College enrollment continues to fall, according to a report from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. The number of undergraduates is now 7 percent lower than in fall 2019, before the "pandemic rocked higher education," reports Nick Anderson in the Washington Post.
Freshmen enrollment is down this fall by about 1.5 percent.
“We don’t see a huge upsurge of first-year students, of freshmen, especially at the four-year institutions,” Doug Shapiro, the research center's executive director, said. He sees little evidence that the “lost classes” of high school graduates are getting back on the college track
Many students aren't as well-prepared for college -- and they weren't all that prepared before they lost months of in-person schooling.
In addition, high inflation may make parents more concerned about college costs -- which are likely to go up with inflation.
The college track leads to a lot of dead ends, this Brookings chart shows.
