Talk:List of the largest United States colleges and universities by enrollment

The Pennsylvania State University and University of California are missing from the list
Penn State has over 95,000 total students and the UC system has over 200,000. Why are they not on the list?


 * It seems really arbitrary which systems are included or not in this list. In the IPEDS system, the relevant classifier would be the "Name of multi-institution or multi-campus organization" variable; when I label the data using that variable when applicable and the institution name otherwise, what I get (for year 2018 & Fall Enrollment like in the article) I get


 * {| class="wikitable sortable" style="width:70%; font-size:90%;"

! colspan="5" | U.S. Department of Education Fall 2018 Enrollment ! Rank ! Institution ! Enrollment
 * 1 || CA C.C. System || 1,019,418
 * 2 || CA State Univ. || 493,171
 * 3 || SUNY System || 415,362
 * 4 || State Univ. System of FL || 360,840
 * 5 || Univ. System of GA || 328,087
 * 6 || UC system || 280,380
 * 7 || CUNY || 274,906
 * 8 || UTX System || 245,240
 * 9 || UNC || 236,993
 * 10 || NC C.C. System || 210,319
 * 11 || AZ Board of Regents || 186,841
 * 12 || WA State Board for Comm. & Tech. Colleges || 184,217
 * 13 || MN State Colleges & Univ. || 178,195
 * 14 || Univ. System of MD || 176,424
 * 15 || U of WI System || 171,098
 * 16 || VA C.C. System || 161,587
 * 17 || UT System of Higher Ed. || 154,793
 * 18 || Texas A&M Univ. System || 153,209
 * 19 || Western Governors Univ. || 121,437
 * 20 || Maricopa C.C. District || 118,942
 * 21 || Los Angeles C.C. District || 114,676
 * 22 || NV System of Higher Ed. || 108,658
 * 23 || The Univ. System of OH || 107,298
 * 24 || Univ. of Phoenix || 105,426
 * 25 || Southern NH Univ. || 104,068
 * 26 || Tech. College System of GA || 98,845
 * 27 || The State Univ. & C.C. System of TN || 98,348
 * 28 || PA State System of Higher Ed. || 98,072
 * 29 || KS State Univ. System || 93,633
 * 30 || WI Tech. College System || 93,435
 * 31 || Dallas C.C. System || 93,417
 * 32 || The Penn. State Univ. || 91,684
 * 33 || The Univ. of LA System || 91,158
 * 34 || Grand Canyon University || 90,253
 * 35 || Strategic Education Inc. || 86,824
 * 36 || U of I Board of Trustees || 85,960
 * 37 || TX State Univ. System || 85,435
 * 38 || CT State Colleges & Univ. || 82,272
 * 39 || CO C.C. System || 80,509
 * 40 || AL C.C. System || 80,230
 * }
 * 21 || Los Angeles C.C. District || 114,676
 * 22 || NV System of Higher Ed. || 108,658
 * 23 || The Univ. System of OH || 107,298
 * 24 || Univ. of Phoenix || 105,426
 * 25 || Southern NH Univ. || 104,068
 * 26 || Tech. College System of GA || 98,845
 * 27 || The State Univ. & C.C. System of TN || 98,348
 * 28 || PA State System of Higher Ed. || 98,072
 * 29 || KS State Univ. System || 93,633
 * 30 || WI Tech. College System || 93,435
 * 31 || Dallas C.C. System || 93,417
 * 32 || The Penn. State Univ. || 91,684
 * 33 || The Univ. of LA System || 91,158
 * 34 || Grand Canyon University || 90,253
 * 35 || Strategic Education Inc. || 86,824
 * 36 || U of I Board of Trustees || 85,960
 * 37 || TX State Univ. System || 85,435
 * 38 || CT State Colleges & Univ. || 82,272
 * 39 || CO C.C. System || 80,509
 * 40 || AL C.C. System || 80,230
 * }
 * 32 || The Penn. State Univ. || 91,684
 * 33 || The Univ. of LA System || 91,158
 * 34 || Grand Canyon University || 90,253
 * 35 || Strategic Education Inc. || 86,824
 * 36 || U of I Board of Trustees || 85,960
 * 37 || TX State Univ. System || 85,435
 * 38 || CT State Colleges & Univ. || 82,272
 * 39 || CO C.C. System || 80,509
 * 40 || AL C.C. System || 80,230
 * }
 * 37 || TX State Univ. System || 85,435
 * 38 || CT State Colleges & Univ. || 82,272
 * 39 || CO C.C. System || 80,509
 * 40 || AL C.C. System || 80,230
 * }
 * 39 || CO C.C. System || 80,509
 * 40 || AL C.C. System || 80,230
 * }
 * }


 * Nikko2013 (talk) 18:14, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

List not distinguishing between types of institutions

 * Header created and comment author information found by Adavis444 (talk) 10:31, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

This is clearly a crappy list. This list includes universities, community colleges, and online high education institutes. This list needs to separate the 3 or be changed to reflect what is truly listed.

