Total postsecondary enrollment in the United States grew 1.0% in fall 2025, reaching 19.4 million students and surpassing prepandemic levels, according to new figures released Thursday by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.
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"Overall enrollment is up slightly, but the real story is the shift between sectors," said Dr. Matthew Holsapple, senior director of research at the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. "Community colleges and public universities are gaining ground, while private colleges are down – a clear departure from the broad-based growth of recent years."
Undergraduate enrollment increased 1.2%, led by a 3.0% jump at community colleges and a 1.4% increase at public four-year institutions. In contrast, private nonprofit colleges saw undergraduate enrollment decline 1.6%, while for-profit institutions dropped 2.0%.
Graduate enrollment remained essentially flat, declining 0.3%.
The enrollment patterns reflect students increasingly prioritizing affordability, flexibility and career relevance over traditional degree pathways, according to higher education analysts.
Community colleges saw particularly strong growth in short-term credentials tied to workforce training. Undergraduate certificate programs grew 28.3% since fall 2021, now enrolling 752,000 students. Certificate and associate degree programs grew 1.9% and 2.2% respectively this fall, outpacing bachelor's degree program growth of 0.9%.
"We're continuing to see students shifting out of some of the more traditional pathways into these shorter-term, these more flexible, perhaps more job- and career-oriented fields," Holsapple said.
The shift may reflect economic uncertainty and concerns about job market conditions, said Jeff Strohl, director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce.
"It's easier to test the waters at a local community college than it is necessarily to go through the steps of enrolling in a four-year program, especially if a student doesn't really know what they want to do," Strohl said.
While international undergraduate enrollment grew 3.2%, adding 5,000 students, international graduate student enrollment declined 5.9%, a loss of about 10,000 students. The graduate decline followed several years of strong growth that had increased international graduate enrollment by roughly 50%.
The downturn reflects federal policies that disrupted the student visa process and cuts to federal research funding that affected universities' ability to support international graduate students.
Enrollment in computer and information science programs declined across all degree levels and institution types, ranging from 3.6% at undergraduate institutions to 14.0% at the graduate level.
Holsapple attributed the decline partly to the reduction in international students, but also to concerns about the tech sector job market and the rise of artificial intelligence.
"Students are seeing the same trends that we all are seeing," he said. "They see the same news reports of layoffs in the tech field. They see the rise of AI like we do."
Despite the shifts, Holsapple said the trends reflect students making informed choices about their education paths.
"Students are making different choices, which I think is a real positive for the field and particularly for students because they have those options," he said, adding that institutions offering nontraditional pathways and more affordable degrees will likely continue seeing growth.
