Elon University’s undergraduate enrollment has dipped below 6,000 students for the first time since spring 2018, according to the Spring Registrar’s Report released Feb. 23.

This decrease comes after an 11.6% drop in enrollment for the class of 2029. Part of this pattern can be attributed to the “demographic cliff,” the decreasing supply of college students from a falling national birth rate that began in 2007.

The total undergraduate enrollment of 5,974 is a decrease from the 6,226 students the university reported in the spring of 2025. It’s also roughly 200 fewer students than the 6,191 reported in fall 2025. Though overall student numbers dropped, there was also an increase of 523 seniors, compared to the fall report. 

According to Alexander Taylor, a data analyst at the Registrar’s Office, the increase in seniors is mostly due to juniors now being classified as seniors after reaching the necessary number of credit hours. 

Taylor also said the decrease in total undergraduate students from the fall to the spring is partially due to students withdrawing or transferring, but also because 143 students graduated in December and January. 

Elon’s Office of the Provost was not available for Elon News Network’s immediate request for comment.

Despite the decrease in enrollment, 30 out of Elon’s 84 majors saw growth between 2024 and 2026. Two majors, nursing and data analytics, increased significantly in student enrollment. Nursing saw a 57.1% increase and the Data Analytics major grew by 60.7%. 

Coordinator for the data analytics program Nicholas Bussberg said the major has seen steady growth since its introduction in 2021. He said it's a popular major due to its flexibility and because of the rise in the importance of data in today’s society.

“Students and everybody else are seeing how important it is to have those data skills, whether you’re being an analyst or a statistician directly, or whether you’re doing it in more of a quantitative field,” Bussberg said. “It's still important to have a lot of those techniques and those skills that we teach throughout our courses in there.”

Bussberg said they have been marketing the major in introductory statistics courses as a way to add extra skills.

“That's our selling point, is to get them to kind of see in that first class what they can add and and then go from there and hopefully continue building on their skills through adding some more courses,” Bussberg said.

Bussberg said that he is hoping for consistent growth in the next few years.