The found by the start of the 2022-23 academic year the number of students who left their respective college grew to nearly 37 million — a 2.9 percent growth compared to the previous year.

But the overall number of students ages 18 to 64 leaving was largely seen in four-year schools compared to two-year programs.

Josh Wyner, founder and executive director of the , said the advising model utilized at community colleges across the country has contributed to their retention by developing an individualized plan for students to schedule classes and monitor progress.

“What that means is [community colleges] have created a much clearer pathway to a degree and restructured their advising systems to ensure students get on those pathways early on,” Wyner told ����Ӱ��, noting schools such as the and in Texas as prime examples of successful models.

Laurel Williamson, deputy chancellor and president at San Jacinto College, said the advising model is particularly helpful for first generation college students.

“It used to be just giving the student a schedule or telling them to go online and pick some classes — that’s crazy,” Williamson told ����Ӱ��. “Students don’t know how to pick classes…[and] we weren’t consciously thinking about it from the student experience side.”

Today nearly 400 community colleges in 16 states have implemented guided pathways reforms, according to the that designed the advising system in 2015.

“Guided pathways have enabled community colleges to reduce the number of students leaving and therefore having less of a population of ‘some college no degree’ adults,” Wyner added.

Williamson said Texas has been “proactive” about using guided pathways, noting 48 of the 50 community colleges have adopted the advising system. 

“[Guided] pathways bring you to focus on what is really important in terms of student completion and student goals,” Williamson said. “It could be a one year certificate, it could be an associate degree. But to boil that down, it is entry into the workforce at a family sustaining wage or an on-ramp to transfer with no loss of credits and junior status at a university.”

Since adopting the model in 2016, Williamson said the key benefit for students is the “thought out” academic advising.

“If you come in and say ‘I want to be a communications major and I want to transfer to the University of Houston-Clear Lake campus we map out the whole trajectory from your entry here to your completion of a bachelor’s degree at Clear Lake so there’s no confusion,” Williamson said.

Mike Flores, chancellor at the , agreed with Williamson and emphasized how the advising system is flexible if a student decides to change their major.

“If the catalog changes, the core requirements change or anything in the general education requirements change at the receiving institution, then our folks are some of the first to know and they then revise the advising guide accordingly,” Flores told ����Ӱ��.

Guided pathways have helped drive down the schools’ degree completion rates from 4.4 to 3.6 years.

“We know time is the enemy of degree completion for our students because education is just one of multiple commitments that they have in their lives,” Flores said, noting that 65 percent of his students are part-time and taking two to three courses each term. 

“It’s saving them time and it’s saving them money, and in turn, we see more students graduating,” Flores said.

Growth in Students Leaving College

The report found the number of students leaving a public four-year school increased by 2.9 percent. But public two-year schools decreased by 4.1 percent — or 52,100 students.

The report also noted the population of students leaving college continues to be less white and more male than the overall undergraduate population — with Latino and Black students disproportionately represented.

Latino and Black students were 24.4 and 19.1 percent of the students leaving college compared to being 21.5 and 14 percent of all enrolled undergraduates in the 2022-23 academic year. 

Wyner believes this disparity is due to students’ enrollment patterns, noting that Black, Latino, Native American and low-income students often don’t choose majors that lead to well paying jobs.

“When we look at which programs those populations are engaged in, they tend to be in programs of study that are less likely to lead to a job with a family-sustaining wage or for a community college student to get a bachelor’s degree,” Wyner said, such as general studies which signals students are entering school without a clear post-graduate plan.

He added that community colleges using guided pathways have seen an increase in degree completion because of their emphasis on career advising.

“​​When students don’t have a promise that the degree and programs they’re enrolled in are likely to lead to strong outcomes, then the chances they’re going to drop out are likely to be much greater,” Wyner said. 

“If I don’t see a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow,” said Wyner, “why continue to travel across that rainbow?” 

