In 2021-22, the Running Start program experienced its first enrollment decline in over a decade. This was due, in large part, to pandemic-related school and college closures and the impact of these interruptions on students' advanced course-taking. Additionally, some students whose early high school years were disrupted chose to stay in high…

Obtaining a postsecondary education is an important factor in long-term labour market success (Frenette 2019) and a key mechanism for achieving intergenerational income mobility (Simard-Duplain and St-Denis 2020). Previous research ending in 2014 documented substantial gaps in postsecondary enrolment rates between higher- and lower-income youth…

In this brief, the authors examine changes in enrollments at the Los Angeles Community College District between fall 2017 and summer 2023 to document the extent of pandemic-era enrollment declines overall and across student populations.

Declining enrollment quickly raises financial challenges within colleges and universities, such as decreased tuition and fee revenues, costs that can be difficult to nimbly control, and reputational risk. For public institutions within the same state, declining enrollment can also have a secondary impact: increasing competition. While a state's…

The meteoric rise in charter schools has several implications for traditional public schools and their students. One understudied implication is the geographic competition for students. Given traditional public school boundaries are often fixed while charter school boundaries are more flexible, charter schools can draw students away from existing…

In a period of growing concerns about the financial viability of many colleges, students and their families have little information about the extent to which a particular institution is struggling. The U.S. Department of Education uses heightened cash monitoring (HCM) and financial responsibility metrics as two tools to identify colleges that…

The newly released enrollment data from the National Center on Education Statistics for the 2022-23 school year point to moderate enrollment gains for traditional public schools. The recent enrollment gains though are smaller than the cumulative enrollment losses since 2019-20 and are not uniform. This paper takes stock of enrollment losses today…

This study employed quantitative descriptive statistics, including time series analysis, to explore how special education enrollment rates in Pennsylvania changed in the school years during the COVID-19 pandemic compared to previous trends. Data were gathered from publicly available annual reports of special education enrollment between 2010 and…

Seminaries in the United States have for more than two centuries sought to equip ministerial leaders for service within the community of faith. And yet these institutions have traditionally been the focus of very little quantitative research. This lack of data is particularly noteworthy given the existential crises many seminaries currently face,…

Guidance counseling is well known to foster enrollment in higher education among students from low social origins in the United States and Canada. However, because students in these North American countries face obstacles that do not exist in many European countries, generalizing previous findings to the European context is difficult. Against this…

In Ghana, private higher education institutions' (PHEIs) share of gross tertiary enrolment is on the decline in the midst of growing demand for tertiary education. Whether this is, an indication of PHEIs in Ghana becoming endangered species in the higher education space has received limited research attention. Through documentary reviews and…

College enrollment rates have been on the decline over the past years, with more high school graduates choosing alternative pathways such as getting employed in an entry level job, pursuing a technical or trade training program, starting a small business, and entrepreneurship. This phenomenon may have been exacerbated by major events such as The…

Since 2018, institutions of higher education have been aware of the "enrollment cliff" which refers to expected declines in future enrollment. This paper attempts to describe how prepared institutions in Ohio are for this future by looking at trends leading up to the anticipated decline. Using IPEDS data from 2012-2022, we analyze trends…

Postsecondary education leaders are eager for reliable data to strategically plan for the next year through the next decade, and WICHE's projections of high school graduates are among the most relied upon sources. As WICHE has reported several times since the pandemic began, the disruption to student populations was illustrated with the shift of…

The COVID-19 pandemic negatively impacted enrollment, a continuation of the decline ongoing since 2010. Two-year colleges are highly dependent on tuition revenue. Consequently, the pandemic exacerbated the postsecondary economic crisis, as 2-year institutions faced financial hardship amidst enrollment uncertainties. In response to the pandemic,…