College Enrollment Is Falling and Rhode Island Institutions Have Been Hit Hard

College Enrollment Is Falling and Rhode Island Institutions Have Been Hit Hard

Demographics, costs, the economy, and the pandemic caused a decrease in enrollment at colleges in America from 2019 to 2020.

Rhode Island colleges and universities were hit hard.

Of the eleven schools tracked, eight colleges in Rhode Island lost students -- and none was hit harder than Johnson & Wales which lost 18% of its enrollment, according to data from the Chronicle of Higher Education.

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Salve Regina in Newport lost 16% and RISD lost 14% of enrollment. 

Only Brown University and the University of Rhode Island gained enrollment and the Community College of Rhode Island was flat, according to the data.

In New England, overall enrollment at colleges and universities fell from 550,597 to 532,194, a 3.3% decrease.

According to the Chronicle, the data is preliminary, "The new data, some of which are for the 2020 fiscal year and some for the fall of 2020 — the first full semester after the pandemic began — are preliminary and were released 'as an exception' because of the 'high level of interest' in how the coronavirus affected higher education, according to a news release from the Institute of Education Sciences, which is a part of the U.S. Department of Education."

 

 

The Chronicle states it used preliminary federal data released in September to measure how enrollment varied last fall and whether geography was a factor in how colleges performed. The Chronicle analyzed fall 2020 enrollment data from the National Center for Education Statistics for over 3,000 institutions across regions and sectors.

“Newly released data by the National Center for Education Statistics provide a highly anticipated look at how the coronavirus upended colleges’ enrollment, staffing, and finances during the past academic year,” according to the Chronicle.

“The data underscore what has trickled out about institutions over the past 18 months: indicators of plummeting enrollment with warning signs for equity, fears of colleges’ faltering finances, and signs of their shrinking academic workforces. The new federal data are also notable because they reveal how these trends affected specific colleges,” added the Chronicle.