By ELYSE ASHBURN

Colleges and universities know that the composition of the nation's student body is headed for a major change. They've been seeing the evidence for years. And an analysis of population data released on Wednesday confirms that major shifts are under way.

"The reality is that the change has hit," said Nancy Davis Griffin, dean of admissions at Saint Anselm College, in Manchester, N.H.

After this year's high-school seniors receive their diplomas, the number of graduates nationwide will begin a slow decline until 2015, according to the new analysis, by the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education. At the same time, the number of minority graduates is expected to grow rapidly as Hispanic and Asian students replace white ones. (State-by-state, regional, and national data from the analysis are available here.)

Ms. Griffin said she was already seeing the shift in the high-school sophomores and juniors who visit her college.

In the Northeast, from where Saint Anselm draws most of its students, the number of Hispanic and Asian high-school students is already growing, and significant increases are expected over the next decade. At the same time, white and black enrollment are each projected to see double-digit-percentage drops, causing an overall decline in the number of graduates.

Nationwide, the number of high-school graduates is expected to peak this year—a year earlier than previously thought—at 3.34-million, according to the commission. The number of graduates is expected to start growing again in 2015, it says, when the rapidly growing Hispanic and Asian populations will begin pushing that number to new highs.

By 2022, almost half of all public high-school graduates will be members of minority groups, according to the commission. If those graduates go on to college, many of them will also be the first in their families to do so.

In short, a growing number of would-be college students will be exactly those that colleges have historically struggled to serve.

"This really isn't new," said Sarita E. Brown, president of Excelencia in Education, a Washington-based group that works to improve educational outcomes for Hispanic students. "But it's going to be a much greater proportion of students than we've seen before, and the downsides of not addressing these issues will be felt much more keenly."

A 'Very Different' Look

The commission, a 15-state coalition commonly known as Wiche, issues its projections every four or five years to help colleges plan. Its estimates are based on birth rates, migration patterns, and elementary- and secondary-school enrollments.

Even more than the national figures, the new state-by-state data from Wiche show pronounced shifts. Several Midwestern and Northeastern states will see the total number of high-school graduates they produce drop by 10 percent or more by 2015. And as Americans continue to migrate to the Sun Belt, a handful of states—Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, Texas, and Utah—will see phenomenal growth across all racial groups, but particularly among Hispanic students.

"There are states that are going to look very different," said Brian Prescott, senior research analyst for Wiche. "It's already happening, and it's happening rapidly."

Education officials in most affected states are already worried about how they will remain economically competitive.

"The fact that the part of the population that is growing the fastest is the least well educated has created a sense of urgency around here," said Raymund A. Paredes, the Texas commissioner of higher education.

Pushing College Participation

In late 2000, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board began a concerted push to raise the state's college-going rate and to close the participation and achievement gaps between white and minority students.

In the seven years since its inception, "Closing the Gaps 2015" has yielded mixed results. The percentage of the population enrolled in higher education rose to 5.3 percent in 2006, up from 5 percent in 2000, according to the most recent data available. And the gap between white and African-American participation in higher education all but closed during that period.

Hispanic enrollment increased as well, but the participation rate for the Hispanic population only inched up, to 3.9 percent in 2006—well shy of the 5.7-percent goal for 2015.

"The challenge in Texas, as in many states, is we're making progress, but we're not making progress commensurate with the growth in the population," Mr. Paredes said.

To continue making gains, Mr. Paredes said, the public-school and higher-education systems are going to have to work more closely to make sure students are ready for college.

One such effort is under way at El Paso Community College, which has begun working with the local school system to administer college-placement tests to high-school students in their sophomore and junior years. That way, students who need remedial work will have time to do it before they show up at the college door.

Starting with the high-school class that will graduate this year, the state has also made its college-preparatory curriculum the default curriculum, a step that Mr. Paredes said would put more minority students on track to head straight to a four-year institution.

Questions of Capacity

Still, in Texas, as in other Western states, community colleges will be expected to absorb many of the new high-school graduates.

In Arizona, Roy Flores, chancellor of Pima County Community College, in Tucson, said his institution had the capacity. With six campuses and a seventh in the works, Mr. Flores said he isn't worried about classroom space. He is concerned, however, about the quality of education students will receive in the public-school system, which is struggling to find enough qualified teachers and suitable classroom space.

"Our students are adults," Mr. Flores said. "We can ask them to hop in a car and drive across town. It's different when you're dealing with 7- and 8-year-olds."

Other states can't take those elementary- and secondary-school students off Arizona's hands, but colleges in slow-growth states are interested in enrolling its high-school graduates.

Lehigh University, in Bethlehem, Pa., has traditionally drawn most of its students from the Northeast, but plans to increase its recruiting in the South and Southwest.

J. Leon Washington, dean of admissions and financial aid at Lehigh, plans to hire two new staff members to focus on states such as Arizona, Florida, Georgia, and Texas. Mr. Washington would like to land students straight out of high school, but he's also particularly interested in community-college transplants from those states and California.

"We think the time is really right to be looking at transfer students," he said.

Lehigh received a record 13,000 applications this year for 1,160 spots in its freshman class for next fall. Mr. Washington is confident that the university can keep the number and quality of its applicants up with aggressive recruiting in other regions of the country. A new financial-aid policy, which eliminates loans for students from families making less than $50,000 a year and reduces loans for others, will also make it easier for low-income and middle-income students to afford Lehigh, Mr. Washington said.

