Credit: Fermin Leal / EdSource
More graduates in California and nationwide will walk across the stage to receive their high school diplomas in the spring of 2025 than in more than a decade — and more than in decades to come.
The “Knocking at the College Door” report, released Wednesday by the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, predicts how many students might graduate across each state in the country, how demographics might shift, and the extent to which the Covid-19 pandemic could have an impact still.
The researchers anticipate that the number of students graduating from high schools in the United States will peak next year and then fall gradually until 2041. The number of California graduates is expected to drop across all racial and ethnic demographics — except for multiracial students, who are expected to increase by more than 200%.
“After years of growth, higher education in the United States now faces a decline in the size of the traditional college-going population as well as shifting demographic patterns within that population,” the organization’s president, Demarée K. Michelau, stated in the foreword of the report.
“These enrollment factors and the pressures of inflation and constraints on government funds combine to present the most perplexing set of issues to face higher education planners and administrators in a generation,” the foreword continued.
Here are the key takeaways from the report.
The number of high school graduates is expected to peak in 2025
The number of students graduating from public high schools in both the state and the nation is projected to peak in 2025.
After that, the number is expected to fall steadily from about 3.5 million nationally to 3.1 million in 2041, largely because of declining birth and fertility rates, but also because students are projected to take longer to finish their K-12 journeys.
The report notes that net migration and mortality also play a role.
California is one of five high-population states that are expected to make up about three-quarters of the national decline, according to the report.
“When we hit the peak in 2025 and then start declining with the number of high school graduates, that puts more downward pressure on those postsecondary moments,” said report co-author Patrick Lane, who spoke at a press briefing Monday.
“So what are the responses?” Lane asked. “How do we address concerns that students have about value?”
Distributions across race and ethnicity will likely change
Nationwide, Hispanic or multiracial students should make up a greater proportion of high school graduates, while the share of students from other racial and ethnic backgrounds will decline, according to the report.
But, according to data from the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, multiracial students are the only group projected to see an increase in California.
Specifically, in California, between 2023 and 2041:
- Multiracial students are projected to increase 224%.
- Hispanic students are projected to decrease 25%.
- American Indian and Alaska Native students are projected to decrease 58%.
- Black students are projected to decrease 62%.
- Asian, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander students are projected to decrease 35%.
- White students are projected to decrease 53%.
Not everywhere in the country will see the same trends
The report projects that the decline in the Western U.S. will mirror the nationwide trend. And California’s decline — anticipated to be roughly 29% across both public and private schools — is expected to account for roughly three-quarters of the regional decline.
Meanwhile, the report states that the South will continue to defy broader national trends — first seeing some growth and later a smaller decline.
The pandemic might have a smaller impact than anticipated
According to the report, the Covid-19 pandemic may lead to a slight drop in the number of high school graduates nationwide — only 1% less than what the organization previously projected for 2037.
The 1% change is “within the usual fluctuations,” but the report also states that the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education has historically underreported the number of future graduates and that they have found evidence “of a substantial number of students no longer enrolled, suggesting a modest impact overall.”
The decline, according to the report, is a result of falling enrollments in both public and private schools. And while the decline is smaller than anticipated, Lane said it will have an impact on the economy.
“When we look around our region, and more broadly around the country, we see workforce shortages in virtually any important employment sector that you can think of, from health care, teaching, nursing, engineering, to things that may not be as high on people’s radar, like diesel technicians. It’s a huge deal for a lot of the West,” Lane said at a press briefing Monday.
“But if these declining high school graduate numbers translate into even more downward pressure on enrollments,” Lane said, “it’ll be hard to meet some of these workforce demands.”
