Beginning next year, college enrollment officials expect the pool of applicants to be smaller than previous generations, a trend they expect will last well into the next 10 years…
“We’re facing the cliff, because those born in ’08 … they’re just entering their high school graduation years,” said James Hughes, Dean Emeritus of Rutgers University’s Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy.
As layoffs and economic uncertainty impacted workers and families during the Great Recession of 2007 to 2009, fertility rates plunged, Hughes said. the rates dropped from a population sustaining 2.0 to 2.1 lifetime births per woman before the recession to 1.6 lifetime births per woman in 2023, he said.
“There was a brief flip up (of the trend line) post-pandemic, but then it’s continued to decline,” Hughes said.
A December report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia predicts that the “impending demographic cliff,” combined with low high school graduation rates and a smaller share of high schoolers moving onward to college, is likely to lead to college closures across the nation.
“Over the next two decades, every year the number of college-age students is going to deline,” Hughes said.