Enrollment in computer and information science programs fell by double digits again this fall at every level of higher education, according to preliminary fall 2026 figures from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. Compared with fall 2025, the count of students in those programs dropped 12.4 percent at four-year undergraduate institutions, 12.3 percent at two-year institutions and 10.4 percent at the graduate level.

The Research Center posted the numbers on October 29, 2026, in its Preliminary Fall Enrollment Trends report, the first of three releases in its Clearinghouse Enrollment Insights series for the academic year. The final fall figures are scheduled for January.

What the report measured

The report tracks year-over-year percent changes in enrollment, not total headcounts. It compares fall 2024 with fall 2025, fall 2025 with fall 2026, and the two-year change from 2024 to 2026. Results are broken out by institution sector, credential sought, student age, race and ethnicity, neighborhood income, enrollment intensity and field of study.

Field of study is grouped using the 2020 Classification of Instructional Programs maintained by the National Center for Education Statistics. Institutions report six-digit program codes, and the Research Center rolls them up into two-digit families. Computer and information science is one of those families, so the figures cover the whole group rather than any single program such as software engineering or cybersecurity.

How the data were gathered

The figures come from enrollment records that colleges submit to the Clearinghouse as part of routine reporting. For this release, the panel covered about 7.92 million enrollments submitted by September 24, 2026. That equals 46.0 percent of participating institutions and 42.4 percent of enrollments, measured against fall 2025 submissions of roughly 18.66 million.

Only institutions that submitted fall data in all three years (2024 through 2026), within the same July 1 to September 24 window each year, were included. The Research Center built the panel this way to keep differences in reporting timing from showing up as enrollment change. Because the panel is rebuilt each year, the set of institutions differs from one preliminary report to the next.

The counts are unweighted. The January final report, by contrast, weights enrollments to account for uneven coverage by sector and state. The Research Center notes that the two reports can therefore produce different estimates of the same change.

The wider enrollment picture

  • Total enrollment rose 0.2 percent over fall 2025.
  • Undergraduate enrollment rose 0.6 percent. Public four-year institutions grew 0.3 percent, private nonprofit four-year institutions were flat, and community colleges grew 1.2 percent, the only sector posting an increase.
  • Graduate enrollment fell 1.6 percent. Master's enrollment dropped 3.7 percent, while doctoral enrollment slipped 0.5 percent.
  • Undergraduate enrollment declined 0.7 percent among 18-year-olds and 0.8 percent among students ages 21 to 24.
  • Health majors moved in the opposite direction from computing, up 6.2 percent at four-year undergraduate institutions, 4.3 percent at two-year institutions and 2.0 percent at the graduate level.

The report describes the computing decline as a continuation of the drop seen in its earlier releases. It does not offer a cause, and it does not break the computing figures out by credential type in its published highlights. The interactive dashboard on the report page allows readers to filter by major alongside sector and credential program.

Limits the Research Center states

The report flags several cautions. All of the estimates are preliminary and subject to revision once more institutions submit data. Even with the fixed panel, some institutions may be overcounted or undercounted for 2026 because of unusual submission patterns.

Race and ethnicity results carry a further caution. Students whose race or ethnicity was missing or unknown grew 14.3 percent among undergraduates in fall 2026 over the prior fall, so the Research Center adjusted the undergraduate figures using earlier reporting patterns. After that adjustment, the undergraduate missing rate was 11.8 percent, down from 14.6 percent before adjustment.

About a quarter of records lacked a reported gender, which was imputed from a name table built from Census Bureau and Social Security Administration data. Only five credential types are shown separately (undergraduate certificate, associate, bachelor's, master's and doctoral); others, including graduate certificates, are folded into totals because coverage is thinner. State results appear only where at least three institutions reported and statewide coverage reached 40 percent, which held for 32 states on total enrollment.

What to watch next

The Final Fall Enrollment Trends report, due in January 2027, will use the full set of submissions and weighted counts. That release will show whether the double-digit computing decline holds once coverage rises above the 42 percent of enrollments in this panel. The methodological notes PDF on the report page lists every definition used, and the dashboard lets a department, program director or employer check the field-of-study change for its own state where coverage allows.

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