The thesis of this thread is incorrect. It was a data error.
Freshman college enrollment was on the upswing in the fall, not declining as the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center reported in October, the prominent research group said Monday.
The organization, which produces widely used data on college enrollment, said a “methodological error” skewed its preliminary calculation of the number of first-year students who enrolled in fall 2024. The center initially said freshman enrollment dropped 5 percent, the first decline since the pandemic and an apparent indication of the fallout from the troubled rollout of the new Free Application for Federal Student Aid.
In a written statement, the center’s executive director, Doug Shapiro, said some students were mislabeled as dual-enrolled in high school and college classes, rather than as college freshmen, and “as a result, the number of freshmen was undercounted, and the number of dual-enrolled was overcounted.” The mistake inflated the number of high school students taking college classes through dual enrollment and affected the organization’s analysis of enrollment trends among 18-year-old freshmen.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2025/01/14/college-freshman-enrollment-increase-data-error/