Colleges will need to adjust to a shrinking, diversifying pool of traditional college-aged students in the near future. What will they need to do to be ready? A new set of projections outlines how many high school graduates will be available to enroll at institutions like California State University, Long Beach. But they don’t change the outlook for a sector that has for decades relied on a steadily growing pipeline of students. Higher education will soon face shrinking cohorts of traditional-aged students, whose enrollment has long been key to making budgets balance. The sector may not be able to kick the can down the road and avoid fixing its creaky business model much longer.
