Making sense of college enrollment decline

Article here. Excerpt:

'The U.S. Bureau of the Census recently released a report indicating college enrollment dropped by about a half million students from 2011 to 2012. In fact, the press release from the Census Bureau said enrollment “plunged” from one year earlier.

Most people are well aware of the correlation between educational attainment and earnings: in general, the higher the education level, the higher the income. Future prosperity, both as individuals and as a society, is tied to improving education levels (particularly for states that are lagging, such as Texas).

So, is the drop in college enrollment something we should be worried about? I don’t think so, and here’s why.

First of all, the drop (which was actually about 467,000 nationwide) isn’t huge compared to total enrollment. With just more than 19.9 million people now in college, the decline was about 2.3 percent from 2011 — not exactly a plunge! Even so, downward is generally considered the wrong direction, so we took a closer look at the underlying changes revealed in the detailed tables.
...
Looking at changes by gender, male students declined by 530,000, while females increased by 61,000. As noted, older part-time male student enrollment fell sharply. White, non-Hispanic male enrollment dropped by 657,000. Enrollment for male part-time students who were working full time fell 302,000. No matter how you slice or dice it, male students comprised the bulk of the overall drop. One particularly bright note for females is the large gain in enrollment among Hispanics, which rose by 375,000 (an increase of almost 25 percent).'