Student Demographic Trends For The 2020s: How To Stay Ahead
Stephen Hawking once said: “Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.” Indeed, the student landscape in higher education has gone through cataclysmic changes in recent years, including a continual drop in domestic college-age population, increasing diversity, more non-traditional students, less international students, and continued adjustments to the current Gen Z student population, among others. Colleges should not just adapt but get ahead and embrace these changes, wherever and whenever possible. Here are some ideas and tips for staying ahead of the trend lines.
The Traditional, Go-To Student Pool Is Drying Up
The primary student prospect pool that U.S. colleges have targeted over the years is defined as well-prepared, domestic high school graduates under age 25 from families able to support the cost of college. Unfortunately, this population as a whole is shrinking.
According to Nathan D. Grawe, author of Demographics and the Demand for Higher Education (2018), in an interview he did for Inside Higher Ed, the recession that started in 2008 led people to delay starting families. The accompanying decline in birth rate means that by 2026, the number of college-age students in the U.S. will have dropped by 15 percent.
Regionally, the Northeast and eastern Midwest are hit the hardest with 20 to 25 percent fewer college-going students.
How are colleges and universities addressing this problem?
A More Diverse Student Body
A 2019 report by the American Council on Education confirmed that colleges, reflecting national trends, are becoming more ethnically diverse, with some of the biggest gains among Hispanic and Asian students. Students of color made up just 29.6 percent of the undergraduate student population in 1996, increasing to 45.2 percent in 2016. According to Hanover Research, nearly one-third of all students are the first in their family to attend college. Nearly one-third of these first-generation students drop out within three years. With diversity in all its facets being so crucial to the educational environment and preparation of students for a diverse world, the report also sadly underscores how many institutions lag in support for underrepresented students, and in mirroring the growing student diversity with more diversity among their faculties and leadership.
A Century Foundation report authored by professors Mesmin Destin and Mary Murphy presents some excellent tips on supporting student diversity, including:
Hanover Research offers these suggestions in their “2020 Trends in Higher Education” report:
Christine Lee on Turnitin.com presentsexamples of college efforts to promote diversity and inclusion, including:
The Continued Rise of Adult, Non-traditional Learners
According to Financeonline.com, almost 75% of higher education students are “non-traditional,” defined as students over 25 who often hold full-time jobs (59%) and perhaps children of their own.
Jeff Maggioncalda in Inside Higher Ed, explains the educational need this way: “As workers move across jobs and careers, they will constantly need new skills — over many decades — to remain employable. This pace of change, fueled by globalization and technology, is fundamentally reshaping the future of work and creating a need for a new kind of lifelong learning.”
The rise of non-traditional students, which started many decades ago and continues today, has forced institutions to reassess traditional education, become more flexible, and redesign the program and delivery of degrees. Here are some examples of what colleges are doing, courtesy of Inside Higher Ed:
For higher education, a sector that often finds change difficult (see our earlier post), the decade ahead brings both challenges and opportunities. In subsequent blog posts we’ll explore how to deal with dwindling international students and supporting Gen Z. Here’s to a productive and fruitful 2020 and beyond.