Freshman Enrollment Did NOT Decline 5% Last Fall

This development certainly shifts the prevailing narrative about student enrollment. To quote the National Student Clearing House Research Center (NSCRC), "Our subsequent research finds freshman enrollment INCREASED this fall. The Research Center will release its Current Term Enrollment Estimates report on January 23. This report is not based on preliminary data, encompasses nearly all institutions of higher education, and uses different methodologies to determine freshman enrollees."

According to NSCRC," the error impacted the enrollment data for freshmen and dual-enrolled students. It did not, however, skew the total number of undergraduate students."

The good news is that freshman enrollment is up. The bad news is that this type of erroneous reporting can wreak havoc on an organization's reputation. Reputational risk is one of the most complex risks to quantify, but it should always be factored into an Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) program.

Further, the enrollment statistics in the original NSCRC report that showed a significant decrease in the freshman population only fanned further speculation that the botched rollout of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) may have been the culprit for the drop in freshmen.

This swing in data must have provided some welcome relief to the Department of Education (DOE).

"We are encouraged and relieved that updated data from the National Student Clearinghouse shows freshman enrollment is up this school year," U.S. Under Secretary of Education James Kvaal said in a statement.

"The increase is consistent with what we are seeing on the financial aid side: More than 5% more students are receiving federal aid this year," Kvaal said.

⭐ 𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐜𝐚𝐮𝐬𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐍𝐒𝐂𝐑𝐂 𝐝𝐢𝐬𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐩𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐲? ⭐

A subset of freshmen students was incorrectly categorized as dual-enrolled students, leading to an undercount in the freshman population and a corresponding overcount in dual enrollment figures.

𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐤 𝐦𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐠𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐠𝐲 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐛𝐞 𝐩𝐮𝐭 𝐢𝐧 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐞?

NSCRC Executive Research Director Doug Shapiro said the center is "conducting a thorough review to understand the root cause [of the error] and implement measures to prevent such occurrences in the future."