Key points:
- Students are increasingly showing up for college and continuing education
- The new rules of student recruitment for adult learners
- Rebuilding trust, relevance, and results in higher ed
- For more news on college enrollments, visit eCN’s Campus Leadership hub
According to the newly released Higher Education Insights Report from higher education marketing and research firm Validated Insights, higher education enrollments continue to grow–up more than 3 percent over 2024.
According to the report, increasing enrollment benchmarks include:
- As of Spring 2025, total enrollment in higher education in the United States was up 3.2 percent year-over-year to 18.4 million.
- Undergraduate programs lead enrollment growth, as enrollment grew 3.5 percent year-over-year in Spring 2025 while graduate enrollment grew only 1.5 percent.
- At the undergraduate level, growth is concentrated among associate’s degrees and non-degree programs, which saw year-over-year enrollment growth of 6.3 percent and 4.8 percent respectively.
- Public institutions continue to dominate the aggregate enrollment landscape. Furthermore, public institutions saw a 3.7 percent enrollment increase from Spring 2024, but enrollment remains 1.8 percent below Spring 2020 levels.
- Online enrollment growth is concentrated among older students and among associate’s degrees and healthcare fields.
“The data are remarkably clear that despite a whirlwind of pressures and distractions, students are increasingly showing up for college and continuing education,” said Brady Colby, Head of Market Research at Validated Insights. “The trend lines are not overly compelling, but they are unmistakable – students want college degrees or other credentials, which is lifting enrollments in almost all higher education programs everywhere you look.”
The report highlights not only the year-over-year growth from 2024 to 2025, but also overall enrollment growth since the Fall of 2020–a span in which higher education enrollments have grown by approximately 500,000 students, an increase of nearly 3% overall.
“Enrollment growth in higher education is nearly universal over the past few years, with the lone exception of master’s programs, which saw a modest dip this past year,” Colby said. “But everywhere else–for-profit colleges, online programs, associate degrees, and career training–the numbers are moving up.”
The new report collects and synthesizes information from multiple providers of enrollment data and highlights trends among degree level, type of institution, program focus, even geography.
According to the report, for example, “Enrollment in the West grew 2.8 percent but the trend varied widely across states in the region. Utah saw the fastest year-over-year growth at 9.4 percent while Idaho saw the steepest decline with enrollment dropping 6.2 percent.”
The report also contains intriguing data regarding online education enrollment trends, such as:
- As of 2023, just 4 percent of traditional undergraduates between the ages of 18 and 21 were studying online. This percentage is projected to grow to 7 percent in 2030.
- Some 63% of adult undergraduates aged 25+ are studying completely online.
- While some degree-level programs have seen their share of online students retreat in recent years, the share of online learning in associate degree and non-degree programs is, comparatively, skyrocketing. The portion of non-degree program enrollees studying online, for example, has doubled since 2021, from 9 percent to 18 percent.
- Online enrollment ratios by field of study have been relatively steady since 2021 with two exceptions. The percentage of students studying online in health care fields has increased significantly, from 11 percent to 17 percent. And the percentage of students studying online in STEM fields has dropped from 35 percent to 24 percent.
The report also includes in-depth data regarding international student enrollments, changes in search traffic for higher education, and the for-profit education sector.
“Data variations are normal and expected,” said Colby. “ Again here, at the top level of higher education, continuing education, the trendline is upwards. Higher education enrollments are not necessarily surging, but they are growing year over year, which is a really good sign for the sector, as well as for our workforce and economy.”
This report is the first from Validated Insights to examine overall enrollment trends in higher education. Previous reports have studied the market for online program management companies (OPM), MBA programs, nursing education, computer science programs, trade schools, and AI/ML programs.
This press release originally appeared online.
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