Iowa regents: The enrollment cliff is here

IOWA CITY — Years after flagging an impending enrollment cliff — predicted as a result of changing demographics, including a financially-motivated drop in the birth rate during the 2008 Great Recession — U.S. colleges and universities have arrived at the precipice.

“To paraphrase that little girl from the movie Poltergeist: It’s here,” Jason Pontius, associate chief academic officer for Iowa’s Board of Regents, said recently in presenting the fall 2025 enrollment report for Iowa’s public universities.

This year represents the edge of the cliff for most states, with the actual decline in high school graduates coming in 2026. Iowa, according to Pontius, has one more year of growth until its high school graduate numbers are expected to drop 7 percent through 2029, according to board calculations.

“What does all of this mean for enrollments going forward? I think for instate students, we should be fine — based on historical patterns,” Pontius said. “But it is going to provide an additional challenge to our admissions officers — having a declining pool of out-of-state students.”

The University of Iowa, for example, has been increasing its reliance on out-of-state students in recent years — reporting this fall a non-resident enrollment of 13,136, up 29 percent from 10,189 in the fall of 2018, according to board documents.

Meanwhile, its instate enrollment has dropped 9 percent from 18,687 in fall 2018 to 17,016 this fall, meaning the instate portion of Iowa’s enrollment has waned to around 56 percent — where resident enrollment across Iowa’s regent universities in the 1990s hovered around 75 percent.

All three of Iowa’s public universities — especially the University of Iowa — rely heavily on Illinois for out-of-state students, with Iowa’s neighbor to the east sending 11,346 students to one of its public universities this fall, including 6,705 to UI.

But Illinois is predicting to see the steepest enrollment drop in the continental U.S. between 2023 and 2041 at 32 percent. Where Iowa is predicting a modest 4 percent drop in high school graduates over that span, Minnesota — which provided 4,517 out-of-state students to Iowa’s public universities this fall — also is predicting a double-digit drop of 12 percent.

Michigan is looking at a 20 percent drop in high school graduates; Wisconsin is expecting a 15 percent decline; and Missouri is bracing for a 12 percent loss.

And those numbers don’t even consider changes in public trust in higher education and a shift in college-going behaviors in Iowa, according to Pontius.

“One other aspect of this that I've talked about before is the Iowa high school college-going rate has been dropping over the last 10 years or so,” he said, slipping from 70 percent in 2012 to 62 percent in 2023.

And a post-graduation-intent survey of Iowa high schoolers ties that drop to a desire to jump straight into the workforce.

The percent of Iowa high school graduates wanting to get a job right away, instead of attending college, has more than doubled from 8 percent in 2005 to 17 percent in 2025 — or 6,056 — surpassing in number and percentage the 10 percent, or 3,741, wanting to attend a private four-year university.

While the most students — 10,156 — have plans to attend community college, making up 28 percent of the 2025 total, that’s down from 13,857 or 40 percent who said so in 2010.

The percent wanting to attend a public four-year university has remained somewhat stagnant over the last decade — dipping slightly from 29 percent to 27 percent.

That stability, according to Pontius, paired with recruiting and retention efforts allowed Iowa’s public universities to increase their total enrollment about 2 percent over last year and about 4 percent over a recent low of 68,938 in fall 2022.

That 68,000 number is where Pontius predicts the universities will fall to again in the throes of the enrollment cliff. And he warned of another X-factor in the declining community college enrollment — meaning fewer transfers to Iowa’s universities.

“Their numbers have gone down, so they have fewer transfers to come into our institutions,” he said.

Other enrollment highlights

Vanessa Miller covers higher education for The Gazette.

Comments: (319) 339-3158; vanessa.miller@thegazette.com