New Enrollment Trends

What do the National Student Clearinghouse, The College Board, and the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (nicknamed the St. Louis Fed) have in common? The answer? They all have recently produced data and research on a wide variety of topics that might affect college enrollment and operations, including admissions, financial aid, tuition pricing trends, and the rate and types of disability among U.S. workers.

This AGB Research blog focuses on these three entities to give boards, board professionals, and presidents a sampling of available resources. Note: The data and research were produced before the 2024 U.S. presidential election, the results of which might bring even more changes to college enrollment, costs, and operations early in 2025. For instance, if the U.S. Department of Education is actually eliminated as the new administration has discussed, the elimination of the Higher Education Act’s Title IV funding for federal student aid—and the requirement for students to file the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) to receive Title IV grants and loans—will profoundly change student enrollment, institutional finances, and available data.

Initial National Student Clearinghouse Fall 2024 Enrollment Data

As of September 26, 2024, the trends in the National Student Clearinghouse’s preliminary estimates of Fall 2024 enrollment were mixed. The overall undergraduate enrollment rose by 3 percent, with increased growth in numbers of undergraduates across all sectors. However, early patterns within the data bear monitoring.¹

For instance, first-year student enrollment is 5 percent lower than at the same time last fall. Enrollments at public and private nonprofit four-year institutions (with enrollment drops of 8.5 percent and 6.5 percent, respectively) declined at the highest rates compared to community colleges (a decline of 0.4 percent). The impetus is a nearly 6 percent decline in 18-year-old first-year students, the age group used as a proxy for those who enroll immediately after high school.²

It is quite possible that the well-documented problems with FAFSA filing this year contributed to these drops. (See most recently a finding from a survey by the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities that “the FAFSA crisis led to enrollment declines at 44 percent of private colleges.”³) As of October 25, 2024, the National College Attainment Network reports that 53.2 percent of the 2024 high school graduating class completed a FAFSA, and more than 2.2 million forms were completed, a drop of 8.8 percent compared to the previous academic year.⁴

Another concerning data point potentially related to the FAFSA issue is that first-year enrollment decreases are “most significant at four-year colleges that serve low-income students.”⁵ Specifically, first-year enrollment has declined (at least in preliminary estimates) by more than 10 percent at four-year institutions serving a large share of Pell Grant-eligible students, while less costly community colleges with a similar share of Pell Grant-eligible students saw first-year enrollment rise by 1.2 percent.⁶

Because filing a FAFSA is mandatory in order to receive a Pell Grant—reserved for students with the lowest incomes and greatest financial need—the disruption in FAFSA filing might have led students to shift their fall enrollment from four-year to two-year institutions based on cost. However, there is also growth in shorter-term credential-program enrollments to be considered. Undergraduate certificate-program enrollment, for example, rose by 7.3 percent this fall.⁷ Until final enrollment data are in, determining the full fall 2024 picture is difficult.

College Board Trends in College Pricing and Student Aid 2024 Report

The College Board has been tracking trends in financial aid, college pricing, and other educational data since 1983 (with the first publication of what was then a separate Trends in Financial Aid report).⁸ The mid-October release of the latest report has a plethora of data that board members, board chairs, presidents, and board professionals can use. This includes average published tuition and fee prices, average net tuition prices, borrowing trends, institutional revenues, and more.

While the average published tuition and fee price charts by sector and state are extremely useful comparative data, Trends’ latest average net-tuition-price data over time also allows comparisons between two-year and four-year institutions, as well as admissions selectivity and family income.⁹

Some notable points include:

