By Douglass Belkin for Wall Street Journal

College enrollment dropped for the third consecutive school year after the start of the pandemic, dashing universities’ hopes that a post-Covid rebound was at hand.

The rate of the decline has slowed this fall, with college enrollment dropping 1.1% since last autumn. Over the first two years of the Covid-19 pandemic, enrollment fell about 6.5%, according to the National Student Clearinghouse, a nonprofit that released a report Thursday….

Online schools and historically Black colleges and universities were among the few categories of schools to enroll more students in the fall, data show. The shift reflects a change in the way students say they are choosing their colleges.