Fall 2020 Enrollment numbers

[dr_codex]

20% Of Harvard's First-Year Class Has Deferred
https://www.forbes.com/sites/brandonbusteed/2020/08/07/20-of-harvards-first-year-class-has-deferred/amp/

I should also post this in the positivity thread, because my struggling, small, not-selective LAC was "only" down 25% in terms of first year students.

The real question is who shows up in fall 2021 for anyone.

My guess is that as opening day arrives, these numbers are going to climb. The only reason that they are not already huge is that the traditional gap year options (working and traveling) are also not especially attractive in the age of Covid-19.

Fears of this are the only rational explanation for some pretty puzzling statements about how things will roll out in a month.

[Aster]

Our institution is currently reporting that Fall enrollments are down by 30%.

[Vkw10]

My institution (public R2) is reporting 1% down on enrollment, but 5% down on student credit hour registration. Semester starts in two weeks, with 30% of classes fully f2f, 30% fully online, and rest a mixture. For f2f classes, faculty are required to allow students to attend via zoom unless the course requires hands on activities (licensure requirements, etc.).

What I'd like to know is where we are with tuition and fee payment. I've heard that financial aid is working with some students to reinstate financial aid packages that were declined earlier in summer.

[spork]

https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/article/2020/08/10/survey-40-percent-freshmen-may-not-enroll-any-four-year-college

[Caracal]

20% Of Harvard's First-Year Class Has Deferred
https://www.forbes.com/sites/brandonbusteed/2020/08/07/20-of-harvards-first-year-class-has-deferred/amp/

I should also post this in the positivity thread, because my struggling, small, not-selective LAC was "only" down 25% in terms of first year students.

The real question is who shows up in fall 2021 for anyone.

My guess is that as opening day arrives, these numbers are going to climb. The only reason that they are not already huge is that the traditional gap year options (working and traveling) are also not especially attractive in the age of Covid-19.

Fears of this are the only rational explanation for some pretty puzzling statements about how things will roll out in a month.

If this had happened when I was a college student, I wouldn't have really considered just skipping the semester or year. What would I have done instead? Better to be busy and engaged than sitting around at home.

[writingprof]

I can understand skipping in the fall, but by spring Lord Biden will have arrived to save us.  You're hurting his economy then, which is presumably not part of the plan.

[jimbogumbo]

We are up  (slightly) Fall to Fall in hours, bodies and money.

[the_geneticist]

20% Of Harvard's First-Year Class Has Deferred
https://www.forbes.com/sites/brandonbusteed/2020/08/07/20-of-harvards-first-year-class-has-deferred/amp/

I should also post this in the positivity thread, because my struggling, small, not-selective LAC was "only" down 25% in terms of first year students.

The real question is who shows up in fall 2021 for anyone.

Harvard's endowment is so large that they could pay freshmen to defer for a year.  They will be just fine.
I would put money on a lot of SLACs going under if the pandemic lasts more than 1 year.

[writingprof]

I would put money on a lot of SLACs going under if the pandemic lasts more than 1 year.

It would be interesting to define what we all mean by "lasts." 

= is still in the news?
= is still infecting "x" new people per day?
= has resulted in no vaccine?

I don't really believe, like Donald Trump Jr., that COVID will instantaneously vanish the minute Biden is sworn in.  But I'd be shocked if it remains front-page news for long after that.

[Aster]

Our institution is currently reporting that Fall enrollments are down by 30%.

And... one week later, that 30% is now less than 20%.

And that's usually exactly how registration goes at Big Urban College. Nobody signs up early. Lots of people wait until the last minute to register. The pandemic doesn't seem to have altered this pattern much. Unfortunately, nobody told this to our gaggle of brand new senior new administrators that thinks the sky is falling.

At our current rate of new student registrations, by the time our semester starts, I'm expecting that we'll be down by maybe 10-ish%, tops. In some disciplines we're already full up, but the admin have blocked us from adding in new course sections. That's a bit dim-witted in my opinion.

[onehappyunicorn]

College wide we are down 18% from the same time as last year. Lots of angst and vague threatening about job security going around. The main issue is that we'll feel the kick in the budget from the state a year from now when we will likely have a larger student population.
Department-wise we are only slightly down, mostly in our electives. All of our core classes are close to capacity, we had to add a section to meet demand last minute. What this says to me is that, assuming we retain our normal percentage of students, we will be experiencing a cut in budget just as we have a wave of students taking electives to finish their degrees. When I ran the report recently we are up 18 majors from last year.
Good times.

[sprout]

College wide we are down 18% from the same time as last year. Lots of angst and vague threatening about job security going around. The main issue is that we'll feel the kick in the budget from the state a year from now when we will likely have a larger student population.
Department-wise we are only slightly down, mostly in our electives. All of our core classes are close to capacity, we had to add a section to meet demand last minute. What this says to me is that, assuming we retain our normal percentage of students, we will be experiencing a cut in budget just as we have a wave of students taking electives to finish their degrees. When I ran the report recently we are up 18 majors from last year.
Good times.

This is what we've been seeing at my CC too.  We've had to add a couple sections of majors classes, and cancel a boatload of non-majors classes.

[spork]

Lots of problems with this Inside Higher Ed article:

https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/article/2020/08/24/will-students-show-private-colleges.

For example, Assumption University is reporting an increased number of deposits in June compared to last year, but there's no figure for the number of students who planned to attend August of last year. So no ability to determine if deposits are going up while the size of the incoming class is going down, or if the summer melt rate has changed.

[Parasaurolophus]

Numbers are in today. Our enrollment is down... 0.8%.

[downer]

Numbers are in today. Our enrollment is down... 0.8%.

That seems survivable -- though it might be that revenue is down more than that.

I am wondering whether schools that made drastic cuts in faculty pay and benefits because of fears about the future, and which are now doing pretty well, are planning to give that money back to faculty.