Dive Brief:

• Postsecondary enrollment continues its steady decline, dropping 1.7% year-over-year in the spring of 2019, representing 300,000 fewer students, per new data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. 
• Enrollment shrunk by 0.9% at public four-year colleges and by 3.4% at public two-years. A 3.2% bump at private nonprofits is due largely to the conversion of several for-profit colleges into nonprofits. Enrollment at four-year for-profits fell 19.7%.
• A strong job market and fewer high school graduates drove the decreases, the center's executive director, Doug Shapiro, said in a statement.

Dive Insight:

Modest gains in graduate and professional education were not enough to offset the drop-off in undergraduates, the report notes. At the program level, those decreases reflect moves by some institutions to shift away from the liberal arts and toward programs that have more explicit ties to the job market.

For instance, undergraduate enrollment in the broad category of "Liberal Arts and Science, General Studies and Humanities" fell 7.1% year-over-year, though it still remains the third most popular program at more than 984,000 students. Enrollment in "English Language and Literature/Letters" fell 4.8%, mirroring the annual decrease reported in the spring of 2018, to just over 133,000 students. 

Meanwhile, programs such as "Computer and Information Sciences and Support," "Transportation and Materials Moving," the "Construction Trades" and "Science Technologies/Technicians" posted annual gains of more than 5%, building on growth from the last two years.

Enrollment increased in 11 states, led by Utah (7.2%), Colorado (3.7%) and Georgia (3.6%). It fell by 5% or more in three states: Alaska (5.2%), Florida (5.2%) and Illinois (5%).

The decline in overall enrollment this spring continues a trend from the past several years. Enrollment fell 1.7% year-over-year in the fall of 2018, following decreases of 1.3% in the spring of 2018 and of 1.5% the year before that. 

The demographic changes Shapiro references are reflected in other projected enrollment decreases, particularly among undergraduates.

Moody's Investors Service predicts the slowdown in enrollment will continue through 2027, according to a March report. Citing data from the National Center for Education Statistics, it notes that the number of high school graduates will increase by 0.2% over the next nine years, compared to 6% growth during the previous nine years.