fall, followed by final and complete reporting on enrollment each winter in its January reports. 

Because the NSCRC has been the go-to source for statistical data on higher education, revelations of the miscalculation shook researchers and higher education leaders and the media outlets that covered the report. The past year has been a challenging one for the higher education sector. Jeremy Cohen, an NSCRC research associate and one of the report’s authors, said that there are a number of forces affecting freshman enrollment, including demographic shifts, the projected decline of high school graduates in the U.S. and the shaky rollout of the 2024-25 Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA).

The U.S. Department of Education noted a potential issue with the preliminary results as early as October when its financial data showed a 3% increase in students receiving federal aid for 2024-25, with 10% more students on track to receive Pell Grants — figures that didn’t match the enrollment declines NSCRC had reported.

In a statement last week, the Education Department’s former undersecretary James Kvaal said he was “encouraged and relieved” by the revised assessment, which he said was consistent with what officials were seeing on the financial side. 

Though the enrollment figures for fall 2024 now tell a different story, suggesting at least a moderate post-pandemic recovery, the revised figures don’t change the fact that some steep declines still loom for higher education. According to a recent report from the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, the number of 18-year-old high school graduates will peak in 2025 at around 3.9 million and are expected to be followed by a 15-year decline, bringing the projected demographic cliff to reality.

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