The coronavirus pandemic continues to ravage college enrollments, with new data revealing declines compounding from last year to this fall.
According to early data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, undergraduate enrollment continued to decline by 3.2% after dropping last year amid the coronavirus pandemic. Enrollment at community colleges dropped by 5.6% and at public four-year colleges by 2.3%.
"These data are depressing, but they also show that the effects of the pandemic on higher education are far from over," Robert Kelchen, professor of higher education at the University of Tennessee, told Yahoo Finance.
The new data represents about half of the 3,600 post-secondary institutions the center collects data on and 8.4 million students as of Sept. 23. Combined with last fall's declines in enrollment, the number of undergraduate students has now fallen by a total of 6.5% since 2019.
“Far from filling the hole of last year’s enrollment declines, we are still digging it deeper,” Doug Shapiro, executive director of the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, said in a statement. “A year and a half into the COVID-19 pandemic, we continue to see significant nationwide declines in undergraduate students, and community colleges remain the most adversely affected sector, experiencing a 14.1% total enrollment decline since fall 2019."
Enrollments determine many schools' financial future
Census data from earlier this month revealed how the coronavirus pandemic hit the education sector exceptionally hard, and college enrollments plunged in 2020 to the lowest level since 2007.
"These enrollment declines could be due to potential students choosing employment in a tight labor market over going to college or difficulties finding childcare during a pandemic," Kelchen said.
In other cases, he added, "some people may not be happy with the mode of instruction — either in-person or online — and are waiting out the pandemic."
Enrollments are key to schools' livelihoods as institutions.
"This continued decline in enrollment could affect how much funding public colleges get from their states, since enrollment is a key driver of appropriations," Kelchen stressed.
Jessica Wood, credit analyst at S&P Global Ratings, explained that experts "talk a lot about net tuition revenue," which refers to colleges' gross revenues (which is enrollment times sticker price) minus institutional financial aid.
"With tuition's discount rates [and] financial aid rising and enrollments decreasing, net tuition revenues have been challenged at many schools for a while now," Wood told Yahoo Finance. "Of course, this is not affecting all schools — but for those with consistent declining [net tuition revenue], this creates some real pressure on total revenues."