Future of Division III

[Kuiper]

Saw a stat on trends in high school graduates in an article about the enrollment cliff that caught my eye.  This doesn't mean any particular school is in trouble, nor are these stats necessarily evidence of the enrollment cliff (2025 is too early for the "demographic cliff" and probably reflects migration out of the Midwest) but these aren't good stats for small DIII schools operating and recruiting in those states.

In 2025, Michigan experienced the sixth largest drop of high school graduates in the country and the second biggest drop in the Midwest with a 20% decline, while Illinois experienced a 32% decline.

The Michigan Association of State Universities (MASU) serves as the coordinating board for the state's 15 public universities. Their data reflects that this decline in enrollment is linked to fewer high school graduates, with 104,326 high school graduates statewide in 2025, estimated to drop to 85,131 by 2041, which is nearly 19%.

If accurate (capturing more than just public HS grads and the first set of numbers are annual declines, rather than over some period), those are pretty startling declines.

[Ron Boerger]

Here's a review of overall enrollment for the current school year courtesy the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center - much more detail available at the URL above, but these are their highlights from their "Final Fall Enrollment Trends 2025 Report":

• In fall 2025, there were over 19.4 million postsecondary enrollments —16.2 million undergraduate and 3.2 million graduate students. Compared to 19.2 million students last fall, this is a 1.0 percent increase in total postsecondary enrollment, driven by undergraduate gains (+1.2%) while graduate enrollment remained stable (-0.3%).Growth in undergraduate enrollment was driven by a 3.0 percent increase in community college enrollment, compared to a 1.4 percent increase at public 4-year colleges. Private 4-year institutions saw declines in undergraduate enrollment this fall (-1.6% at nonprofit and -2.0% at for-profit institutions).
• Enrollment in undergraduate certificate and associate degree programs continues to grow at a faster pace than bachelor's program enrollment (+1.9% and +2.2% compared to +0.9%). After four years of consecutive growth, there are now 752,000 enrollments in undergraduate certificate programs at community colleges, a total increase of 28.3 percent from fall 2021.
• Graduate international student enrollment declined 5.9 percent after years of steady growth (-10,000). At the undergraduate level, there was an increase in international enrollment (+3.2%, +5,000) but at less than half the rate than last fall (+8.4%).
• Freshman enrollment remained stable this fall (-0.2%) at 2.5 million students. Public 4-year institutions experienced a 1.9 percent increase in freshmen (+18,000 to 971,000 students) while private 4-year institutions saw declines (-10,000 at each sector). There were 965,000 freshmen at community colleges, an increase of only 4,000 students (+0.5%) after three consecutive years of strong growth.
• Enrollment in Computer and Information Science programs declined across all award and institution types, ranging from -3.6 percent at undergraduate PAB institutions to -14.0 percent at the graduate level.

As someone with a lifetime in the industry, it comes as no surprise that with AI taking over many entry level jobs and depressing salaries that C&IS enrollment is down, a trend that seems likely to continue.

Worth noting that the 1.6% decline in private non-profit enrollment is a sharp turnaround from gains the previous three years and a 6.6% increase last year.  Also worth noting that freshman enrollment at highly selective private non-profits (PNPs) increased 2.0%, very competive PNPs 0.6%, while competitive PNPs saw a 1.7% decline and less selective PNPs a 3% decline. However, when looking at overall undergraduate enrollment, only highly selective PNPs *and less selective PNPs* saw increases (1.7%, 1.9% respectively) while the middle two classes saw decreases of 1.0% and 1.5%.  I can't explain why less selective schools show such a disparity in freshman and total enrollment; either they're seeing more transfers from other schools, retaining more of their students, and/or other factors are in play.

If you're wondering about the definitions for selectivity, "highly selective" means anywhere from admitting <33% to 33-50% of applicants, "very competitive" admit 50-75%, "competitive" 75-85%, and "less selective" more than 85%.

Fascinating to go through the site which is open to all (and no account registration needed).