Dartmouth College, too, is hoping to leverage increased financial aid to diversify its student body, as the pool of high-school graduates fills with minority and first-generation students.

Dartmouth's new aid policy waives tuition for students from families with annual incomes below $75,000 and eliminates loans for other aid recipients.

With low-income and first-generation students, "cost is a huge deterrent when they think of private education," said Maria Laskaris, dean of admissions and financial aid at Dartmouth. "I do think we'll see an impact in the kind of students applying to Dartmouth."

Getting in, however, probably won't get easier. Even as the number of high-school graduates nationwide dips in the next few years, Ms. Laskaris said she expects applications to hold steady.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=787033&forum_id=1#9503936)

A new national report projecting the size of high school graduating classes through 2022 finds that the rapid, sustained growth of graduates that began in the early 1990s ends this year, in 2007-8. A long-anticipated period of moderate declines in the number of graduates — and traditional-aged college applicants — is soon set to begin, which could increase competition among colleges and intensify financial pressures on tuition-dependent institutions.

“The second baby boom, if you will, it has come to an end this year,” said David A. Longanecker, president of the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE), which on Wednesday released its seventh edition of Knocking at the College Door.

But the report also projects enrollment patterns that are distinctly regional and, in some cases, state-specific (individual state profiles are available online). Generally speaking, the report projects expansion in the numbers of high school graduates in the South and West, drops in the Northeast and Midwest, and, nationally, explosive growth among non-white graduates, especially Hispanics, as the number of white youth falls.

“It really ups the ante for states on two fronts, because for some states they’re going to face a declining high school graduate population which means that if they’re going to have a more educated population, they’re going to have to reach out to adult learners much more than they have,” said Travis Reindl, program director for Jobs for the Future. “And then for other states, they’re going to see serious growth. They have to increase their K-12 capacity, and figure out how they can accommodate [students] when they get to college.”

“And for all the states, you’re seeing growth in the groups, particularly students of color, that historically we haven’t done a very good job of serving,” Reindl added.

“Any way you cut it, the states have their work cut out for them.”

On a national level, the number of public high school graduates is projected to peak this year at just over 3 million before beginning a gradual decline through 2013-14 — when numbers are expected to begin climbing back to peak levels by 2017-18. The anticipated average annual rate of decline from 2007-8 through 2013-14 is about 0.7 percent.

“After 2007-08 overall production of high school graduates will become much more stable for the foreseeable future than it was during the expansion period,” the report states, “when it was growing by leaps and bounds.”

The Northeast and Midwest will be bracing for substantial declines. Under the projections, the Northeast will experience declines from this year’s peak through the end of the projected period, in 2021-22, with 1 percent average drops per year. The total percentage declines in high school graduates by 2021-22 range from 2.6 percent in Maine to 22.7 percent in Vermont.

Meanwhile, in the Midwest, the number of high school graduates is expected to fall by about 8 percent — 60,000 students — by 2014-15. (“Thereafter,” the report states, “the number of graduates is projected to fluctuate.”) Michigan will see the most precipitous declines, at 13.2 percent among public school graduates by 2015.

In contrast, in the South, robust and rapid growth is expected. From 2004-5 to 2021-22, the number of high school graduates is projected to increase by 210,000 — about a 20 percent increase. Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Texas account for most of the projected expansion, with the percentage of public high school graduates expected to rise by 35.5 percent in Florida, 40.9 percent in Georgia, 30.7 percent in North Carolina and 40.1 percent in Texas. Unlike in the rest of the country, it’s unclear, the report says, whether those four states will peak at a certain point: “[R]ather, they may undergo a consistent expansion in high school graduate numbers, with a single year or two during which the growth pattern is momentarily disrupted.”

And numbers of high school graduates in the West, after peaking next year, in 2008-9, will slowly decline by 2 percent by 2014-15 before rising.

Two Western states in particular — Arizona and Nevada — are expected to see the size of their high school graduation classes almost double between 2004-5 and 2021-22. Other rapidly growing Western states include Colorado (29.3 percent), Idaho (39.1 percent) and Utah (42.4 percent).

Much of the expansion is fueled by growth in minority students, due largely to varying birth rates among different racial groups as well as immigration. Between 2004-5 and 2014-15, the number of Hispanic public high school graduates is expected to rise by 54 percent, Asians by 32 percent, American Indians by 7 percent, and blacks by 3 percent (WICHE’s Longanecker explained that the African-American population, which increased through this year, will now start to decline).

Under the projections, the number of white graduates would fall by 11 percent. The West is projected to have its first “majority-minority” graduating class in 2010, and the South in 2017.

Panelists at an event marking the release of the report in Washington Wednesday focused on a wide range of questions necessitated by different fortunes facing different regions of the country. In the Northeast and Midwest, for instance, “How do you keep a critical mass in a school as populations are declining?” Longanecker asked. (He added that higher education has historically reached out to non-traditional students in times of population declines.) On the other hand, how can states like Arizona and Nevada, faced with dramatic expected expansion, cope with the demand?

But the common challenge addressed was the need to better serve minority students. One can honestly say that two- and four-year colleges have made progress on access in terms of admitting more students from diverse backgrounds, said Janis Somerville, director of the National Association of System Heads.

“The problem is most of us have been reporting more — ‘We admitted 40 more African-Americans this year,’ ” she said, offering a typical example.

“The problem is if you’re in any number of states you can be admitting 40 more and still be losing ground.”

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=787033&forum_id=1#9508057)