The data, released by the and the , found about one-third of community college students transfer to a four-year school with less than half graduating within six years — equating to the net completion rate of 16 percent.

But the report, in collaboration with the , saw even smaller completion rates for students who are Black, Latino and low-income at 9, 13 and 11 percent respectively.

John Fink, a senior research associate at the Community College Research Center, said this is because the transfer system is “riddled with barriers” from the historic lack of collaboration between community colleges and four-year schools.

“It’s not an equitable system when we rely on [community college] students to come in with knowledge of this hidden curriculum on how to transfer instead of holding institutions responsible for creating clear pathways and adequate advising along the way,” Fink said.

The confusion and lack of clarity has added to students’ growing disdain for working towards a four-year degree as recent enrollment gains come particularly from community colleges with a vocational program focus, Fink said. 

“The [transfer system] largely replicates existing societal inequities,” Fink said. “The folks who are going to community college in large numbers are from communities that have historically had less access to bachelor and graduate degrees — like low-income and students of color.”

“If there’s no additional resources and support to make up for this, you can expect to see these disparities in completion outcomes,” Fink said.

Disparate Bachelor’s Degree Outcomes

The report showed mixed four-year completion outcomes from community college transfers demographically, Fink said. 

Low-income, Black and Latino students saw completion rates below the national average, in addition to men and students 25 years or older.

But high-income, Asian and White students saw completion rates above the national average, in addition to women and students 18 to 19 years old.

Fink said completion rates have increased slightly compared to previous years — jumping from 14 percent in 2016.

But he noted the increase is “not a lot [and] definitely not where we need it to be.”

“There is so much potential here to create greater economic mobility, to further diversify student bodies and to bring in community college transfers that can perform at the same if not higher rates than non-transfer students,” Fink said.

Fink said creating a “sense of belonging” on campus and expanding core practices such as dual enrollment will greatly improve transfer completion outcomes.

“Visibility, belonging and inclusion are important things to think about in order to change some of these dismal outcomes nationally,” Fink said.

‘Exclusionary’ Transfer Practices 

Dr. Marielena DeSanctis, president of the , said the completion disparities for students from low-income backgrounds are troubling.

“There’s plenty of data that speaks to more and more jobs requiring a bachelor’s degree, so it’s concerning when you start limiting the number of people that can attain one,” DeSanctis said.

DeSanctis, who previously worked at , said Florida has a very different landscape for students to transfer from a community college to a four-year school compared to Colorado.

“There was no question that the courses you were taking were going to transfer and that it was going to be equivalent credits [but] here in Colorado that’s not the case,” DeSanctis said, noting the harm of “exclusionary” transfer practices she’s noticed from four-year schools.

“Because community colleges tend to be more racially and ethnically diverse, we should be telling students that community college is a vehicle to transfer to a university — particularly students that are ready to change the trajectory of their lives,” DeSanctis said. 

Debi Gaitan, vice president of student services at , agreed with DeSanctis, adding that constraints placed on students from low-income backgrounds shouldn’t hinder them from having access to a four-year school whether they decide to transfer or go straight into the workforce.

“San Antonio is very much a city where we can see where our communities of poverty reside and they feed directly into our institutions,” Gaitan said, noting that her students are often part-time, caring for family members and working to make ends meet.

“We want to ensure the stigma of not completing is not placed on this population,” Gaitan said. “It’s more about ‘did they reach their goal of being able to get a better job with better income to get out of poverty.’”

Gaitan said it’s important for both community colleges and four-year schools to actively reach out to students from low-income backgrounds.

“Students that have choices and are resourced know about us and know what we have to offer,” Gaitan said. “Therefore we need to shift to the communities that don’t know we’re here…[because] students from intergenerational cycles of poverty need those same resources our upwardly mobile, higher income communities already have.”

Gaitan said resources that have been effective in her community include counseling programs and “apartment starters” where students have access to microwaves, washing machines and other household needs so they can focus on their studies.

