Current Term Enrollment Estimates: Fall 2022
Expanded Edition
February 2, 2023
Fall undergraduate enrollment has begun to stabilize in 2022, contracting only by 0.6 percent or about 94,000 students, compared to fall 2021. However, postsecondary enrollment remains well below pre-pandemic levels, down about 1.23 million undergraduates and 1.11 million total enrollment, both undergraduate and graduate, compared to fall 2019.
Freshman enrollment is up 4.3 percent (+97,000 students) from the previous fall. However, freshman enrollment remains down 150,000 compared to 2019. Community colleges, which have been hit particularly hard by the pandemic, saw freshman enrollment increases of 42,000 students (+6.1%) over fall 2019.
Latinx and Asian students bucked the slight national decline, with their undergraduate enrollment rising 1.6 percent and 1.8 percent, respectively. Male undergraduate enrollments were stable (+0.2%, +15,000 students) while female enrollments continued declines from 2021 (-1.5%, -122,000 students).
This expanded edition features new analyses of race and ethnicity, undergraduate and graduate enrollment by major field at the state level, and institutional selectivity. This new dashboard-based report allows users to explore the longitudinal data through interactive visualizations. Full data are available in the Data Appendix for download.
Navigate using the tabs at the top of the dashboard to see details for different institutions and students.
Download the Data Appendix (xlsx) and the Methodological Notes (pdf).
Difference from the COVID-19 Stay Informed report series
The CTEE report series is published every December and May to provide the most current national enrollment estimates by institutional sector, enrollment intensity, age group, gender, major field as well as state-level enrollment estimates.
The CTEE reports provide estimated postsecondary enrollment numbers based on the Clearinghouse universe of institutions, after accounting for data coverage rates. This differs from the Stay Informed report series that is designed to quantify the immediate effects of COVID-19 by analyzing year-over-year percentage change in unadjusted, preliminary data for fixed panels of institutions that reported data in the same month each year across all comparison years.
The estimated enrollment numbers presented in the CTEE report may differ from the results of the Stay Informed reports due to the difference in methodology and institution coverage.
The CTEE Expanded Edition report is supported in part by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through grant R305X220022 to Teachers College, Columbia University. This project is part of the Accelerating Recovery in Community Colleges (ARCC) Network. The opinions expressed in this report are those of the authors and do not represent the views of the Institute or the U.S. Department of Education.