Education

A historic decline in U.S. births signals more enrollment troubles

From The Chronicle: “Already bracing for an enrollment crash expected to hit in 2025, higher education got more bad news this week: The U.S. birth rate fell 4 percent in 2020, marking the lowest number of births since 1979 and the sixth consecutive year of declining birth rates, according to a report released this week by the National Center for Health Statistics. Once that ‘demographic cliff’ hits, the new data show, it won’t let up for more than a decade; babies born in 2020 won’t reach traditional college-going age until 2038. So enrollment managers who have already spent years stressing about declining birth rates and high-school graduation rates — some of the effects of which are already visible — should brace for the long haul…”

Read the full article from The Chronicle