“These are communities that need us to be different and need us to be doing more,” Gaitan said. “We want as many people in higher education to know this as possible because that’s how we have learned and that’s how we have adopted and adapted some really promising practices.”

This article is part of a series in partnership with reporter Joshua Bay’s highlighting the struggles of community college students.

The found community colleges led overall undergraduate enrollment growth in the fall of 2023 by 2.6 percent, or 118,000 students, compared to the previous year.

Community college gains were carried by those with a vocational program focus — pointing to students’ growing disdain for working towards a four-year degree.

“We have shortages in a lot of jobs that require bachelor’s degrees,” said Josh Wyner, founder and executive director of the , including well-paying careers in nursing, teaching and software engineering that pay north of $50,000 annually.

“So when we see students entering community college not in those liberal arts programs that lead to bachelor’s degrees, it’s troubling,” Wyner said, adding that a vocational degree won’t provide the long-term financial payoff that would more likely come from a four-year education.

Career-Driven Programs Lead Enrollment Growth

Community colleges with a vocational program focus grew 16 percent in the fall of 2023 compared to the previous year’s 3 percent gain — bringing them above their pre-pandemic enrollment by nearly 30,000 students.

But, transfer-focused community colleges only grew slightly by 0.2 percent in the fall of 2023 compared to the previous year’s 1.1 percent drop — continuing their pre-pandemic enrollment decline by more than 500,000 students.

“There’s fewer community college students entering a transfer pipeline that we can’t afford to lose,” said John Fink, a senior research associate at the .

This trend comes as community colleges remain in a “very deep hole” because their uptick in enrollment doesn’t come close to pre-pandemic numbers, he added.

The report found community college growth in the fall of 2023 brings current enrollment to about 4.5 million students.

Popular programs include computer science, business and health that grew by 9.1, 3.5 and 2.4 percent respectively. 

But, there were more than 5.2 million students enrolled pre-pandemic — leaving community colleges with a net loss of nearly 700,000 students.

“Community college growth is certainly an encouraging sign, but there’s still a long way to go to get back to where we were,” said Jeremy Cohen, a research associate at the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.

Despite the growing number of companies no longer requiring job applicants to have a four-year degree, their hiring behavior hasn’t changed, Wyner said.

“The majority of good jobs in our country are populated by workers that have a bachelor’s or greater,” Wyner said. “So if students aren’t enrolling in community college programs that align with attaining a bachelor’s, we’re going to really struggle filling job vacancies in the future.”

Wyner said the main factor community college-goers rely on to decide whether a four-year degree is worth pursuing is “word-of-mouth” experiences from current students.

“If a student leaves [a four-year] college without a degree or with a degree that didn’t give them a better life than they would have had if they never attended, they’re going to go back to their communities and when people ask if it was worth it their answer is going to be no,” Wyner said. 

“So the decisions we’re seeing them make may be entirely rational because the educational system keeps failing far too many of them,” he added.

Transfer Student Declines Impact Four-Year Schools

This trend has implications for four-year institutions that rely on transfer students as part of their enrollment strategy, Fink said. 

“It might seem like this is a community college issue, but that’s going to translate in years forward to many four-year institutions,” Fink said.

Wyner added how leaders at four-year institutions need to play their part in correcting community college enrollment declines.

“Instead of lamenting the fact that student enrollment in community colleges has come down, four-year schools need to lean in and do something about it,” Wyner said, such as emulating Northern Virginia Community College’s that provides dual enrollment and guaranteed admission at George Mason University.

He said their program transfers more than 4,000 students every year to George Mason University and has a graduation rate of over 70 percent — higher than the national undergraduate average of .

“If you create really strong pathways for students, they’ll come back to community colleges,” Wyner said.

This article is part of a series in partnership with reporter Joshua Bay’s highlighting the struggles of community college students.

While overall completion rates for students nationwide stalled at all colleges, Black and Latino students’ saw success at community colleges, which were prepared for pandemic challenges with tools in place like online classes for working students.

