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Amidst all the loopholes that our country’s higher education system is witnessing in recent times, a few encouraging incidences and facts have also emerged.

The 2011 reports have been better as compared to those of 2010. According to the report, graduate institutes across America received as many as about 1.88 million student applications. These individuals had applied in order to earn a doctoral of master’s degree. These are the statistics of 2011.

This shows that there was a whooping 4.3% improvement in the numbers of applicants as compared to 2010. This is certainly a stat that is going to bring some relief to the United States Higher education system which has more or less been facing the music in the past few weeks.

However, just when the education system thought that it has finally earned some points for good work, the inevitable had to happen. While the numbers of student applications has been on a steady rise, the students who actually enroll themselves in such courses have gone down. This again is a very worrying factor, according to the report.

The report stated that there has been an increase in the applications in the last 10 years. However, the education system has not been to convert most of the applications into enrollments, indicating again that there are loopholes that need to be addressed immediately.

According to the report, around 441000 student enrollments were recorded by graduate schools all over the country. If you compare the stats to the year 2010, there was a decrease in enrollments by about 1.7 percent. While the percentage might sound marginal, it comprises a large number when we consider 441000 students. Compare this to the year 2003 and the result is even worse. The enrollment stat is 3 percent short when compared to 2003.

What is rather baffling to see is the fact that doctoral and master’s degree have a lot of value in America and yet students seem to be staying away from such courses. The overall economy of the country is not doing very well at the moment and hence the value of graduate degree has gone up even further. According to Debra W. Stewart, the president of the Council, one of the major reasons for decrease in overall number of enrollments is mainly due to the rising education cost.

Stewart stated that undergraduates across the country are already under the burden of repaying their educational debts. In such a scenario they can’t even think of pursuing further studies and look for another loan. Hence, these students and their families are left with no choice but to not get indulged in a graduation degree program.

Stewart also said that looking at the current scenario; it is very unlikely that the situation is going to improve in 2012. It could only get worse and chances are that there would be a further decline in the number of enrollments mainly because the federal loan subsidy concept does not exist anymore.