Oregon's Higher Education Coordinating Commission (affectionately referred to as "The HECC") just put out its freshest headcount data for the state's community colleges and four-year public institutions. The patterns are not surprising, but interesting, nonetheless.
There are three views here: The first is a high level summary of all the institutions, colored by type on stacked bars, and totaled with the line. It's simply a starting point.
The second view (using the tabs across the top) shows a long trend of enrollment, from 2014 to 2023, broken out by four-year institutions. As you can see, OSU has been growing quite dramatically over that time, much of it driven by our Ecampus enrollments. However, for the skeptics, were you to remove all Ecampus students from the enrollment mix, we'd still be the largest four-year public in the state.
Among four-year institutions, OSU enrolls more resident students, and more nonresident students, than any other public university in Oregon. We know our first mission is to the people of the state, but of course, academic reputation and programs are drawing increasing numbers from beyond our borders.
The third tab shows community college enrollment over that same period, and this is the national trend everyone has taken note of. Long, slow declines driven first by a strong economy, and then a precipitous drop due to COVID-19. There is some good news, however, as 13 of the 17 community colleges have shown enrollment growth this fall. We're hopeful that our community college partners will bounce back quickly and strongly; they do a lot of heavy lifting for four-year colleges and, of course, for the students they serve.
I recommend you use the highlight filter to emphasize a particular school, and the chart is a big noisy. Choose whether to display data as headcounts or as percentage change since 2014.
Hover over a point to view the details. And if you'd like to see this larger, click here to go directly to the visualization.
And, as always, let me know what you see here.
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