Title: The World Is Changing: Just Not as Much as You've Heard (the Real Story of Student Demographics in the Coming Decade)
Abstract: Just after the turn of the new millennium, a new buzz began to infiltrate high-level conversations within higher education institutions. Administrators became increasingly concerned about projected declines in the national and state numbers of high school graduates. The issue rang out around the halls of academia, from board meetings to recruitment strategy sessions. Enrollment leaders repeatedly fielded the multi-million dollar question: What are we going to do about this? Strategists unfolded their maps of the United States and pointed out those states projected to maintain strong student growth through the national decline: Florida, Texas, Arizona, California, Nevada, Georgia. Budgets ballooned as many admissions professionals immediately felt the pressure to recruit far and wide, investing dramatically more money on direct marketing and outreach to prospective students. Indeed, according to a recent Maguire Associates/ 'Chronicle of Higher Education survey of senior admissions and enrollment officials, 88 percent of fouryear institutions either have a plan or are developing one to address coming demographics changes. The issue has simmered for half a decade and is now coming to a boil as we approach the long-anticipated top of the demographic curve. As uncertain days arrive, it's important to step back and ask what we truly know about changes on the horizon. How significant will they be? Most importandy, are the facts different from what we've heard? From our vantage point serving hundreds of higher education institutions of all types and sizes, we see tension, media attention, and widespread good-intention among those attempting to prepare for and pro actively address changes in the student pipeline. How much of the concern is warranted, and how much is hype ? And what do the impending demographic changes actually mean, not just for the nation and society as a whole, but for your institution? PUT IT ALL IN PERSPECTIVE Rather than the projected decline of high school graduates and college-going students, it's really the anticipated shift in student demographics that is meaningful in the historical arc of American education. Nationally, the shift is identified primarily by rising Hispanic and modestly White high school graduation numbers, an increasing percentage of women, and more first-generation students attending college in the coming decade. In combination, these are indeed notable as national trends. For higher education, it's most certainly true that demographic shifts will support ever-increasing competition among institutions for certain sub-populations of students. But competition for the best and brightest within all demographic groups has been fierce for years, and will continue for years to come. So, to what degree does it make sense for individual institutions to focus on broad demographic trends? The first thing to remember is that, in terms of declining numbers, we're measuring from the top of a pool that has been rising for fifteen years. Lest we forget, the United States experienced significant demographic disruption among high school graduates only a couple decades ago. Between the late 1970s - when there were approximately 2.8 million public high school graduates nationwide - through the 1980s, there was a 20 percent nationwide drop in graduating high school seniors - bottoming around 2.2 million in 1991. Many states never returned to their 1978 high school graduation numbers. Some haven't even come close, most notably Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. In comparison, both N ces (National Center for Education Statistics) and wiche (Western Interstate Commission of Higher Education) project national declines of just 3 percent from current levels. The ebb and flow of high school graduation numbers is not a new phenomenon. Figure 1 (on page 45) gives us a look at the big picture -, with public high school graduates segmented by ethnicity and non-public graduates on top (ethnic data are not available from private high schools). …
Publication Year: 2009
Publication Date: 2009-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 2
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