• Although the data include COVID-19-related Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund monies in 2020–21 and 2021–22, first-time, full-time in-district students enrolled in public two-year colleges have received grant aid totally covering their annual tuition and fees every year since 2009–10—more than a decade ago.¹⁰
• Inflation-adjusted net tuition and fee costs for first-time, full-time in-state students at public four-year colleges and universities were an estimated $2,480 in 2024–25. This cost peaked more than a decade ago, in 2012–13, at $4,340.¹¹
• Inflation-adjusted net tuition and fee costs for first-time full-time students at private nonprofit four-year colleges and universities were an estimated $16,510 in 2024-25. In 2006–07, they were $19,330; in 2014–15, they were $18,680.¹²
• In 2019–20, full-time dependent students whose parental income was less than $40,000 had their tuition and fees fully covered at the following percentages, broken down by institutional type and selectivity:¹³
  • Public two-year: 71% of such students
  • Public four-year, minimally selective or open admission: 54%
  • Public four-year, moderately selective: 56%
  • Public four-year, very selective: 79%
  • Private nonprofit four-year, minimally selective or open admission: 41%
  • Private nonprofit four-year, moderately selective: 26%
  • Private nonprofit four-year, very selective: 47%
  • For-profit: 5%

The expiration of COVID-19 emergency funding in the United States, combined with enrollment decreases and election results in the United States, might change the financial picture for boards and presidents in the near future. However, these data show that the popular narrative of “college is unaffordable” is actually more nuanced—and has been over time—depending on institutional type and selectivity combined with family income.

Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Blogs

Two summer 2024 blogs in the On the Economy blog series put out by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis draw attention to comparative data (pre-pandemic and current) on how the subpopulation of Americans with disabilities intersects with the overall U.S. working-age population. The takeaway for boards and presidents alike is that disabilities—particularly cognitive disabilities—have risen among the working-age population since the advent of COVID. This will affect everyday operations of institutions, systems, and foundations.

Although certainly not the only cause of disability, COVID continues to be both fatal—as of November 2, 2024, the CDC’s provisional estimate is more than 11,000 deaths across the United States in the past three months alone¹⁴—and disabling. A June 2024 JAMA data brief provides information on mounting evidence that approximately 7 percent of adults age 18 or older in the United States have had a post-COVID-19 condition, commonly known as long COVID.¹⁵ Further, the Census Bureau and National Center for Health Statistics are currently partnering to assess how prevalent post-COVID-19 conditions are, using the experimental Household Pulse Survey.¹⁶ The latest available estimate (from August 20 through September 16, 2024) reports 17.9 percent of adults have experienced long COVID.¹⁷

In July 2024, the St. Louis Fed On the Economy blog used Census data to compare the employment-population (E-P) ratio in February 2020 and February 2024 for working-age individuals with and without a disability. They found that the E-P ratio for individuals with a disability rose 5.8 percentage points between February 2020 (30.9 percent) and February 2024 (36.7 percent). By contrast, the E-P ratio for individuals without a disability in February 2020 was 74.8 percent, decreasing 0.2 percentage points to 74.2 percent in February 2024.¹⁸

The authors conducted a more in-depth analysis of the ratio components and concluded “… the U.S. working-age population with a disability grew faster than the working-age population without a disability. … [I]t is more likely that the pandemic increased disabilities among both the population and the workforce, resulting in higher E-P ratios for those with disabilities.”¹⁹

This was followed by another blog post in August 2024, in which the authors dug into Current Population Survey data on different types of disabilities. They found that “since 2019, the E-P ratio has increased across all disability categories, meaning a greater percentage of America’s disabled population is working regardless of disability type; however, the most prominent increase has been among those reporting only a cognitive disability.”²⁰

Takeaways

• Fallout from the 2024 presidential election is still unknown as this blog is being written. If the incoming administration makes good on early rhetoric to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education, both money flows and data sources will be upended.
• The fall 2024 enrollment picture is mixed so far, with declines in first-year student enrollment but gains in overall undergraduate enrollment. Problems with the electronic FAFSA might have contributed to enrollment declines.
• The percentage of U.S. working-age people with a disability has risen, as has the overall size of the disabled population in the United States. The highest increase in workers with disabilities, however, has been among workers who only report having a cognitive disability. The long-term effects of this on institutions, systems, and foundations remains to be seen as COVID continues and other potential pandemics arise.

Lesley McBain, PhD, is AGB’s senior director of research.

Notes