High school graduates expected to peak at 4 million in 2025 before hitting a ‘demographic pothole’
College enrollment leaders have begun revamping their recruitment messages with experts predicting a significant decline in high school graduates beginning in 2025 and lasting more than a decade.
About 3.8 million students graduated from high school in 2019. That number should peak at 4 million in 2025 before hitting a “demographic pothole” and declining each year throughout the 2030s, according to the “Knocking at the College Door” report released by the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education in December.
A drop in births during and following the Great Recession is a leading reason for expected drop, the commission says in its report.
Even as the graduating classes decline size, they will become more diverse, the commission says.