Future Population Changes
Current and future college-bound high school students are stoked. The Washington Post reports that there will be an overall decrease in the number of high school students applying for college, and that there will be an overall increase of minority applicants. Which means it will be easier to get into college than it has been, and (hopefully) the minorities will no longer be referred to as such since they’ll be the populations with the highest numbers on the average college campus.
Obviously this happy day/apocalypse is freaking out admission and recruitment offices. Whatever. As long as the decrease in students isn’t drastic enough to result in the closure of any schools, the change seems like a positive one that will benefit the students. How can less-severe competition for admission and an increase in diversity be detrimental?
Population Shift Sends Universities Scrambling: Applicant Pool Forecast To Shrink and Diversify
Colleges and universities are anxiously taking steps to address a projected drop in the number of high school graduates in much of the nation starting next year and a dramatic change in the racial and ethnic makeup of the student population, a phenomenon expected to transform the country’s higher education landscape, educators and analysts said.
After years of being overwhelmed with applicants, higher education institutions will over the next decade recruit from a pool of public high school graduates that will experience:
- A projected national decline of roughly 10 percent or more in non-Hispanic white students, the population that traditionally is most likely to attend four-year colleges.
- A double-digit rise in the proportion of minority students — especially Hispanics — who traditionally are less likely to attend college and to obtain loans to fund education.
The demographic changes will be profound for individual students: Some will probably see their chances of getting into selective schools improve, and others will see opportunities to enroll at the most selective schools decline. And for colleges, the demographic changes will mean new ways of recruiting and educating students.
“One challenge will be looking at the interface between high schools and college and the issue of college readiness, and the other will be the whole issue of the cost of college,” said David Ward, president of the nonprofit American Council on Education.
The efforts come as the nonprofit Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education plans to release a report this month that will show a decline in high school graduation next year in most areas of the country, except the West, senior research analyst Brian Prescott said. That is at least a year earlier than in some past projections.
Many schools, accustomed to annual increases in the number of high school graduates, are retooling recruitment efforts to focus on states where that population will keep rising.
Although the outlook varies from state to state, the West is projected to have the highest percentage growth, with the Midwest and Northeast experiencing declines. The South is looking at mixed results, according to projections.
Further Reading:
Minority Student Acceptances Increase Dramatically for Class of 2011
Projections of High School Graduates by State, Income and Race/Ethnicity
Minority Data and Strategies at Ithaca College
Students of Color Make Dramatic Gains in College Enrollment…
University Preparing to Deal With Minority Influx
The Changing Face of American Colleges
Minority College Enrollment Surges Over the Past Two Decades…
Posted by Alexa Harrington
I also think that the change is not totally a negative one if the decrease in students enrolling to college would not result to closing the university or college. But I am really wondering why these things are happening. Are students nowadays don’t value education that much? Or did they found another way to obtain a degree that they are considering more than enrolling in College Schools like online education?
I was excited to read that too, as I hope to have kids someday and send them to college. I was afraid that by the time they were old enough, you have to have been a major world leader at the age of 16 to get in.
What I expect to see, over the next few years especially, is an increase in international applications that compensates for the drop in domestic ones. With the US economy collapsing like a flan in a cupboard (with apologies to Eddie Izzard), a US education is starting to look like a real bargain to well-off students, particularly in Asia. The perception of quality is the same, but for them, the price is dropping fast. I bet that’s where the most diversity will come from.