Demography is destiny
States face big changes in college populations

DECLINES IN THE NUMBER of high school graduates will dramatically change the face of higher education in this country, as will the increasingly diverse ethnic and racial makeup of high school graduating classes, according to a new report published by the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE).

The report, "Knocking at the College Door: Projections of High School Graduates by State and Race/Ethnicity, 1992 to 2022," indicates that after 14 years of rapid growth in the number of high school graduates, that figure will plateau to more than 3.34 million this year. Beginning in 2008-09, the number of those graduates will decline, falling to their lowest point around 2013-14 and then slowly rising.

These changes will vary by region. Between 2007-08 and 2021-22, the number of high school graduates in the Northeast will decrease by 13 percent, while the number of high school graduates in the Midwest will shrink by 7 percent. The West, however, will see an increase of 5 percent, and the South will see a 10 percent increase. Nationally, the number of high school graduates will increase by 6 percent.

As for diversity, all four regions will see declines in the number of white non-Hispanic graduates, and increases in Hispanic graduates and Asian/Pacific Islander graduates. In the West, such changes will be significant; its class of 2010 is projected to be the first where the minority is the majority, with less than 50 percent of graduates who are white, non-Hispanic. The South will experience its first majority minority graduating class in 2017. Individual state profiles, with projections of public school graduates by race and ethnicity, are posted at www.wiche.edu/policy.

The report notes that such projections are important for state policymakers who can use them to set tuition rates for nonresidents, to attract high school graduates from neighboring states with an abundance of graduates. College presidents also can consult the report to adjust "the ways in which they reach out to minority students and adults."

College catch-up
Learning communities boost underprepared students

ONCE KNOWN MAINLY for enrolling older students working toward a college degree, community colleges today too often are seen as bastions of remediation. Two-year institutions must help many students—whose high school educations left them academically unprepared—play catch-up so they can handle college-level work.

A new study offers "learning communities" as a possible solution to the community-college conundrum. In March, MDRC (formerly the Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation) released "A Good Start: Two-Year Effects of a Freshmen Learning Community Program at Kingsborough Community College." The report documents the effects of placing freshmen at the diverse college in Brooklyn in groups of up to 25 students who took three classes together during their first semester. These classes included a remedial English course, an academic course such as health or psychology, and a one-credit orientation course. The program also provided students counseling and tutoring as well as a voucher for textbooks.

MDRC randomly assigned 1,534 freshmen either to a learning community or to a control group that received the college's usual courses and services. To be eligible for the learning community, students had to be first-time freshmen between the ages of 17 and 34 who were attending college full time during the day and did not qualify as ESL students.

The study found that the learning community helped students feel more integrated and engaged than students in the control group. Students in the learning community also were more likely to pass remedial English. And they attempted and passed more courses and earned more credits during their first semester, although such positive effects diminished in subsequent semesters.

The report states the evidence is "mixed" as to whether the learning communities increased persistence in college. While the program did not affect the rate at which students re-enrolled, slightly more learning community members than control group members attended college in the last semester of the study's two-year follow-up period. MDRC will continue tracking these students' outcomes for at least another year.

College Catch-Up—Visit www.mdrc.org/publications/473/full.pdf to read the full report.