Comment by at 2009-10-09T00:15:06

Article name
I don't know that this recent rename actually fixes anything that was incorrect with the title. The list here is of US post-secondary institutions (both colleges and universities); the title should probably reflect that. And, to the above unsigned comment, there are room for many lists on WP; if you want to create those separate lists, go ahead. -Nicktalk 05:59, 9 October 2009 (UTC)


 * What about the Community Colleges of Chicago --68.214.72.178 (talk) 08:57, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Proposal: Rename and replace data
The list on this page is getting unwieldy, and there is a lot of inaccuracy (e.g., SUNY is not a single university, nor are the campuses under a single administration; some colleges listed include "noncredit" students, which opens up an entirely new can of worms). The US Department of Education's data website provides a list, and I suggest we use the data from that list. The list includes over 7000 colleges and universities in the US and ranks them based on their 2009 12-month unduplicated headcount enrollment ("How many unique students were enrolled for at least 1 credit at some point in time between Aug 09 and Aug 10"). This appears to be the only unbiased way to present the data. The data is publicly accessible, but tricky to get to. I've posted a screencap here. This also has the benefit of letting a third party (Dept of Ed) decide on what constitutes a single institution vs. separate institutions. (I believe they base it on how the school is accredited.)

Therefore, I propose replacing the current list with the one from the Dept. of Education, and, for clarification, the page will be renamed "List of United States colleges and universities by enrollment". -Nicktalk 05:08, 28 October 2010 (UTC)


 * I was thinking the same thing. Maricopa County Community College District is obviously not one college either. At this point we're essentially doing original research by taking statistics from different colleges and compiling them together to determine which is the largest.--Cúchullain t/ c 12:43, 28 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I'd think that this list would be rather better if we excluded community colleges entirely. john k (talk) 04:46, 30 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I disagree - that would be a different list altogether. Maybe such a list would also be useful but let's not delete this one just to make room for it. ElKevbo (talk) 05:55, 30 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Why not separate lists for community colleges and four year colleges and universities? Community colleges are especially problematic because they so often have multiple campuses, and student bodies are much more fluid than they are for four year schools - there's always a significant percentage of people in community college classes who are not pursuing a degree. It's really comparing apples and oranges. john k (talk) 21:35, 30 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Sounds good. Is the data available already extracted from IPEDS i.e. somewhere other than through the Data Cutting Tool? Is there an identical table in the Digest of Education Statistics, perhaps?  ElKevbo (talk) 05:55, 30 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I also think a rename is in order: The title "List of United States colleges and universities by enrollment" led me to believe that ALL college enrollments would be listed, but the only information shown is for *largest* enrollments. I do think it's fine to have the page be limited to the top 10, or 20, or whatever enrollments, but I think the title should be changed. --ErikVKing (talk) 01:07, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I renamed the Article. --ErikVKing (talk) 20:20, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Santa Ana College
Santa Ana college does not have 55,000 students. This was taken from the school's website of the 2010 enrollment. {http://sac.edu/Safety/documents/SAC-Fact-Sheet.pdf }Pwordisony (talk) 03:30, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Mention on DailyKos
This article has been mentioned on that blog. 23:10, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

IPEDS reference verification
The article says that the table information can be verified in IPEDS. In the rankings section it says that the data is for Fall 2013 enrollment and in the references section it says that it is for Fall 2012 enrollment. However, I am unable to reproduce the table using either 2012 or 2013 enrollment data. Is anyone else able to reproduce it? If so, can you share the IPEDS session to verify? --Jtbates (talk) 06:52, 12 March 2016 (UTC)

Delete?
It's not clear to me what the value of this list is, since it is now wildly out of date, and there is a single canonical sources -- IPEDS -- and that source already publishes many versions of this list: the 20 largest, the 120 largest , all schools over 15,000 , and so on.

The page as it is now is worse than useless, it is actively wrong -- Phoenix has shrunk, and now has fewer than 100,000 students; Ashford and Kaplan were both acquired and have disappeared as separate entities, and Southern New Hampshire University and Western Governors' University, both private non-profits and now the #1 and #2 largest schools in the country, weren't even on the 2013 list. Clearly no one cares enough about this page to edit it -- in the last two years, not one update changed any enrollment data.

There could be other solutions, including copying and pasting IPEDS data to here, but I wonder if it would be better to just remove it? cshirky (talk) 03:53, 5 July 2021 (UTC)