Despite hundreds of millions spent by Democrats to encourage more Michiganders to attend college, enrollment has flatlined following a sharp decline during the pandemic.
Recently released enrollment data analyzed by Bridge Michigan shows 53.4% of the class of 2024 enrolled in college, a roughly 9% decline since 2019 that equates to 8,800 fewer college-bound students.
About 37% of the 100,344 Michigan high schoolers who graduated in 2024 enrolled in four-year colleges, a decline of 1% from 2023, while enrollment at two-year schools was up just over 1%, to 16.4%.
The latter represents a drastic decline for the state’s community colleges, which enrolled 23.1% of the graduating class of 2019, despite multiple scholarship programs passed by Democrats in recent years to boost numbers.
Democrats voted in 2022 to pump up to $550 million a year into a Michigan Achievement Scholarship to provide up to $5,500 per student each year at the state’s 15 public universities and colleges, and have since added tuition free community college.
That’s in addition to about $42 million in annual tuition grants, $87 million for a Tuition Incentive Program, $2 million for Children of Veterans & Officer’s Tuition, $26.6 million for state competitive scholarships, and $52 million for a Michigan Reconnect program, according to a fiscal year 2024-25 higher education appropriations report.
“What we ultimately want is to keep pulling more students into the college-going pipeline who maybe had decided it wasn’t for them, or had maybe decided that it wasn’t affordable,” Michelle Richard, Michigan’s deputy director of higher education, told Bridge. “And I think it’s too early to tell if this investment is having the impact that we really want to see.”
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Gov. Gretchen Whitmer suggested during her recent State of the State address that the lagging enrollment is fueled in large part by men, who are far less likely to take advantage of the scholarships, particularly the Reconnect Scholarship aimed at courting Michiganders over the age of 25.
“Women outnumber men at community colleges, universities, and most of all in Michigan Reconnect, where enrollment is 2-1, women to men,” she said. “We’ve built great programs open to everyone, but we need to do a better job of getting more young men signed up.”
To that end, Whitmer promised to issue an executive directive focused on boosting enrollment of men in higher education and skills training programs.
Data analyzed by Bridge shows 42.3% of female high school graduates in 2024 enrolled in a four-year school, while that percentage for young men was 31.5% – a 10.8 percentage point difference that has widened from a nine-point gap since Whitmer took office.
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The enrollment trends spell trouble for Whitmer’s goal of increasing the percentage of Michiganders holding a college degree or certificate to 60% by 2030. Currently, Michigan ranks 34th among states with 32.7% of residents over the age of 25 with a degree, according to Bridge.
Research published by the Education Data Initiative last year showed the Great Lakes State ranks 10th for the average cost of in-state tuition and fees.
While the massive infusions of taxpayer cash have done little to boost college enrollment, Whitmer’s proposed 2025-26 budget calls for millions more.
The governor is recommending an additional $50 million for the Michigan Achievement Scholarship, $15 million for a College Success Fund, and an increase in allocations for operations of $14.6 million for the state’s 28 community colleges and $69.8 million for its 15 public universities.
In addition, the governor wants $75 million for a MI Future Educator Fellowship and Student Teacher Stipends for aspiring educators, and $50 million to help non-credentialed staff in K-12 schools to become teachers, according to Michigan Advance.
“The fact that we didn’t see this immediate, instantaneous increase in college-going in that first class, that’s not a surprise,” Richard told Bridge, referring to the . “We hadn’t had the opportunity to build that momentum, and I think it’s going to continue to take us time to use this investment to combat a kind of a national narrative that really questions whether higher education is something that’s valuable in the economy.”