By Derek Newton
Reposted from Forbes, with permission
To even the most casual observer, these must feel like belligerent times in higher education – surrounded by fires, besieged, and under crushing market pressures all at once.
But I bring good news, reason for hope and optimism.
Those market pressures – the droning cadence of return-on-investment posturing and supposed shrinking value propositions – they were never real. Many people absolutely wanted them to be. It’s become highly fashionable, and occasionally quite profitable, to make “The End is Near” signs around anything and everything about traditional higher education. But unlike the current enemies at the gates, the doomsday sign-holders won’t go away. In fact, most of them have been clinging to their cardboard and magic marker proclamations for going on 15 years now.
But unfortunately, the recent smoke and chaos around higher education’s ivory towers have obscured what’s happening in them – they are becoming more crowded.
That’s right. Despite all the wrangling, chaos, and doomsplaining, enrollments in higher education have increased. Again.
According to a new report by higher education research and marketing firm Validated Insights, “As of Spring 2025, total enrollment in higher education in the United States was up 3.2%” over 2024. And, “Undergraduate programs lead enrollment growth, as enrollment grew 3.5% year-over-year.” Enrollment in graduate programs grew 1.5% year-over-year, the report says.
Growth was concentrated, the report found, among 2-year degrees and non-degree programs, but even enrollment in the much-maligned bachelor’s degree was up – 1.1%. Further, it says, “Public institutions continue to dominate the aggregate enrollment landscape,” posting a robust 3.7% enrollment increase from Spring 2024 – even though overall enrollment in this sector remains 1.8% below pre-pandemic levels.
In any normal environment, these types of sustained enrollment gains across nearly all sectors would be big news, even celebrated. But, as mentioned, this is nowhere near a normal environment in higher education. To switch metaphors, our attention is so focused on the dangerous mudslide that we’re missing the mountain. We’re even confusing one for the other. The mudslide is real, the mountain is good – thank you very much.
It’s not all wine and roses. The report shows another troubling increase in enrollments at for-profit institutions. “Enrollment at for-profit institutions grew 3.7% year-over-year in Spring 2025. As of Spring 2025, for-profit enrollment is 18.3% higher than it was in Spring 2020.” Even for a mountain, it’s a condition that forecasts a problem.
The report from Validated Insights isn’t new data, it’s a convenient compilation of enrollment information from multiple sources. But it paints a compelling picture and includes some interesting points beyond the higher enrollment trends.
There is a perception that online college offerings are growing so much as to become the new normal, and, as a result, that they will crowd out traditional, in-class, on-campus education. But one interesting point from the report shows that maybe that’s not quite accurate.
Yes, online higher education programs are growing. That’s no surprise. But these online programs are heavily, nearly entirely, concentrated among adult students and at open-access institutions, and in non-degree programs. Long-term, that’s probably not great. Right now, the concentration of online delivery is so strong that, according to the report, just 4% of traditional undergrads (aged 18-21) were studying exclusively online, while nearly two-thirds (63%) of adult students were.
Another no-surprise, but no surprise in the report related to online programs is that online enrollments are growing in health fields. Eleven percent of students in health programs were studying online in 2021. That percentage is now 17%. No surprise. Meanwhile, it is a surprise that online enrollments in STEM fields – science, technology, engineering, and math – are down in that time. In 2021, 35% of STEM students were in online programs. By 2024, it had dropped below one in four (24%).
But the growing enrollment is the key finding. Or at least it ought to be, especially for those who have been predicting massive, even existential market swings in higher education. Listen to the market, they say.
Well, in higher ed, the market is definitely speaking. Quoting the report’s author Brady Colby, Head of Market Research at Validated Insights, “The biggest takeaway from our report is that, if you believe people shop with their feet, more and more people are finding their way to higher education opportunities, clearly seeing value in those choices. And not just in workforce or online career training either. Public university enrollments and traditional degree program enrollments are growing too.”
That’s right. Despite wildfires, mudslides, and every conceivable type of manufactured and intentional threat, students are finding their way past all that, to the gates of higher education, even traditional colleges, asking to be let in. The fires and flare-ups are hard to ignore. But increasing applications and increasing enrollments tell us that, at least in the eyes of the buyers, very little has happened to the value of college.