U.S. colleges and universities got some good news last week: A National Student Clearinghouse Research Center report showed that declines in undergraduate enrollment had begun to stabilize in fall 2022 — even though total enrollment across higher education was still nearly 6 percent below 2019 levels.

Some academic fields, however, have sustained enrollment declines for years, including the broad category that encompasses four-year liberal arts and sciences/general studies and humanities programs. It saw a 4.8 percent decline over that period, which followed a 2.7 percent decline from fall 2020 to fall 2021 and a 6.4 percent drop from fall 2019 to fall 2020.