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Expert: Enrollment Diversity a Matter of Survival

WASHINGTON — With the overall number of public high school graduates in the United States expected to plateau over the next several years but at the same time become more diverse, colleges and universities must do more to enroll students of color and ensure their success.

Doing so, said  Joe Garcia — president of the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, or WICHE — is not just a matter of increasing equity and opportunity.

“This is a matter of economic competitiveness and sustainability of the economic recovery,” Garcia said. And for colleges and universities that face declining enrollment and have excess capacity, he said: “This is a matter of survival.”

“They need to figure out how to reach out to these populations,” Garcia said.

120716_diverse_studentsGarcia made his remarks Tuesday at the National Press Club during the release of WICHE’s annual “Knocking at the College Door” report that provides projections of high school graduates.

The report’s key finding is that the overall number of high school graduates, which reached a record high of about 3.47 million in 2012-2013, will “plateau for most of the next decade” and experience a short-lived growth between 2024 and 2026, a period during which the number is expected to reach about 3.56 million.

“The pending national plateau is largely fueled by a decline in the White student population and counterbalanced by growth in the number of non-White public school graduates—Hispanics and Asian / Pacific Islanders in particular,” the report states.

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