“[Community colleges] were better situated to handle the disruption from in-person to online courses…and that, in fact, led to greater retention rates,” said Josh Wyner, founder and executive director of the .

Analyzing trends for students six years after enrolling in postsecondary education, a from the found a 62.2 percent completion rate for those starting in fall 2017 — a stalled number compared to 2015.

But, Black and Latino students’ who enrolled in fall 2017 saw completion rates decline to 43.4 percent and 50.1 percent respectively — a 0.5 and 0.2 percentage point drop compared to those enrolled in 2016.

Wyner said the imbalance for Black and Latino students came from either the need to work when parents lost their jobs or the need to take care of siblings because their parents didn’t have jobs during the pandemic where they could work from home.

“Income and wealth disparities often prevented students from these groups from not only enrolling in college in the first place but also staying when there were disruptions,” Wyner said.

At public four-year colleges, Black and Latino students saw steeper completion rate declines to 48.7 percent and 56.1 percent respectively — a 1.5 and 1 percentage point drop compared to those enrolled in 2016.

In contrast, Black and Latino students at community colleges increased to 31.6 percent and 38 percent respectively — a 0.5 and 0.1 percentage point gain compared to those enrolled in 2016.

Wyner said the completion rate hike at community colleges was because those schools historically enroll students with diverse educational needs, and by necessity, were already invested in online learning pre-pandemic.

Amrit Ahluwalia, director of strategic insights at , said in a statement in response to the report that the increase in community college completion rates show how young students view college as a “means to an end.”

“When they get the learning they feel they need to support their short-term employability, they find jobs and leave their programs,” Ahluwalia said.

Wyner said because Black and Latino students often come from lower income communities, they view community college as a more attainable means of education.

“On average, tuition for a public institution is twice the rate at a four-year college than a community college,” Wyner said. “So it would make sense that if income correlates [completion declines for Black and Latino students] would be felt more in the four-year space than the community college space.”

This comes as more than 2.4 million students enrolled in postsecondary education for the first time in fall 2017 — an increase of 1.2 percent compared to 2016.

“Not only have fewer of the 2017 starters completed as of 2023, but the data also show fewer still enrolled, suggesting that this is more than just a matter of slower progress during the pandemic years,” Doug Shapiro, executive director of the research center, said in a statement.

In addition, the gender gap continued to grow for those enrolled in fall 2017 — with a completion rate of 65.6 percent for female students compared to 58.4 percent for males.

Wyner said the low number of colleges providing hands-on learning had a disproportionate impact on male student retention.

“There’s pretty good evidence that adults learn better when theory is taught alongside hands-on learning,” Wyner said. “I do think that is something that really needs to be thought about as a way to bring men back into higher ed.”

He added how this is especially true for male students who feel disconnected from learning because they were raised in families that worked blue-collar jobs without needing a degree.

Moving forward, Wyner said colleges need to fully address the value they offer to students so they continue to stick around despite their life circumstances.

“If your programs aren’t actually delivering value to students, they may be making entirely rational decisions to leave,” Wyner said.

Overall college enrollment surged by 2.1 percent in fall 2023 compared to last year’s decrease of 0.9 percent, according to the .

But freshmen enrollment for this fall declined by 3.6 percent, particularly among 18- to 20-year-olds in four-year institutions — reversing last year’s promising 4.6 percent increase. Instead, community colleges led enrollment gains, particularly among freshmen over 21.

The enrollment increase among all freshmen at community colleges signal students’ growing interest in programs such as healthcare and construction offering short-term commitments that lead to direct employment connections, the report found.

Doug Shapiro, executive director of the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, said in a statement the freshmen decline is a “troubling sign” for four-year institutions as young students opt out.

“This disparity in age aligns with the disparity in the kind of schools and the types of programs students are now choosing,” Shapiro told ����Ӱ��.

