By Stephanie Sowl, Associate Director of Research  

Amid a long-term trend of declining postsecondary enrollment, recent years have shown encouraging signs of recovery with overall undergraduate enrollment rising since pandemic lows. These green shoots reinforce our belief that more students – particularly those furthest from opportunity – can access high-quality postsecondary pathways that support economic and social mobility. In particular, we’re cautiously optimistic about recent growth in undergraduate enrollment at institutions located in rural settings. According to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, undergraduate enrollment at rural institutions is up 5.1% from fall 2024 to fall 2025 and is up 9.3% from fall 2023 to fall 2025, outpacing overall undergraduate enrollment growth during the same period. Since peaking in 2010, college enrollment in rural America had been declining more sharply than in urban and suburban locales. This trend reflects lower college-going rates for graduates of rural high schools and has informed ECMC Foundation’s Rural Impact Initiative, which aims to enhance the field’s understanding of the unique challenges, opportunities, and assets of rural postsecondary institutions and learners.   

Increasing the number of learners who enroll in postsecondary education is a critical first step to achieving ECMC Foundation’s North Star and motivated us to conduct internal analysis of national, state, and institutional undergraduate enrollment trends. We examined enrollment by locale and found national trends and state-level findings on rural institutions that we’ll continue to monitor, including:  

The critical role of public institutions  

In the 2023-24 academic year, colleges and universities located in rural and town locales enrolled 3.7 million undergraduate students and more than 80% (or 3 million) of those students were enrolled in public two- and four-year colleges. State systems of public higher education are vital resources for rural communities. Rural institutions not only provide college access but in many cases are major employers and community gathering spaces. Ensuring these systems and institutions are adequately resourced and have the capacity to deliver on their missions remains a priority for the Foundation.    

Post-pandemic enrollment trends vary by state, signaling potential policy lessons  

Between the 2019-20 and 2023-24 academic years, fifteen states saw growth in undergraduate enrollment at public institutions located in rural and town locales despite a 5% national decline in headcount for the same period. In most instances, institutions in these states began to rebound from pandemic enrollment lows around 2022 with some states launching programs and policies explicitly focused on rural learners. In Colorado, for example, the board of the Colorado State University system committed more than $8.5 million in 2021 to improve rural learner college readiness and enrollment and nonprofits like The Attainment Network (an ECMC Foundation grantee) have been working to align education and workforce systems. Though we cannot attribute Colorado’s 6% rural enrollment growth from 2019-20 to 2023-24 to these specific policies and programs, they are indicative of the steps state systems, institutions, and nonprofit organizations can take to boost enrollment for learners in rural settings.   

In the Rural Impact Initiative and other ECMC Foundation grantmaking, postsecondary institutions, community-based organizations, and states are responding to the barriers that rural institutions and learners experience with promising strategies.   

Creating flexible online programs to meet the needs of rural adult learners  

Rural regions’ expansive geography can create “education deserts,” where students have few or no nearby college options, often forcing them to relocate or commute long distances to attend college. To address this challenge, many rural postsecondary institutions have looked for ways to reduce the barriers to enrollment through more flexible program offerings. For example, the University of Maine at Presque Isle (UMPI) aims to boost enrollment for rural adult learners through their YourPace program, which offers fully online, asynchronous, competency-based degrees. Largely because of YourPace, UMPI has seen about 67% enrollment growth over the past five years, defying broader enrollment declines seen at many other rural institutions. These and other efforts in Maine (e.g., the LevelUP program that aligns college programs with workforce needs) are expanding access and may be contributing to rural institution enrollment growth in the state, including a 22% increase in enrollment from 2021 to 2023 for men.  

Multi-state partnerships to address workforce development obstacles in rural regions   

Research has found that rural youth’s educational aspirations are shaped by their perceptions of opportunities in the local employment market. Youth are exposed to trends in the local economy and are aware of whether these economies can support careers requiring a college degree. This alignment between education and workforce also rings true for rural adult learners. A recent RAND report discussed learnings from the Tristate Energy and Advanced Manufacturing (TEAM) Consortium, a regional workforce and economic development partnership focused on building career pathways in energy and advanced manufacturing across parts of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. TEAM included about ten community colleges, working to standardize common entry-level courses and curricula across states and stackable credential models. This effort may be contributing to the enrollment growth observed among TEAM Consortium partner institutions. Pierpont Community and Technical College in West Virginia, for example, has seen a 25% increase in enrollment since 2021 and the highest male enrollment since 2016.   

Reversing the declines in college enrollment in rural areas has the potential to place millions more learners and their families on paths to economic and social mobility. At ECMC Foundation, we are encouraged by the growth in undergraduate enrollment seen over the past few years and see that growth, in part, a result of the focused work underway to increase postsecondary attainment and economic opportunity in rural areas. Through the Rural Impact Initiative and other grantmaking and investment strategies, the Foundation remains committed to sustaining this momentum, improving rural learner outcomes, and advancing its North Star goal of eliminating gaps in postsecondary completion.