The prophets of doom of higher education will have to wait a little longer before knowing their victory.

That’s because there’s new data from the National Student Clearing House Research Center – our best source for information on what’s happening in, to and with our colleges and universities. This new information shows that undergraduate enrollment for fall 2024 is up 3% – yes, up.

The summary of results states: “All sectors are experiencing growth in the number of undergraduate students this fall. »

This is quite remarkable given that for years we haven’t heard much beyond the imminent and certain collapse of universities – how half of them were going to close, how they refused to update their technology, how they were unable to meet the needs of students. needs, how they were no longer worth it.

Yet here we are. The market speaks. The demand for a college education is increasing.

As with any data, there are caveats. On the one hand, this report, released at the end of September, is based on preliminary enrollment data for fall 2024. The full report will not be released until January. The sample set also represents roughly half of all available data, so it is not a sample size.

Furthermore, college pessimists have already trumpeted the report’s findings that “first-year enrollment is declining, down 5 percent from the same time last fall, with public and private nonprofit institutions lucrative 4-year period experiencing the largest declines (-8.5% and -6.5%). »

And, as a subset of the data, it’s not good. It is clear that the decline in first-year enrollment this year will persist for five or six years at most institutions.

There are, however, a few points that make such a conclusion less important than it seems when taken out of context.

The first is that, even with an actual decline in first-year enrollment, overall enrollment is up 3%, meaning that increases in cohorts of older, returning, and/or returning students double registration is quite important.

The report doesn’t say, but this increase outside of freshmen could be another indication of the Covid rebound — the return of people who left or postponed school because of Covid. If that’s even part of what it’s about, it’s a very important development.

The second thing that stands out regarding the decline in first-year enrollment is the nearly 9% decline in public schools. Public schools are consistent, generally growing, highly sought-after, and relatively inexpensive sources of enrollment. While other sectors are evolving, audiences have, by and large, stayed put. As a result, seeing an 8.5% decline in public school freshman enrollment does not lead me to believe that anything in public school demand has changed. This leads me to believe that the data is flawed and that when we have the full report, the numbers will return to their historical average. There is no plausible circumstance in which public schools experience a more acute enrollment shortage than private, nonprofit schools.

We’ll see. But it looks good to me.

The decline in freshman enrollment is also mitigated by the fact that community college enrollment is on the rise – “associate degree programs (+4.3%) are seeing an increase in enrollment this fall,” the report says. report.

Naturally, associate degree programs are aimed at first and second year students. So the growth of these degree programs means that early students are not necessarily skipping college, but may simply jump straight into a public or private four-year school. That’s good news in itself, since community colleges have been pummeled by declining enrollment during the pandemic. But because associate degree programs are a critical pipeline for four-year schools, especially public schools, it is reasonable to expect that some of this growth will translate into four-year enrollment in a year, two or three.

Although not directly related to the much-noted decline in first-year student numbers, the report also found that “the number of students pursuing short-term degrees continues to grow rapidly, with enrollment in certificate programs undergraduate studies increasing by 7.3%.

Again, the report neither says nor speculates, but it is at least possible that some students who otherwise would have been freshmen at a four-year school will instead enroll in these accreditation programs at shorter term.

And while reasonable people may disagree about whether this is a good or bad thing, for the health and vitality of schools it is no problem. Because these short, career-focused programs can educate more students than a traditional degree, and because they are often very profitable and easily marketable, most schools are probably happy to see them expand, even if this results in a measurable cost in terms of diploma registrations.

These changes and enrollment flows are important today because many experts and observers still predict a “demographic cliff” as fewer 18-year-old students will be eligible for college starting around 2026. Initial cliff estimates predicted a 15% drop. % of these students over five years. Although some forecasts have started to soften estimates, in the face of a 3% annual decline, 3% growth is now a big problem. Another year of similar growth before 2026 could shift the demographic cliff toward a demographic buttress — especially since enrollment was low. last year too.

If this interim report proves strong and the January numbers show about 3% growth in undergraduates, the total two-year growth in undergraduate admissions will be about 5%.

It might not be huge. But it’s real. And this is not the death march that higher education is supposed to be on. In the real world, real people who make decisions about their money and their futures are voting on the future of college and higher education. And they are increasingly voting yes.