By Michael Napolitano
The number of college-aged students is expected to decline starting next year, leaving some colleges worried of the effects on admissions, according to the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE).
The organization recently released its seventh edition of Knocking at the College Door and said major population drops in the Northeast and Midwest are the primary reason for the change.
“The challenge of ensuring a high-quality education for all Americans has never been greater,” David Longanecker, WICHE president, said in a press release.
While he said that many states in the West and South will see large growth in the college-aged population, an overall decline will come as a result of declines in the other regions of the country.
Northeastern fits in the geographic region as one of the schools facing a smaller pool of possible applicants. Ronne Patrick-Turner, Northeastern dean of admissions, said she thinks the university is prepared for the changes.
“Much of our recruitment strategy has a lot to do with making sure that Northeastern is well-known,” she said. “We’re a global institution that receives a very large number of applications each year.”
The report, which covers school years from 2005-06 through 2021-22, projects that the expansion in the college-aged population that started in the early 1990s will peak this year with more than 3.34 million high school graduates. After this peak, states like Massachusetts, New York and Vermont will start to produce fewer possible college applicants each year.
“It’s something we’ve been anticipating,” said David Hautanen, director of undergraduate admissions and recruitment at Northeastern. “As a result, our recruiting base has broadened to states where the population will remain level or grow.”
Hautanen listed Arizona, Florida and Texas among the states that the university has been focusing on in recent years.
“We’ve been working closely with high school counselors and our 750 alumni in the Alumni Admission Program to further expand our influence,” he said.
While the population change affects the status quo of college admissions, it is not the only theme that arose out of the new projections. Diversity is supposed to rise in the next few decades, with an expected 54 percent increase among Hispanic graduates by the 2014-15 school year. Asian students will increase by 32 percent. Whites, on the other hand, will decrease by 11 percent.
“More and more minority students, particularly Hispanics, are taking the ACT college admission and placement exam and aspiring to go to college,” said Richard Ferguson, ACT’s CEO and chairman of the board, in a WICHE press release.
States like California and Texas are already seeing this change, with more minorities than whites in many classrooms. In the West, the first “majority minority” class is expected to graduate in 2010. The South will follow suit by 2017, according to the study.
Fred McGrail, Northeastern spokesperson, said he doesn’t think the population decline will have an impact on the school’s tuition costs or scholarship offerings.
“Demographically, we’re at the peak in terms of the number of students applying,” he said. “We have 36,000 applicants a year and only 2,800 spots, so I don’t think this will affect us too much.”
