Updated 5:16 am EDT Oct. 23, 2024

College freshman enrollment dropped this fall and researchers aren’t sure why. 

It could be the mountain of problems with federal financial aid during the last enrollment cycle. Or it might be anxiety over the Supreme Court’s ban on race-conscious admissions. It may be that some Americans are changing their attitudes about the value of a college degree. 

Whatever the reason, new national data published Wednesday recorded a 5% dip in first-year undergraduate enrollment compared with last fall – a figure researchers referred to as “startling.” 

The numbers painted a rosier picture overall: They show undergraduate enrollment has grown an average of 3%. Those gains were bolstered by more high schoolers taking college classes and older students returning to finish coursework for their degrees. 

The largest reductions in freshmen happened at four-year public and private nonprofit schools. Community colleges also saw declines, but they weren’t as steep. 

On a call with reporters Tuesday, Doug Shapiro, who oversaw the data analysis at the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, hesitated to identify what triggered the decline in first-year student enrollment. 

“It’s very hard to pinpoint any single cause of the changes, particularly in freshmen, this fall,” he said. “There have been so many different headwinds.” 

Though colleges have continued to add academic programs, the next few years will likely bring stronger headwinds. Declining birth rates will shrink the pool of high school graduates, increasing competition among universities for fewer students. 

The looming “demographic cliff,” as college administrators call it, increases the urgency for schools to understand emerging trends about which students are choosing to go to college and why. 

This year won’t be the last time they’ll contend with smaller freshmen classes. 

“The overall number of high school graduates was not projected to decline this year,” Shapiro said. “Those declines are not supposed to start until next year or the year after.” 

Zachary Schermele is an education reporter for USA TODAY. You can reach him by email at zschermele@usatoday.com. Follow him on X at @ZachSchermele.