College enrollment stabilizing after years of steep declines, data show

An influx of freshmen in the fall has helped narrow enrollment declines at colleges and universities across the country, but the total head count for all of higher education was still 5.8 percent below 2019 levels, according to a National Student Clearinghouse Research Center report released Thursday.

The report, a closely-watched indicator of sector-wide trends, suggests the stunning loss of students in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic is abating. Declines in undergraduate enrollment began to stabilize last fall, contracting by just 0.6 percent compared to the same period in 2021. With more than 3,600 institutions captured in the data, the new numbers are an improvement from earlier estimates that relied on fewer schools.