{"id":20130,"date":"2020-11-15T00:00:59","date_gmt":"2020-11-15T00:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tamus.edu\/data-science\/?p=20130"},"modified":"2025-09-24T17:58:56","modified_gmt":"2025-09-24T17:58:56","slug":"ihe-enrollment-trends-in-texas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tamus.edu\/data-science\/2020\/11\/15\/ihe-enrollment-trends-in-texas\/","title":{"rendered":"IHE Enrollment Trends in Texas"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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While institutions of higher education (IHE) have long held concerns regarding student enrollment, the uncertainty surrounding the effects of COVID-19 on not only beginning-of-semester student enrollment this fall, but also student persistence throughout the semester, has heightened many concerns at colleges and universities. Based on preliminary data published recently by the National Student Clearinghouse (NSC)<\/a>, undergraduate enrollment across the United States is down 4.4 percent\u00a0when comparing fall 2020 to fall 2019 enrollment<\/span>, while graduate enrollment is up 2.9 percent. The NSC report stated that postsecondary enrollment nationally is 3.3 percent lower overall across all institutional levels (two-year colleges and four-year universities) and types (public, private nonprofit, and private for-profit).<\/p>\n

Closer to home, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB) is in the process of certifying CBM reports from public colleges and universities in order to release official enrollment data for fall 2020. Once published, we will be posting a blog entry that will examine statewide and institution-level data to explore the extent to which COVID-19 has affected enrollment at Texas public IHEs. To contextualize that forthcoming discussion, this blog post reviews recent enrollment data and trends for both 2-year and 4-year institutions, specifically highlighting the tremendous enrollment growth Texas colleges and universities have seen in the demographic consisting of Hispanic female students.\u00a0<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Growth in undergraduates; graduate enrollment falling off<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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The interactive visualizations below disaggregate enrollment profiles for all public universities by classification levels (undergraduate and graduate) and race\/ethnicity categories, while the community college visualization breaks down enrollment by race\/ethnicity categories. All data were downloaded from the THECB’s Accountability System Interactive Portal<\/a>.\u00a0As seen in the visualizations, undergraduate enrollment at both the 2-year and 4-year institutions saw steady growth from fall 2014 to fall 2019 across the public colleges and universities in Texas. Statewide undergraduate enrollment at public universities increased by 11.2 percent from 474,771 in 2014 to 528,117 in 2019. Enrollment statewide at public two-year institutions increased by 7.9 percent from 693,791 to 748,478 during the same time period.\u00a0<\/p>\n

While enrollment has grown overall, not all demographic segments of the student population have seen increases. By far the largest gaining group overall are Hispanic students, whose numbers increased at both public colleges and universities in the tens of thousands. At 4-year institutions, just over 42,000 more Hispanic students were enrolled in 2019 as were enrolled in 2014, an increase of 26.7 percent in six years<\/b>. African American student enrollment also increased, growing from 59,364 in 2014 to 63,379 in 2019. By contrast, White undergraduate students peaked in 2016 before falling by more than 9,000 students in 2019 for a six-year decrease of 3.9 percent. Fall 2018 saw Hispanic undergraduate students surpass white students as the highest representation group at public universities. The enrollment gap between the two groups widened to more than 16,000 students in fall 2019, as Hispanic students represented 38.1 percent of all university undergraduates, compared to 35.3 percent White students.\u00a0At the two-year college level, Hispanic student enrollment grew at an even greater clip, with an increase of 27.3 percent from 2014 to 2019<\/b>. African American and White student enrollment decreased by 4.3 percent and 9.9 percent, respectively.<\/p>\n

At the graduate school level, enrollment at public universities followed a pyramid shape from 2014 to 2019. After seeing increases in the first-half of the time period, graduate student enrollment dropped off to almost where it started, registering an overall increase of 1,041 students for an 0.8 percent gain. As with the other academic levels, Hispanic student enrollment increased, while other demographic areas dropped. The 5,004 headcount gain in Hispanic graduate students (21.9 percent) was the primary reason that the overall graduate enrollment in Texas’s public universities did not decrease from 2014 to 2019. African American graduate student enrollment also increased, growing from 13,732 to 14,570, a 6.1 percent increase.\u00a0 Although White graduate student enrollment dropped off slightly from 51.7K to 50.6K, the largest decrease at the graduate level was seen in the International student population, which fell by almost 6,200 students, a 20.4 percent decrease. Although the THECB does not currently publish international enrollment by country for each educational level (undergraduate and graduate), the overall largest declines by country from 2014 to 2019 were student enrollments from India (2,335 decrease from\u00a011,976 to 9,641; -19.5 percent); China (1,132 decrease from\u00a0<\/span>7,642 to 6,507; -14.9 percent); and Saudi Arabia (672 decrease from 1,376 to\u00a0704; -48.8 percent).\u00a0<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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