Seton Hall’s Board of Regents approved a $340.7 million unrestricted operating budget for the 2027 fiscal year (FY2027), marking a $7.3 million decrease from Fiscal Year 2026 (FY2026), as the university navigates inflation and shifts in national undergraduate enrollment trends.
In an email to The Setonian, university relations (UR) stated that the FY27 budget “prioritizes academic programs, our Catholic mission and the student experience” while ensuring SHU is positioned to remain financially resilient amid the national landscape for undergraduate enrollment.
According to data obtained by The Setonian from SHU’s Office of Institutional Research, total enrollment increased from 9,494 students in 2023 to 9,812 in 2025, marking a 3.3% increase over two years. The increase was driven largely by growth in graduate programs, which climbed 8.4% in the same span.
SHU’s increase in total enrollment was driven by a significant increase in applications: 26,562 in 2025, up from 23,748 two years prior, an increase of 12%. That application surge, without a proportional rise in admissions, pushed the acceptance rate from 79% to 69%. The yield rate—the portion of admitted students who chose to enroll—increased from 8% to 9%.
From 2023 to 2025, undergraduate enrollment increased comparatively modestly from 6,061 to 6,178, while the Law School held steady at just over 1,000 students. The 2025 freshman class also grew, from 1,569 full-time students in 2023 to 1,605. Notably, this class’ academic profile also strengthened, with average SAT scores rising from 1310 to 1324.
That momentum continued into the most recent 2026 admissions cycle: the Class of 2030 comes from an applicant pool of 28,070. At a 2,300 applicant increase from the previous year, the admissions rate declined further to 67.5%. The average high school grade point average (GPA) for the class is 3.68, up from 3.55 in 2016.
However, while SHU’s applicant pool and yield rate increased, the university pointed to a broader demographic shift reshaping college enrollment nationwide. According to UR, fewer high school graduates are entering college — a decline that has intensified competition among colleges and universities as they seek to fill incoming classes while retaining current students.
“The national landscape for undergraduate enrollment has become increasingly competitive due to demographic changes,” UR said. “Most notably, fewer high school graduates are entering college, in part due to the so-called “demographic cliff.”
The “demographic cliff” is most closely associated with economist Nathan Grawe of Carleton College, whose research traces this cliff to a sharp and sustained decline in U.S. birth rates. The decline began during the 2007-2009 birth recession, resulting in a smaller pool of college students around 2025.
Grawe’s research states that 2025 represents a high-water mark for the number of U.S. high school graduates, a milestone underlying projections for the years in which enrollment decline will follow. Nationally, enrollment projections show the annual number of U.S. high school graduates, which peaked at 3.8 million in 2025, is projected to decline through 2041.
Echoing Grawe’s sentiment, Patrick Lane, vice president of policy analysis and research at the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE), stated last year’s national enrollment numbers reflect a steady downward trend.
WICHE research indicates the impact will not be distributed evenly across higher education, as selective, well-resourced institutions project steady or growing enrollment demand. Regional and tuition-dependent colleges face the greatest risk as their profile is most exposed to the dwindling applicant pools.
Lane commented, “This is not the first time higher education has faced enrollment headwinds, and the ultimate outcome does not need to be gloomy. There are strong, evidence-backed approaches that can truly benefit students and also help meet the daunting workforce challenges of the future.”
Lane’s optimistic view of how higher education may reshape itself in response to national trends can be realized in how universities adapt and continue to reach prospective students. SHU may be doing just that. Despite national trends, UR stated SHU remains a destination of choice for local students as the university continues to attract “high-achieving students seeking an outstanding education” close to home. Approximately 75% of the incoming undergraduate class is from New Jersey, according to UR.
UR said the university has leaned into a “high-touch” recruitment strategy in response to these trends, including hosting more than 9,000 families on campus, visiting over 2,000 high schools regionally and nationally, and welcoming more than 5,000 students via virtual events in the past year.
The university also noted that SHU remains on pace to meet both its incoming-class enrollment and discount-rate goals, and that incoming students’ academic profiles, as measured by average standardized test scores, are stronger than last year’s admissions cycle.
With approximately three-quarters of the incoming undergraduates hailing from New Jersey, the remaining 25% are drawn out of state or internationally. UR stated that more students nationally “seem inclined to study closer to home.”
The geographic data provided by SHU’s Office of Institutional Research proves the university’s account of its recruitment strategy; incoming freshmen from New Jersey grew from 1,112 in 2023 to 1,235 in 2025, an 11% increase, while out-of-state enrollment fell from 430 to 348 students in the same period, a decline of almost 19%.
While local enrollment numbers have remained steady for SHU, international enrollment emerged as a specific sector for caution. In the university’s FY27 budget letter, federal policy was cited as affecting student loans and international enrollment, making administrators “cautious about our graduate enrollment projections.” The university did not specify which federal policies it was referring to, though these trends can be linked to prior Setonian reporting on new graduate degree loan limits.
Loan changes stem from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), the tax and spending reconciliation law signed by President Trump in July 2025. Having begun July 1, the law eliminated the federal Grad PLUS loan program for new borrowers, removing the option for graduate and professional students to borrow up to their entire cost of attendance.
The OBBBA caps annual federal borrowing through Direct Unsubsidized Loan programs at $20,500, with a lifetime limit of $100,000. There is a cap at $50,000 annually for programs classified as professional—including medicine, theology, and dentistry—with a lifetime cap at $200,000. Separately, an aggregate lifetime limit of $257,500 is applied across all combined federal student loans.
In December 2025, The Setonian reported that loan changes had already started reshaping students’ plans. Degree programs classified as “nonprofessional”were assigned lower caps compared to their “professional” counterparts; this shift in federal educational priorities led students to reconsider their career paths, reflecting how this national shift in enrollment has affected SHU. The university’s falling acceptance rate and rising application numbers point toward overall institutional health; however, modest declines in out-of-state and international enrollment, compounded by new federal caps on graduate borrowing, suggest the university isn’t immune to the same pressures reshaping the higher education landscape.
Whether SHU’s trajectory holds may depend on where the university falls within Grawe and WICHE’s framework. The research points to selectivity complemented by financial resilience as the determining factor between which institutions will weather the demographic cliff and which institutions won’t. SHU’s falling acceptance rate, strengthening incoming class profile and increasing application volume suggest the university will be able to withstand the challenges ahead.
Still, the coming admissions cycles will be the true test. With 2025 marking the national peak in high school graduates, applicant pools are expected to begin narrowing in the coming years. What’s more, federal loan caps add new uncertainty to graduate enrollment. As Lane noted, the outcome of these shifts doesn’t have to be bleak, but will require adaptation. As of now, university officials told The Setonian that SHU is on track to meet its enrollment goals for the coming year.
Elizabeth Maria Churchill is the assistant editor of The Setonian’s News section. She can be reached at elizabethmaria.churchill@student.shu.edu.
