College enrollment rose in 2023 for the first time in a decade

After falling for a decade, college enrollment in the U.S. finally ticked up last year, with higher education institutions across the nation adding 176,000 students, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.

In what executive director Doug Shapiro called “a welcome change,” the number of enrolled students rose 1.5% between 2022 and 2023, to 18.3 million, after falling steadily from 20.5 million in 2011. “The number of students in college has finally turned the corner after years of decline,” Shapiro said in a statement. 

But the numbers don’t mean that the four-year liberal arts degree has made a comeback. If anything, colleges are catching up to demographic and cultural shifts that prioritize concrete skills and question the ballooning costs of education. The main one is the education hack beloved by Gen Z: Skills-based training.

Just look at the data: The largest enrollment rise was for community colleges with strong vocational programs, which posted a 16% increase from 2022 to 2023, the NSCR noted.

Students “are voting with their feet,” Kathleen deLaski, founder of Education Design Lab, said on LinkedIn, noting that community colleges were growing into “new role[s] as regional talent brokers for high demand jobs.” 

Elsewhere, interest in trade schools is also booming, with enrollment up for construction trades, repair, and precision production programs, the NSCR noted. 

‘Budget-minded’ students

The shift reflects a growing practicality among Gen Z as well as the lingering effects of the pandemic, when millions of young people were shoved into subpar remote-learning setups that turned off many from further education. A whopping 68% of Gen Z now say they don’t need a college degree to be successful, according to a YPulse survey. 

This youngest Gen Z cohort also says that work experience is more important than…