Weekly Briefing: Which State Lost the Most Undergraduates Last Fall?

The National Center for Education Statistics has released 2020 enrollment data for more than 3,000 colleges. Here's a closer look at the numbers. ADVERTISEMENT [Academe Today Logo]( Did someone forward you this newsletter? [Sign up free]( to receive your own copy. What state lost the most undergraduates last fall? The enrollment picture for undergraduates has been grim lately. Some surveys have found that undergraduate enrollment dropped 3.6 percent in the fall of 2020 and 4.9 percent in the spring of 2021. As usual, those numbers don’t tell us everything: How did certain states fare? Which regions, if any, saw gains? The National Center for Education Statistics [released 2020 enrollment data]( last month for more than 3,000 colleges across the country. Our Jacquelyn Elias broke down those numbers. Here’s a bit of what she found: - Fewer than one-third of those institutions saw undergraduate enrollment grow in 2020 from 2019. - One area did see growth: the Rocky Mountain region. Suburban colleges in Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Utah, and Wyoming saw more than 4-percent growth, or an increase of more than 5,000 full-time undergrads, in 2020 over 2019. Most of that bump stemmed from Western Governors University, the nonprofit online mega-university. - Four states — Utah, Arizona, Nebraska, and New Hampshire — saw undergraduate enrollment grow from the fall of 2019 to the fall of 2020. - Alaska and New Mexico saw some of the biggest declines in undergraduate enrollment from the fall of 2019 to the fall of 2020. [Read Jacquelyn’s full story here](. And if you’re into by-the-numbers stories like this one, check out: - [This look]( at whether campus life is really rebounding from the pandemic. - An interactive about [what the industry]( learned last year. - [This analysis]( of what happened to pandemic predictions for colleges. SPONSOR CONTENT | Salesforce.org [The Growing Potential of Chatbots in Higher Education]( ADVERTISEMENT Lagniappe - Learn. 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