An enrollment cliff, driven in large part by declining birth rates, will begin to impact colleges around the country in 2025. The number of U.S. high school graduates is expected to peak in 2025 or 2026 and then decline for years to come. The decline is in addition to other headwinds such as the financial crisis, declining male enrollment in post-secondary education, new educational models, state demographics, and cynicism about ‘relevance’ of a modern college degree.

According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, the consensus is that America will hit a peak of around 3.5 million high-school graduates sometime near 2025. After that, the college-going population is expected to shrink across the next five to 10 years by as much as 15 percentage points. All this while expenses continue going up and private institutions and state governments are left to make tough decisions.

Schools built classrooms and hired teachers to educate bumper crops of babies born in 2000s, and now there are too few kids. Kids born in the first cohort of declining births are now in 10th grade. This is the enrollment cliff that colleges are going to confront soon. pic.twitter.com/hj4Kip0s5B

— Jill Barshay (@jillbarshay) April 25, 2024

Colorado’s population demographics are relatively stable but many of DU’s students come from 500 miles away or more to attend DU. According to the Colorado Department of Education, “Just under 50% of high school graduates attended an institution of higher education in the fall after graduation. Large public universities and land grant universities such as the University of Colorado have larger endowments and state revenue to support students and provide financial assistance. DU on the other hand relies on tuition and fees to cover 70% of the University operations cost. DU’s revenue was $843 million in 2023 while income from tuition and fees was $594 million with overall expenses of $772 million. These ratios have remained relatively stable for DU while many public university systems have overbuilt – particularly in the Northeast and Midwest.

COVID relief funds buoyed many Universities but that money is now gone. Added to all this is declining public trust in higher education. A recent snafu with the Federal Student Loan Program (FAFSA) hit DU this year, reducing the incoming freshman class by 25%. Hopefully, this represents a one-time event but, perhaps, it is a harbinger of things to come. No doubt, DU administrators will be sharpening their pencils and deciding what offers are core to their educational mission and what is not this upcoming school year. The result? Some of the administrative, academic and ancillary activities may become a thing of the past.

An article by Forbes suggests that winners and losers will emerge from this transition as fewer and fewer students attend college. Colleges will be pushed to transform their operating models to accommodate changing demand, new demographics and societal needs. Colleges and universities that are ill-prepared are likely to fall by the wayside.

Secondary public universities will be challenged as well – especially in rural areas and secondary state-supported universities. According to Forbes, “Small private colleges will continue to be vulnerable with the exception of a small number of wealthy schools  (those having larger endowments) that are highly reputable and, generally, among the most competitive for admission.” This explains Denver’s recent billion-dollar campaign ‘The Denver Difference’ to bolster the University’s war chest. However, an ongoing concern for the DU Board of Turstees has to be the recent slippage in the University US News & World Report College Rankings where Denver has fallen to #124.

All this while Americans’ confidence in higher education fell to 36% in 2023 — much lower than in 2015 (57%) and 2018 (48%), per Gallup polling.

Another Forbes article cites political headwinds as Universities get caught up in political turmoil, outside their educational mission, which has alienated stakeholders, alumni, staff, and students alike. There is no better example of this than the Israel-Palestine conflict on the DU campus earlier this year. Forbes suggests universities recommit to their core mission, reprioritization and commitment to faculty & staff, demonstrate clear (unambiguous) leadership, build community partnerships and foster civil discourse. The fifth point, civil discourse, is an area DU hopes to navigate with The Denver Difference introduction on campus.

Some schools are trying to combat the “enrollment cliff” by recruiting nontraditional students — adults with jobs and families, for instance. Another opportunity may be attracting more male students, a group that has dropped to 40% of the student population at many universities. Other colleges are beefing up their “distance learning” options along with work-study credits. Finally, many universities are looking at ways to create a ‘value proposition’ that aligns students’ skills more closely with the outside work world.

Despite the obvious headwinds, the University of Denver is positioned to survive the upcoming turmoil but it will require adaptability and effort to create an attractive value proposition for a dwindling number of college candidates. However, it will not be easy or without difficult decisions.