Video: Where Community Colleges Are Seeing Promising Enrollment Growth

Enrollment in community colleges showed some promising signs of recovery in fall 2023. Public two-year colleges grew 2.6%, much faster than public four-year colleges.

Students in dual enrollment programs grew the fastest of any age group, but traditional-age students also grew. Men are also starting to return to community colleges, after falling dramatically at the start of the pandemic. Though the number of White students is still falling, other racial and ethnic groups are now coming back to community colleges.

“Clearly, you can say this looks pretty promising for a nascent recovery,” said Doug Shapiro, executive director of the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.

In this video, Shapiro and Hee Sun Kim, a senior research associate at the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, present the findings from their Current Term Enrollment Estimates report for fall 2023, with a special focus on the numbers for community colleges. The Research Center, a partner in the ARCC Network, released the report in January 2024.