Here are four key takeaways from the report:

1. Young students ages 18 to 20 led freshmen enrollment declines.

Freshmen enrollment, particularly in the 18 to 20 age group, declined by 5.2 percent despite last year’s 4.5 percent increase.

However, freshmen in the 21 to 24, 25 to 29 and over 30 age groups increased by 14.3 percent, 17.4 percent and 24.4 percent respectively.

The freshmen enrollment trend was not expected as more students applied to college for the 2023-24 academic year than last year, reported.

Shapiro said the age disparity stems from young students’ reluctance to choose traditional four-year institutions — opting instead for community colleges and certificate programs.

“This is something that should not be news to anyone at any four-year institution,” Shapiro said.

“If you’re less confident the job you get, even after earning a degree, is going to pay you significantly more than what you could make right now, it makes sense why young students would focus on short-term programs that have more direct connections to the workforce,” he added.

Kevin Carey, vice president of education policy for , told the strong job market has exacerbated difficulties for four-year institutions to recruit high school graduates.

“A lot of four-year institutions are competing with the job market,” Carey said. “Some of those shorter-term degrees could represent an attempt to compromise with it.”

2. Community colleges led undergraduate enrollment growth.

Undergraduate enrollment gains particularly come from community colleges — accounting for nearly 59% of overall growth.

Community college enrollment also increased by 4.4 percent compared to last year’s 0.1 percent decline.

This growth suggests community colleges are starting to recover after taking a hit during the pandemic, the report found.

Shapiro said this aligns with the age disparities seen in freshmen enrollment as older students are more likely to attend community college over four-year institutions.

“Community colleges have only now started to improve,” Shapiro said. “To me, that signals students are looking for shorter programs, shorter commitments of time and more direct employment linkages.”

Thomas Brock, director of the , told shifting attitudes toward four-year institutions have had indirect benefits for community colleges.

“Whether it’s around affordability, debt, preparing for the job market, I think perhaps in some ways the negative press has been a little more directed toward the four-year sector,” Brock said.

3. White student enrollment declined as Black, Latino and Asian students grew.

Black, Latino and Asian students lead overall undergraduate enrollment growth — increasing by 2.1 percent, 4.2 percent and 4 percent respectively.

White students declined by 0.9 percent, a continuation of last year’s 4.8 percent drop, but Shapiro said this is in part due to the ending race-conscious admissions.

“Part of the apparent decline we see in white students is because they’re not revealing their race,” Shapiro said.

He added how these demographic shifts trickle down to , with less white students graduating compared to their Black, Latino and Asian peers.

4. Male student enrollment grew at nearly twice the rate of female students.

Undergraduate male enrollment increased by 2.2 percent compared to female enrollment that increased by 1.2 percent. 

The gender disparity continues the greater impact the pandemic had on women the past two years, the report found.

Shapiro said this is in part due to job market growth in careers like construction and manufacturing that historically favor men.

“It’s a small difference, but it’s been steady,” Shapiro said.

Across all four-year universities and community colleges, male freshmen enrollment declined by 1.3 percent compared to female freshmen enrollment which declined by 3.2 percent, the research center found. 

Between fall 2020 to 2022, there was a 1.5 percent drop among college freshmen, 90 percent of which are students aged 18 to 20 years old.

The steepest drops among college freshmen in fall 2022 were white, Asian and Black students who declined by 7, 3.2 and 2 percentage points respectively.

“The pandemic disproportionately harmed women, particularly women of color and low-income women, and this is one more example of that impact,” said Catherine Brown, senior director of policy and advocacy for the .

Brown noted that women were often the ones who “stepped up to homeschool, to take care of children, to take care of parents and to take care of people with health problems” during the pandemic.

Stephen Barker, director of communications at said the caretaking trend trickled down to young women who were “disproportionately caring for siblings at home while their parents were working.”

“There were a lot of barriers for girls to get through the school work and graduate from high school. It’s something unique to a lot of girls who would have otherwise been college bound,” Barker said. 

