As an admin I can see number the total number of tickets purchased for an event, broken down into tickets for classmates and for their guests.

On the Classmates Profile page, non-admins can only see how many classmates have registered or bought tickets to an event. Is there a way for non-admins to see a total number of attendees for an event, short of me doing a daily edit of some sort of status announcement?

No. Classmates only see the number of classmates that have registered for the event. If you want them to know the total number, you would need to publish that information somewhere on the site for them to see.