College enrollment declined by close to half a million (463,000) students in 2013, marking the second year in a row that a drop of this size occurred.

The cumulative two-year drop of 930,000 students for 2012 and 2013 was larger than any college enrollment drop before the recent recession, according to U.S. Census Bureau statistics from the Current Population Survey released today.

“The drop-off in total college enrollment the last two years follows a period of expansion,” said Kurt Bauman, chief of the Census Bureau’s Education and Social Stratification Branch.

“There’s some research that associates economic hard times with growth in college enrollment,” Bauman said in a telephone interview. “Now there’s a fallback.”

The losses in college enrollment were similar in younger and older students, according to the report. Registrations among students 21 and younger fell by 261,000 while the enrollment of students older than 25 fell by 247,000. About 40 percent of people in the U.S. ages 18 to 24 years were enrolled in college in the fall of 2013, down from 42 percent two years earlier, according to the Census Bureau.

Community colleges experienced the largest enrollment decline at 10 percent for 2013, while enrollment at four-year colleges grew slightly at one percent.

While the most recent enrollment decline was in two-year programs, the drop in 2012 was mainly felt by four-year colleges, Bauman said. Registration in four-year colleges fell 5.3 percent to 10.3 million that year from 10.9 million in 2011, according to figures released last year.

College enrollment may be affected by a waning number of graduating high school seniors across the country. The high school class of 2012 ushered in a first wave of declines, according to a report issued that year by the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education in Boulder, Colorado. The trend will worsen after 2025, when admissions officers face the impact of a drop in births that began with the recession. College enrollment grew by 3.2 million between 2006 and 2011, he noted. That level of growth exceeded the previous 10 years combined of 2 million students from 1996 to 2006.

Hispanic student enrollment did not grow for the year after having increased to one million for the previous five years (2007 to 2012). Black student enrollment also did not grow after a climb of 500,000 in the previous five years. In addition, Asian student enrollment remained stagnant after an increase of 340,000 for the same time period.

According to the Census Bureau, a larger share of Hispanic students attend two-year schools than Asians, Blacks or non-Hispanic whites and those schools saw a sharper decline than four-year schools.

Of the total 19.5 million college students, 5.3 million attend two-year colleges, 10.5 million attend four-year colleges and 3.7 million are in graduate school.

The Census Bureau also reports that of those students 58.2 percent were non-Hispanic white,16.5 percent were Hispanic, 14.7 percent were Black, and 8.1 percent were Asian.

—Bloomberg News contributed to this story.