Despite an overall 4.2 percent drop in college enrollment since fall 2020 among all students, the declines have slowed down and are comparable to pre-pandemic rates, the research center found.

The group looked at 42 states and found enrollment declines in 27 this fall. While some states had increases — South Carolina, New Hampshire, and New Mexico had the largest — Alaska, Michigan, Kansas, Missouri and Nevada saw the largest declines, between 4.3 and 5.2 percentage points. 

The decline in freshmen female college enrollment is a “new phenomenon” that may take several years for recovery, Barker added. 

“As the economy recovers and we’re past this need for something immediate for girls to support their family and themselves, then I think we’ll see them pivoting and returning back to school,” Barker said.

Two female college freshmen who did enroll said they could both see and feel the pandemic’s impact on young womens’ secondary school plans.

When she got to campus, Caroline Holtman, a freshman engineering major at Texas A&M University, discovered that only a fraction of her classmates were female.

“There are a few classes I’m in where the girls are severely outnumbered. For one of my classes, the ratio was one girl to every four or five guys,” Holtman, 18, told ����Ӱ��.

“That was probably the biggest challenge going from [high school] classes that are pretty evenly split between guys and girls to classes where all I see are men,” Holtman said.

The initial barriers finding a community of female friends in her STEM classes was difficult, she added. 

“I knew that I’d be going through this degree with very few women, but I really didn’t understand the magnitude of it until I got here,” Holtman said.

Pooja Muthuraj, a freshman at the College of William & Mary planned to pursue a lengthy academic path to become a doctor, but said the pandemic influenced her views on what a healthy family life should look like.

“Having to spend that much of your life at school affects me and my female friends in particular because our biological realities impact us more than men,” Muthuraj, 18, told ����Ӱ��.

“It’s definitely a concern when thinking about having a family in the future,” Muthuraj said after watching her mom struggle to balance career and family.

Instead, Muthuraj plans to pursue a career in health nonprofit. 

“They’re decisions I don’t think I would have considered so much if the pandemic never occurred,” Muthuraj said.

Outcomes were significantly worse for minority groups, according to the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association and the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, which released the findings earlier this week. 

While 40.7% of white students who experienced an abrupt closure completed their studies at other locations, only 25.3% of Black students and 26.4% of Hispanic students did the same. Just 32.9% of American Indian and 36.4% of Asian students also met that goal. 

The findings were based on the records of 143,215 students at 467 institutions across the country, nearly half of which were in the private, for-profit, two-year sector. Nearly 55% were female, 25% were white and 34% were 30 or older at the time. Almost 83% experienced closures at for-profit institutions. 

“Less than half of those students — 47% — ever re-enrolled at another post-secondary institution,” said Doug Shapiro, the Research Center’s executive director, speaking of the students as a whole. “So, their school’s closing effectively closed the doors on the student’s educational dreams.”

Of those who did re-enroll only 36.8% earned a postsecondary credential: More than half left their new school without earning any credential, Shapiro said. 

Roughly 100,000 of the students in the study attended campuses that closed abruptly, leaving them to scramble for transcripts that were often unavailable, making it even more difficult for them to pursue their degrees. 

Researchers say states can play a greater role in preventing abrupt closures by enacting more stringent initial authorization practices for these colleges and by providing oversight in the years that follow, in part by monitoring student complaints and implementing a regular, more rigorous renewal process. 

Rachel Burns, a senior policy analyst with the State Higher Education group, acknowledged that it can be difficult for students to take a more proactive role around the issue. While private for-profit schools have for , ensnaring thousands, including minorities and , into expensive, worthless programs, many of these schools still have appeal. 

“There are already reasons to be skeptical of some of those institutions but sometimes those are the best options for students that need flexible schedules,” Burns noted, adding students would be wise to keep current copies of their transcripts and educate themselves about the transfer process. 

Not only did closures disrupt or end students’ education, but it left them in debt. The federal Department of Education allows for the discharge of federal student loans for eligible students when their schools close, the report states, but not everyone qualifies or successfully completes the process.  

