Spring enrollment ticks up 1% — but graduate headcounts take a hit

Dive Brief: 

College enrollment ticked up 1% year over year in spring 2026, though the growth wasn’t uniform across the higher education sector, according to final data released Thursday by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. 
Undergraduate enrollment reached 15.5 million students in the spring term, up 1.3% from the year before. Meanwhile, graduate enrollment stayed mostly flat, falling 0.1% to 3.1 million students. 
“We’re seeing more students enroll in undergraduate programs than we did last spring, but graduate enrollment is under pressure, with declines in both master’s programs and international students,” Matthew Holsapple, the clearinghouse’s senior director of research, said in a statement. 

Dive Insight: 

The clearinghouse’s latest data shows that spring enrollment growth has been concentrated in a “somewhat narrow set of places,” Holsapple said during a call with reporters on Wednesday. 

Public colleges, for instance, experienced the bulk of the sector’s undergraduate growth. 

Spring enrollment at community colleges rose 3.1% year over year, to 5.8 million students, continuing the strong growth seen in recent years. Meanwhile, undergraduate enrollment at public four-year colleges increased 1.5%, reaching nearly 6 million students. 

Private nonprofit and for-profit colleges didn’t fare as well. Undergraduate enrollment stayed largely level at private nonprofits, declining 0.1% to 2.7 million students. It sank slightly more, 0.5%, at for-profit colleges, which enrolled almost 645,000 undergraduate students. 

Certain types of academic programs also saw more growth than others. Close to 932,000 students enrolled in undergraduate certificate programs, a 10.2% year-over-year jump that builds on several years of positive momentum. That’s compared to 4.5 million students in associate degree programs, a 1.3% enrollment increase, and 8.4 million in bachelor’s programs, a 1% uptick. 

One type of bachelor’s program, meanwhile, saw especially steep declines. Undergraduates pursuing a computer science degree declined 8.4% at four-year colleges. At two-year institutions, the decline was even steeper, an 11.2% drop compared the year before, the clearinghouse said.

Graduate enrollment spiked at for-profit colleges, rising 3.8% to about 263,000 students. That increase continued gains in the sector seen since 2024. 

In contrast, public and private nonprofit institutions lost graduate students. That enrollment ticked down 0.3% to 1.5 million students at public colleges, and slumped 0.6% to 1.3 million students at private nonprofits. 

The clearinghouse found further divides in international enrollment data. Undergraduate international enrollment rose 3.9% compared to the year before, but graduate international enrollment sank 4.3%. 

Steep decreases in international students at some colleges have been attributed to the Trump administration’s moves to tighten student visa policies.