CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug 21, 2025--
According to the newly released Higher Education Insights Report from higher education marketing and research firm Validated Insights, higher education enrollments continue to grow – up more than 3% over 2024.
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According to the report, increasing enrollment benchmarks include:
“The data are remarkably clear that despite a whirlwind of pressures and distractions, students are increasingly showing up for college and continuing education,” said Brady Colby, Head of Market Research at Validated Insights. “The trend lines are not overly compelling, but they are unmistakable – students want college degrees or other credentials, which is lifting enrollments in almost all higher education programs everywhere you look.”
The report highlights not only the year-over-year growth from 2024 to 2025, but also overall enrollment growth since the Fall of 2020 — a span in which higher education enrollments have grown by approximately 500,000 students, an increase of nearly 3% overall.
“Enrollment growth in higher education is nearly universal over the past few years, with the lone exception of master’s programs, which saw a modest dip this past year,” Colby said. “But everywhere else — for-profit colleges, online programs, associate degrees, and career training — the numbers are moving up.”
The new report collects and synthesizes information from multiple providers of enrollment data and highlights trends among degree level, type of institution, program focus, even geography.
According to the report, for example, “Enrollment in the West grew 2.8% but the trend varied widely across states in the region. Utah saw the fastest year-over-year growth at 9.4% while Idaho saw the steepest decline with enrollment dropping 6.2%.”
The report also contains intriguing data regarding online education enrollment trends, such as:
The report also includes in-depth data regarding international student enrollments, changes in search traffic for higher education, and the for-profit education sector.
“Data variations are normal and expected,” said Colby. “ Again here, at the top level of higher education, continuing education, the trendline is upwards. Higher education enrollments are not necessarily surging, but they are growing year over year, which is a really good sign for the sector, as well as for our workforce and economy.”
This report is the first from Validated Insights to examine overall enrollment trends in higher education. Previous reports have studied the market for online program management companies (OPM), MBA programs, nursing education, computer science programs, trade schools, and AI/ML programs.
Like its other benchmark education market research, the Higher Ed Insights Report will be updated regularly, including other timely and relevant information about higher education and the higher education market in general. To receive future reports from Validated Insights, follow Higher Ed News by VI on LinkedIn.
About Validated Insights
Validated Insights is an agile marketing agency specializing in helping higher education institutions achieve and exceed their goals. With a comprehensive suite of services, including digital marketing, paid search, paid social, and web strategy, Validated Insights delivers data-driven strategies and measurable results. The agency's agile testing approach enables short- and long-term growth through better creative, strategy, media execution and continuous brand building. Validated Insights is the only agency in the higher education space to offer a performance guarantee in KPIs in the first 60 days - and continuous growth beyond that.
A new report from Validated Insights states that as of Spring 2025, total enrollment in higher education in the United States was up 3.2% year-over-year to 18.4 million. In Fall 2024 the year-over-year growth rate was slightly higher at 4.5% to a total of 19.1 million, just 0.5% below the most recent projection for Fall 2024 from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). Find the full report – including data about adult learners, international student enrollments, changes in search traffic for higher education, and data about the for-profit education sector – at https://vihigheredinsightsaug25.carrd.co/.
MIAMI (AP) — Some oil vessels are diverting away from Venezuela after U.S. President Donald Trump threatened a “blockade” of sanctioned oil tankers entering or leaving the South American country, a dramatic escalation in the White House’s pressure campaign on leader Nicolás Maduro.
Trump said Tuesday on social media, in all caps, that he is ordering a "total and complete blockade of all sanctioned oil tankers” into and out of Venezuela, a move that threatens to choke off revenue from the world's largest oil reserves that are key to Maduro's grip on power.
It’s not clear exactly what Trump meant by his threats. U.S. sanctions adopted during his first administration make it illegal for Americans to purchase Venezuela’s crude oil without a license from the Treasury Department.
Additionally, hundreds of ships themselves have been sanctioned — part of a massive shadow fleet of often aging vessels that has proliferated in recent years to transport oil on behalf of Iran, Russia, Venezuela and other U.S. adversaries under sanctions.
At least 30 vessels under sanctions are navigating near Venezuela, according to Windward, a maritime intelligence firm that helps U.S. officials target the shadow fleet. A few have started to change their course, perhaps fearing they could face the same fate as the Skipper, a sanctioned vessel seized by U.S. forces last week near Venezuela.
“It’s quite clear that this has disrupted energy flows to and from Venezuela,” said Michelle Wiese Bockmann, a senior analyst at Windward. "Every hour when we’re tracking these vessels, we are seeing tankers that are deviating, loitering or changing their behavior.”
Among those is the Hyperion, which had been sailing toward the Jose port in Venezuela before doing a 90-degree turn early Wednesday and starting to head north away from the South American mainland.
The vessel, previously part of Russia’s state-owned shipping fleet, was one of 173 sanctioned in the final days of the Biden administration for allegedly facilitating Russian oil sales in violation of sanctions over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
Following the penalties, the vessel changed its flag from the Comoros to Gambia. But the West African nation deleted Hyperion — along with dozens of other vessels — from its privately run ship registry in November for allegedly using false certificates claiming to have been issued by its maritime authority.
The vessel’s ownership also is obfuscated under multiple layers of offshore companies, some of them listed in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
“It’s just screaming that it’s in a position to be seized,” Wiese Bockmann said.
Since the first Trump administration imposed punishing oil sanctions on Venezuela in 2017, Maduro’s government has boosted its reliance on a network of rogue tankers to smuggle a growing share of the roughly 900,000 barrels of oil per day that the OPEC nation produces.
Sanctioned tankers carried about 18% of Venezuela’s international shipments during the second half of this year, up from 6% in the first half of the year, according to Jim Burkhard, global head of oil markets and mobility at S&P Global Energy.
Burkhard said that while supplies to China, the main destination for most Venezuelan oil, could be affected, he doesn't expect any major disruption to oil markets.
“Volatility or uncertainty around Venezuela is not new, it’s not a shock,” he said. Markets also react more when supplies of oil are scarce, and “the market today is not tight. There’s plenty of oil.”
Unaffected for now is the roughly 143,000 barrels per day of Venezuelan heavy crude sent to U.S. refineries along the Gulf coast, much of it transported by Chevron, which has a waiver to operate in Venezuela.
“Chevron’s operations in Venezuela continue without disruption and in full compliance with laws and regulations applicable to its business, as well as the sanctions frameworks provided for by the U.S. government," spokesman Bill Turenne said.
Still, for the industry's rogue actors, Trump's threat of a blockade represents a paradigm shift.
“There are already ships that have decided not to leave Venezuela for fear of being seized, and there are also ships headed to Venezuela to load crude oil that decided to turn back," said Francisco Monaldi, a Venezuelan oil expert at Rice University in Houston.
That's good news for the oceans, where hundreds of vessels, many without insurance and poorly maintained, were a constant menace.
"Many of these are no more than floating rust buckets," said Wiese Bockmann, the Windward analyst. "So irrespective of the sanctions and the geopolitical reasons for their being targeted, it is a good thing to have a strategy to deal with them and to remove them from trading.”
Associated Press writer Michael Biesecker and Michelle L. Price in Washington, Regina Garcia Cano in Caracas, Venezuela, and David McHugh in Frankfurt, Germany, contributed to this report.
President Nicolas Maduro addresses supporters during a rally marking the anniversary of the Battle of Santa Ines, which took place during Venezuela's 19th-century Federal War, in Caracas, Venezuela, Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos)