A Government Accountability Office report from 2021, researchers said, shows that of 246,000 who weathered school closures between 2010 and 2020, only 80,000, or 32.5%, had their . These students, the GAO reported, collectively owed $4 billion, with the median debt hovering around $9,500 per student. 

The study found, too, that private for-profit, two- and four-year institutions enroll a disproportionately large number of students of color: in 2018, 12% of all students of color enrolled in postsecondary institutions eligible for federal student aid attended for-profit institutions.

Re-enrollment rates overall were highest among women at 49%, white students  at 62.5%, and traditional college-age students with the youngest, those 18-20, fairing the best at 54%.  

Those who re-enrolled within one to four months were the most likely to earn a credential, coming in at 47.6%:  Those who waited a year or more were the least likely at 18.7%. 

In several ways, the long-term findings on college closures mirror the nearer-term impact of the pandemic when college enrollment plummeted, particularly at community colleges which serve many low-income students of color. 

Nearly 12,000 campuses of institutions of higher education closed during the years examined by the study — often because of loss of accreditation related to financial challenges — and more have been added to the list since then, including Lincoln College of Illinois. 

The 157-year-old school survived a major campus fire in 1912, the Spanish flu of 1918, the Great Depression, World War II, the 2008 global financial crisis, according to its announcement, but it and the impact of a crippling cyberattack.

 The school, many of them first-generation college-goers, shuttered in May. Roughly 44% of the student body was Black. 

Student Jaylah Bolden, who has since transferred to another school, earlier this month that many of her friends were not able to make that leap and now are not enrolled anywhere.

“They lost their faith,” she said. “We didn’t give up on school. School gave up on us.”

Researchers said abrupt closures in the private, for-profit four-year sector had the worst and most profound impact on re-enrollment rates.

This marks the first of three reports. The second, expected in early 2023, will quantify closures’ impact on students by comparing them to those whose schools did not shutter. The last will examine how state policies affect student outcomes, comparing students who experienced closures in states with stringent protections against those attending schools without such safeguards. No release date has been set for the final report.

“We can now add increased attrition of 2019 freshmen to the severe impacts of the pandemic,” said Doug Shapiro, executive director of the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.

The independent Clearinghouse collects the nation’s most authoritative college-going data. By matching high school graduation records against college enrollment records, the Clearinghouse determines which high school graduates enroll in college, which “persist” through the college years, and which end up earning degrees.

The data released today shows that of the 2.6 million students who entered college as first-time freshmen in the fall of 2019, 74 percent returned for their second year — an unprecedented two percentage point drop, the lowest level since 2012.

Not surprisingly, community colleges showed the steepest decline in persistence rates, down 3.5 percentage points to 58.5 percent. Community colleges attract a disproportionate number of low-income and minority students, and they have seen the most dramatic enrollment and persistence drops.

In most cases, the explanations are straightforward: These students needed to get jobs — even low-skill, low-paying jobs — to support their families. In theory, these students could return to college now that the pandemic has eased, but there’s little evidence in enrollment trends to suggest this is happening.

Instead, they appear to be forming a missing generation of college students, an unprecedented phenomenon likely to affect the nation’s productivity rate for years. Any country’s international competitiveness is forecast by the skills acquired by young people entering the workforce.

Before today’s data release, there was ample evidence to suggest a missing generation was taking shape. This spring, overall college enrollment fell by 603,000 students, from 17.5 million to 16.9 million — a drop that is seven times worse than the year before when the pandemic first hit and marks the sharpest year-over-year decline since 2011, the first year the Clearinghouse began keeping track.

While the pandemic was expected to eat away at college enrollment, many experts were surprised that a quick recovery in college-going never materialized. Today’s data from the Clearinghouse only makes that news grimmer.

“These losses erase recent improvements that colleges have made in keeping learners on track early,” said Shapiro. “They will ripple through higher education for years.”