ROUND-UP: WICHE Projects Steady Contraction in College Enrollments After 2025
 
The number of high school graduates will peak across the country with the Class of 2025 and then steadily contract over the next dozen years according to the findings contained in the 10^th edition of Knocking at the College Door, published by the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education.
 
Graduating classes will peak at 3.93 million in 2025, about 4 percent above the 3.77 million high school graduates in the Class of 2019. Increased public high school completion rates, especially among students of color, are expected to power the larger-than-anticipated sizes through the middle of the decade. The subsequent decline is attributed to the so-called birth dearth that dates to families having fewer children amid the economic disruptions of the Great Recession.
 
Below are links to coverage in major national publications:
 
Knocking at the College Door
WICHE (December 15, 2020)
 
Birth Dearth Approaches
Inside Higher Ed (December 15, 2020)
 
What Do Demographic Projections Mean for Colleges?
Inside Higher Ed (December 15, 2020)
 
The Demographic Cliff: 5 Findings From New Projections of High-School Graduates
The Chronicle of Higher Education (December 15, 2020)
 
Declines in High School Graduates May Not Be as Bad as Expected: Report
HigherEdDive.com (December 15, 2020)