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Freshman enrollment dropped more than 5 percent from last year at American colleges and universities, the largest decline since 2020 when Covid-19 and distance learning upended higher education, according to preliminary data released on Wednesday by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, a nonprofit education group.
The finding comes roughly a year after the federal student aid system was dragged down by problems with the Free Application for Federal Student Aid form, commonly known as FAFSA, which led to maddening delays this year in processing families’ financial data to send to school administrators. That in turn held up the rollout of financial aid offers well into the summer, leaving many families struggling to determine how much college would cost.
By itself, the enrollment data does not establish that errors with the FAFSA form caused a significant number of students to postpone college out of frustration with the process or to choose lower-cost alternatives to four-year schools, such as community colleges or two-year degree programs.
But the numbers released on Wednesday highlighted a drop in freshman enrollment, particularly at schools serving students from lower-income families that disproportionately depend on federal aid to afford college.
Most significantly, the data indicated that both public and private four-year schools that admit the largest shares of students receiving Pell grants saw freshman enrollment dip by more than 10 percent from 2023 levels.
Pell grants provide a subsidy of up to $7,395 per year for low-income students and offer a financial boost for schools that disproportionately enroll lower-income students. The grants generally support families in the lower half of household income distribution — those earning $60,000 a year or less — but more than half have typically gone to students whose families earn less than $20,000 annually.
Increasing the maximum size of the Pell grant for the 2024-25 academic year has been celebrated by Education Department officials as one of the Biden administration’s proudest accomplishments. At the urging of department officials, lawmakers increased the maximum award by $900 total, up from $6,495 in 2022.
But the steep drop-off in freshman enrollment at schools with the largest populations of lower-income students suggested that far fewer incoming students were able to take advantage of the more generous award this year, and that any positive financial impact on those schools was blunted by the decline.
Doug Shapiro, the executive director of the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, said that a variety of factors, including the Supreme Court decision last year ending race-conscious admissions, anxiety over excessive student debt and a strong labor market, may have played some role affecting individual decisions about college. He said it was unclear to what extent headaches with FAFSA may have contributed.
But based on observations from the downturn in 2020, Mr. Shapiro said that when high school seniors deferred college that year, only an “infinitesimal” number returned in the years after, leaving a permanent dent in enrollment. For that reason, he said, there was little evidence that the numbers would bounce back next year with more students than usual flocking back to college.
“Life happens,” Mr. Shapiro told reporters during a call on Tuesday. “These students end up with jobs and sometimes families, and they find it harder and harder as time goes on to think about entering college again.”
Ahead of the report, the Education Department published an analysis on Tuesday stating that the total number of students it expects to receive federal student aid has risen by 3 percent since 2023 and that 10 percent more students are on track to receive a Pell grant this year.
But in its report, the department acknowledged that it received 2 percent fewer applications for federal student aid this year compared with the year before and said “that gap is larger for high school seniors and other first-time filers.”
Data compiled by the National College Attainment Network, which tracks FAFSA applications, shows that around 212,000 fewer high school seniors applied for federal student aid for this cycle, a nearly 9 percent decrease from this time last year.
President Biden has spoken urgently about the need to rein in the costs of college, describing higher education as a “ticket to the middle class.” At the same time, he has often highlighted his plans to create well-paying jobs that do not require a college degree and to invest equally in apprenticeship programs and other forms of training that can serve as a pathway to those careers.
James Kvaal, the under secretary of education, said it was difficult to ascribe any drop in enrollment this year to a particular cause given larger demographic trends and shifting attitudes about the value of college.
“It’s a complicated story,” he said. “You have a long-term decline in college enrollment, punctuated by the pandemic. Recently, we’ve had a bit of a comeback — it’s hard to know if that progress last year was sort of a new base line or if that was a one-time surge.”
Mr. Kvaal also pointed to recent indications that, in part because of increases in federal student aid, the cost of secondary education has gradually come down.
A report published by the College Board this month found that the average debt among those who borrowed for college decreased by $5,500 in inflation-adjusted terms from a decade ago. Tuition for in-state students at public universities has also fallen in that time, the report showed.
The report by the National Student Clearinghouse on Wednesday was based on enrollment numbers from just over half of all U.S. colleges and universities, which together account for around nine million students, and the final numbers may vary as more colleges report their freshman class sizes this semester.
While the report shows declines among students age 18 to 20 who did not start school this year, it nonetheless found that undergraduate enrollment was up by about 3 percent over all, driven in part by an increase in high school-age students taking college courses.
It also found that enrollment in associate degree programs is growing and that the fastest growth occurred among undergraduate certificate seekers, with enrollment in those programs up by 7.3 percent this year.
“The gains among students either continuing from last year or returning from prior stop outs are keeping overall undergraduate numbers growing, especially at community colleges, and that’s at least some good news for students and schools alike,” Mr. Shapiro said in a statement accompanying the report.
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