Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many colleges and universities across the United States have shifted to online learning. Understanding the urgency of the COVID-19 pandemic, and its impact on students and institutions of higher education, the National Student Clearinghouse continues to track outstanding college enrollment trends in almost real time to deliver enrollment data dashboards that are updated monthly using the latest enrollment data available. To highlight enrollment patterns attributable to the pandemic, the years 2018 and 2019 are used as the baseline years for the data. The trends starting with summer 2020 are highlighted as follows:
- Community colleges and private for-profit institutions suffered enrollment declines of 6 to 7 percent.
- Summer enrollment fell at community colleges regardless of gender, age, race and ethnicity, or location, except for Asian students and high school dual enrollees.
- A double-digit drop in male community college enrollments of 13.6% led to significant overall national enrollment losses for males (-5.2%).
- At for-profit four-year institutions, full-time enrollments were down by 5.7 percent while part-time enrollment increased at a slower pace than expected.
- Students who enrolled at community colleges this summer were more likely to attend full-time rather than part-time.
- Students aged 20 and younger including high school dual enrollment students continue to drive undergraduate enrollment growth.
- Enrollments jumped 8.2% for public colleges and 17.3% for private nonprofit four-year colleges.
- While younger student enrollment is growing, older student enrollment declined (particularly for those aged 30 or older).
- Undergraduate Black students suffered the steepest enrollment declines, particularly at community colleges. Black graduate enrollments increased 3 percent.
- Black undergraduate summer enrollments were down 8.3 percent from last year including a decline of 9.7 percent at private for-profit four years and 10.5 percent at community colleges.
- Hispanic students saw a double-digit enrollment increase at the graduate level (12.7%), the fastest growth among all racial/ethnic groups. Hispanic students also saw increased undergraduate enrollment at all institution types except for community colleges.
- At primarily online institutions, where more than 90 percent of students enrolled exclusively online, graduate enrollments increased 5.8% whereas undergraduate enrollments decreased by 3.7% resulting in a 1.5 percent overall enrollment decline.
