It looked like student housing would see a good year in 2022. Student housing vacancies dropped to a seven-year low. International real estate firm Hines, for example, launched a closed-end fund to target tactical opportunities in the 30 top U.S. metro markets across various niche asset classes, like student housing.

However, overall enrollment numbers suggest that not all is rosy. The change between before the pandemic and now is one million fewer students in college, as NPR reported. Data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center compares year-over-year enrollment changes in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021, across public two-year, public four-year, private nonprofit four-year, and private for-profit four-year.

There were only three times any of the sectors saw positive growth. In the fall of 2018, private nonprofit 4-year schools experienced a year-over-year enrollment increase of 2.4%. Then in fall of 2020, public four-year schools had an increase of 0.2% while private for-profit four-year schools had 5.3%. But the declines meant that every sector saw a decrease over the four-year span.