University enrollment continued to decline in the fall for the sixth straight year, adding more bad news to the woes of financially stretched colleges and universities, new figures show.

The total decline in enrollment slowed somewhat, down 1 percent this fall compared to the previous fall, the new numbers, from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, show. But the drop in the number of first-time students is speeding up. There were 63,000 fewer first-time students in higher education this semester than during the same period last year.

This means there are more than 2.6 million fewer students enrolled in higher education in the semester just coming to an end than there were in the fall of 2011, the most recent peak.

For-profit universities also continued to take a pounding, with nearly 69,000 fewer students in the fall than in the fall of last year.

No upswing is projected until 2023, and it will be very gradual and comprised increasingly of low-income racial and ethnic minorities who are the first in their families to go to college, the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education estimates. Those students tend to need much more financial aid and academic support.

Read the full article by Jon Marcus about university enrollment from source The Hechinger Report