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- Deeper Look at Fall 2023 IPEDS Data, part I
Deeper Look at Fall 2023 IPEDS Data, part I
A view of the largest online institutions along with trends on total enrollments
Phil Hill
January 13, 2025
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Welcome to our newly-upgraded subscribers. For this first supplement to last week’s public profile of Fall 2023 IPEDS data, I am going to look at top institutions by exclusive DE enrollment and trends in total enrollment before the paywall, and then breakdown by sector and degree type. In an upcoming post I’ll further break down the data further.
Keep in mind (as described in detail in the profile post) that I believe Fall 2023 data represent a likely high point in US higher ed enrollments prior to the impact of the FAFSA fiasco and the demographic cliff(s). Enrollments went up by all DE types and by all sectors. With that in mind, let’s look further at the data.
Largest Institutions
First, let’s look at the largest US higher ed institutions for Fall 2023, ranked by exclusive DE enrollments (total enrollments labeled on the right).
The neck-and-neck race between Western Governors University (WGU) and Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU) continues, followed by Arizona State University, Texas A&M University, and Grand Canyon University.
Total Enrollments
The first view shows total enrollments over time for US higher education, both in absolute terms and as year-over-year (YoY) percentage changes.
The headline for Fall 2023 is that total enrollments increased by 2.6% from 18.65 to 19.13 million from Fall 2022, marking the first overall increase in more than a decade. You can see that the peak losses, naturally, were in Fall 2020 (3.1%), followed by Fall 2021 (1.6%).
It is also worth pointing out the differences from the National Student Clearinghouse (NSC) Fall 2023 that was reported a year ago.
NSC reported a 1.1% increase for Fall 2023, but IPEDS (which is more accurate as a census rather than survey method) shows a much larger 2.6% increase.
