Dive Brief:
- The anticipated decline in the population of high school graduates over the next 15 or so years will be slightly bigger than previously projected, according to the latest forecast by Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education.
- Nationally, high school graduates will peak between 3.8 million and 3.9 million in 2025 and eventually decline to about 3.4 million by 2041, a drop of about 10.3%. Just by 2030, WICHE projects the pool of high school graduates will shrink by 3.1%. Graduates will increase in just 12 states — mostly in the South — and the District of Columbia by 2041, while they will decline in the rest of the U.S.
- Although often referred to as a demographic cliff, WICHE’s projections show “a slower and steadier decline” than the metaphor suggests, giving policy makers and institutions some time to respond, the authors note. It also pointed out that efforts such as boosting the college-going rate of high school graduates could offset the drop.
Dive Insight:
WICHE’s latest edition of “Knocking at the College Door” adds new detail, estimates and nuance to trends that the higher education sector has spent years bracing for.
“While the news may not come as a surprise, the fact that the moment we have all been expecting is now upon us can be jarring,” the authors wrote. “And the trends that we expected have been compounded by an unexpected pandemic, changing the context in which we now exist.”
WICHE’s forecasts are drawn from birth data, enrollment figures for first through 12th grades and the numbers of high school graduates in each state.
High school graduates expected to peak in 2025
In part, WICHE’s study adds detail to the COVID-19 pandemic's effects on those attending and graduating high school. For one, it might reduce the total number of graduates.
WICHE’s new projection for high school graduates in 2037 is 1% lower than an estimate it made four years ago. And while that’s a normal fluctuation for a forecast, “WICHE finds evidence of a substantial number of [high school] students no longer enrolled, suggesting a modest impact overall,” the study authors noted.
Additionally, the report notes the pandemic may have decreased college preparedness among prospective students.
The authors cautioned against both doom-and-gloom views of a shrinking high school graduate pipeline and focusing purely on its impact on institutional finances.
“Higher ed can kind of write its own story about this report and these numbers,” Patrick Lane, WICHE’s vice president for policy analysis and research, said in a media briefing Monday. “One response could be: ‘Well, there's fewer high school graduates coming, so we're going to have lower enrollments. We might as well start cutting back.’”
But, Lane added, “We don't think that's a positive and a proactive response when we factor in the huge number of workforce shortages across states, across regions, and really across the country.”
In other words, declines in college attendance, enrollment and graduations are not just a problem for the higher ed sector.
Lane also raised “serious concerns” about some colleges experiencing enrollment declines while high school graduate numbers are peaking.
At the same time, increasing the college-going rate of high school graduates could pose a potential avenue for mitigating their shrinking numbers. The WICHE team pointed to a college-going rate of 62% in 2022, as estimated by the National Center for Education Statistics. That’s a decline from almost 70% in 2016.
“Any approach to managing the expected decline in the number of graduates must involve improving the immediate college-going rate of high school graduates and improving the progression and retention of students who do enter college,” the authors write.
Running what Lane described as a “simple math exercise,” the report’s authors showed that an increase of just half a percentage point in the college-going rate of high school graduates could offset the decline in their numbers.
Accomplishing that would require concerted effort by institutions and policymakers at multiple levels. It could include reducing college costs for students, simplifying the process for attending, beefing up high school advising and adding more support for college students, according to the report.
