Undergraduate enrollment is holding steady at Virginia’s public colleges and universities even as some of the same institutions are grappling with steep graduate student declines and as enrollment across the state’s private colleges has dropped.
About 180,762 students are enrolled in undergraduate programs at the state’s public four-year colleges and universities this fall, an increase of less than 1% over last year’s 179,246, according to early estimates from the State Council of Higher Education, also known as SCHEV.
This year’s estimates show continued, even if slight, increases in enrollment at public colleges and universities since declines seen during the COVID-19 pandemic.
For now, Virginia’s public colleges aren’t seeing the undergraduate enrollment cliff, a predicted demographic downturn caused by declining birth rates and changing attitudes about higher education that leaders have been warning about.
The number of first-time students enrolled at public institutions in Virginia rose by about 1% this fall, from 36,944 to 37,334. Tod Massa, director of policy analytics for SCHEV, said the state’s public four-year universities “really beat expectations” with that number.
“It may not be a huge win, but it’s a win,” Massa told attendees at the council’s Sept. 21 meeting. “We know that there are changes occurring in how people view college and workforce preparation, but we haven’t hit a huge cliff, and we’re not going to hit a huge cliff.”
The larger picture across the state is more complicated.
Graduate enrollment has been a cause for alarm at some of the state’s largest institutions; full-time enrollment is down about 1.8% at public colleges and universities and more than 13% when private schools are included, according to the early estimates.
At Virginia Tech, full-time graduate student enrollment is down more than 7%.
A significant driver of the decline is a drop in international student enrollment, which SCHEV is expected to release more information about later this year.
Private institutions, which typically enroll more than 100,000 students each year, also saw declines this fall.
There are about 100,253 undergraduate students enrolled at private four-year colleges across the state, compared to 102,602 last fall, a 2.3% decline based on the early SCHEV estimates. Overall enrollment at those schools is down about 2.6%.
Combined, this means that overall enrollment across public and private institutions is down about 1.4% in Virginia.
SCHEV has not yet released official census data it collected from colleges and universities this fall; a spokesperson said in a Sept. 24 email that final enrollment numbers should be available in November or December.
Universities work to reverse enrollment declines
Schools across the state are exploring ways to attract more students — and keep the ones they have.
Attendees of SCHEV’s joint meeting with the Council of Presidents last week discussed three-year degree programs — like those that the University of Lynchburg is piloting and that Roanoke College has launched online — and direct admissions programs that offer qualified students admission to a school before they’ve even applied.
Radford University has rolled out direct admissions for its nursing program. Starting in the fall of 2027, incoming freshmen with a GPA of 3.0 or higher can qualify for direct admission into the nursing program, bypassing the competitive process that often occurs at other institutions even after a student enrolls. As long as a student remains eligible, a seat will be saved for them in the university’s nursing program.
These types of offerings, coupled with student support services like on-campus mental health counseling and free tuition programs for low-income students, keeps students coming, President Bret Danilowicz said.
Dannette Gomez-Beane, the university’s vice president for enrollment management and strategic communication, concurred.
“When we retain students, then enrollment’s going to go up naturally because they continue, right? So that is one of the areas that we’ve worked very hard on,” she said in a phone interview. “Our academic affairs team and student success efforts have really lowered barriers for students to stay in school.”
Radford has seen its overall enrollment remain steady or increase over the past three years after a multiyear stretch of continuous enrollment decline until 2023.
In a phone interview, Danilowicz attributed that to the university’s work to retain students — especially between their first and second year, when students are most likely not to return to college — and to offer students and their families “a great affordable experience that will lead into a career.”
Radford didn’t see the same declines as some of its peers in graduate student enrollment this year. The number of graduate students enrolled at Radford actually jumped from 756 to 850 students this fall, an increase of more than 12%.
Danilowicz said that the university doesn’t have a large international student population and prioritizes graduate programs that lead to specific careers, such as the school’s family nurse practitioner program and Master of Business Administration program.
Last year, graduate students made up about 1,630 of Radford’s 7,830 students.
Some institutions are also bolstering part-time enrollment, especially at the graduate level, which is evident in this year’s early enrollment estimates.
Part-time graduate enrollment is up about 7.9% for both public and private institutions, according to the SCHEV data.
The same is true for professional students, those who are enrolled in a post-secondary program that prepares them for specific licensed careers such as law, medicine and dentistry.
Professional student enrollment is up overall by 1.6% for both public and private colleges and universities, and part-time professional student enrollment is up 9.8%.
At Radford, Danilowicz also said growth doesn’t always have to be a university’s goal. Though Virginia’s public colleges and universities have seen significant increases in enrollment in some years, maintaining steady enrollment can be worthy enough.
“Growth isn’t always what we should be striving for. It kind of has gotten us in trouble as an industry over time,” Gomez-Beane said.
Since he took over leadership of the school in 2022, Danilowicz said his goal has been to maintain stable enrollment.
“If we happened to grow, that was OK, but not necessary because when you’re at stable enrollment, you’ve got a stable budget, and you can plan a strategy that supports your students,” he said. “Wild swings one way or the other don’t help. And being in a constant state of decline, then you’re prioritizing how to manage your budget rather than supporting students. So enrollment stability is an ideal place to be to support students to have them successfully launch into careers.”
