Report Projecting Drop in Freshman Enrollment Delivered Incorrect Findings

An error in the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center’s projection of the number of first-year students starting college last fall caused the organization to report incorrectly that freshman enrollment last year had dropped when in fact it had increased, its director said in a statement this week.

By mistakenly mislabeling a number of first-year college students as high school students taking college or university courses, the center said it underestimated the true number of incoming college students. That led it to erroneously project the largest drop in freshman enrollment since 2020 in a report it published in October.

The acknowledgment on Monday amounted to a reversal of the report’s top-line findings. Those conclusions fed into anxieties in higher education about long-term challenges, including a coming “demographic cliff” caused by a drop in births during the Great Recession and more general doubt about the value of a college degree.

The report was based on preliminary enrollment data that the research center gathered from slightly more than half of all U.S. colleges and universities. After catching its error, the center said it expected to show that enrollment had risen in a report next Thursday, which includes data from nearly all institutions of higher education.

It said that the error had affected previous reports as well, but that “the effect was magnified” last year because of an unusually large number of dual-enrolled high school students. That may have obscured the fact that the number was inflated even more by the center’s overcount.

“The National Student Clearinghouse Research Center acknowledges the importance and significance of its role in providing accurate and reliable research to the higher education community,” the center’s executive director, Doug Shapiro, said in a statement. “We deeply regret this error and are conducting a thorough review to understand the root cause and implement measures to prevent such occurrences in the future.”

The faulty numbers were reported by a wide range of news media and trade publications, including The New York Times.

The National Student Clearinghouse, founded in 1993, is a nonprofit that provides services to thousands of U.S. institutions of higher learning, including by maintaining student records and enrollment, degree and student loan data.

While it walked back its conclusions about freshman and dual-enrolled students on Monday, the center said its other findings — including that total undergraduate enrollment had increased — remained sound.

The report last fall also raised alarms that a comparatively tumultuous year for college students applying for federal financial aid might have led to a significant number of students postponing or abandoning college.

Concerns about how the problematic rollout of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid early last year would affect college enrollment left many schools and higher education groups nervously anticipating the center’s October findings.

In a statement on Monday, the Education Department’s under secretary, James Kvaal, said officials were “encouraged and relieved” by the revised assessment.

“The increase is consistent with what we are seeing on the financial aid side: More than 5 percent more students are receiving federal aid this year,” the statement said. “Thank you to the high schools, college counselors, colleges and universities, and community organizations for pulling together to help students and families through a tough year.”

When the report was published in October, the department did not directly dispute its conclusions, but provided a list of other factors that could have explained the apparent decline.

Those included a longer-term downward trend in undergraduate enrollment as documented by the National Center for Education Statistics, a strong labor market drawing high school students directly into the work force and falling rates of college attainment among men.

The revised numbers expected next week instead suggest a modest recovery in the number of students starting college after a steep drop-off during the pandemic, according to the research center’s statement.