The National Student Center has released its fall 2019 enrollment estimates for all colleges and universities, and there’ a surprise: Despite the lamentation over dropping numbers of students in the Northeast, enrollment in New Hampshire has risen.
I suspect this is due largely (entirely?) to online enrollment at Southern NH University, which has become a national online behemoth. According to data, SNHU’s online enrollment grew 73% from 2015 to 2018, and it makes up an incredible two-thirds of all college enrollments in New Hampshire (if I’m reading the data correctly). I’ve got a query into the researchers to find out for sure.
Every other Northeast state is seeing enrollment declines. Here’s the chart with enrollment estimates from 2019 and two years previously, and the percent change over that period:
| 2019 | 2017 | % change | |
| N.H. | 157,248 | 147,773 | + 6.03% |
| Mass. | 427,958 | 444,670 | – 3.91% |
| Vt. | 38,207 | 40,024 | – 4.76% |
| Maine | 63,259 | 65,361 | – 3.32% |
| Rhode Island | 68,739 | 69,543 | – 1.17% |
| Conn. | 183,981 | 187,124 | – 1.71% |
| New York | 1,044,388 | 1,092,559 | – 4.61% |
| U.S. | 17,965,287 | 18,463,677 | – 2.77% |
Return to the Concord Monitor
According to Institutional Research, UNH undergrad enrollment went from 12,847 in 2017 to 12,103 in 2019. Using the same calculation method as above, a 6.15% drop. (Grad student enrollment was up a bit.)