1. Data & Implications for the Northeast Region
Good afternoon and welcome to the Knocking at the College Door Regional Webinar about Data & Implications for the Northeast Region.
My name is Peace Bransberger at the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education and co-author of Knocking at the College Door. I am your moderator today and I am joined by several respondents who will provide thoughts about the high school graduates trends for their state, higher education enrollment and access, state workforce, and state and institutional decision-making.
Before we get started, WICHE would like to thank ACT and the College Board for their generous financial support of Knocking at the College Door. Without their partnership and collaboration, these projections would not be possible. I would also like to thank the New England Board of Higher Education for collaborating on this webinar.
AT THE COLLEGE DOOR
Tuesday, March 7, 2017
#Knocking2016

2. Logistics Your Participation
Open and close your control panel using the arrow in the orange box.
Choose Mic & Speakers or Telephone (Note: All attendees will be muted.)
Submit questions and feedback in the Questions panel.
Your Participation
[SLIDE 2] First, a little housekeeping information.
All attendees will be muted; however you should be able to hear at this point. You can click on the small orange box on the right side of your screen to access the “Audio” tab on the control panel to connect via your computer speakers or to access dial-in information.
Since all attendees are muted, if you have a question or feedback, please enter it in the “Question” box, in the panel on the right of your screen. We will monitor and respond to incoming messages throughout, and address some questions during the Q&A portion. You may download the presentation slides, copies of the Knocking report and a packet of profiles for the Northeast from the Handouts portion of the control panel.
We are recording this webinar and you will receive a followup with a link to the recording after the webinar. Lastly, you’ll be directed to a brief evaluation of the webinar when you leave the event. We rely on your feedback to help us develop useful resources, so we appreciate you taking the time to complete the short evaluation.

3. Agenda High School Graduate Trends Implications Q & A
Peace Bransberger, Senior Research Analyst, WICHE
Implications
Ross Gittell
Chancellor, New Hampshire Community College
System
Nyal Fuentes
College and Career Readiness,
Mass. Dept. of Elementary and Secondary Education
Peter Francese
Demographics and Consumer Markets Consultant, Francese.com
Q & A
[SLIDE 3] I will present the high school graduate trends as the first part of the webinar. Then we will hear from our panelists from the Massachusetts Department of Education, New Hampshire Community College System and an experienced demographics and consumer markets expert.

4. Knocking at the College Door: Projections of High School Graduates
Public and Private High School Graduates
Public by Race/Ethnicity
Nation, Four Regions, 50 States, DC, and Guam & Puerto Rico (new)
[SLIDE 4]
I should preface my presentation about the trends, with a few technical details.
We use what is called a cohort-survival ratio method to generate the projections. We gather the most recently available data from the federal Common Core of Data for public school students, which are 90% of the total, and from the Private School Survey for private religious and nonsectarian school students. For this edition, school year was the most recent data for the most part, with some variation across public and private schools. We use the student data to compute ratios, which show the quantitative patterns of progression from grade-to-grade and onto graduation. We use the five most recent years’ patterns to project the number of students and eventually graduates, in the future years. If we used just student data, we could only project about a decade out. So, we add in data about births in recent years to project out further, about 18 years.
Over the years, the number of U.S.-born kids – and how they fare getting through school – has been the primary determinant of the high school graduate trends. We don’t explicitly model or quantify the many factors that influence how students progress through school, such as being retained in a grade or promoted early, moving between schools, locales or states, policy changes, or economic or other environmental factors. These sorts of things are implicit in the enrollment and graduate counts and progression ratios. We also can’t know exactly the amount that immigration adds to high school graduate numbers – but, our analysis indicates it was notable in prior years of high immigration and has reduced recently with declines in immigration.
We summarize important details about the underlying data and the methodology in Appendix C of the report. On the whole, our analysis indicates that any data or methodology nuances have only marginal effects on the trends, if any. Please do enter any specific data or methodology questions in the Questions box.

5. U.S. High School Graduates
So, let’s begin with the national trends for high school graduates.
The big national headlines are that despite the recent improvements in the official high school graduation rate, the sheer number of youth is moderating. This leads to a slowdown and even declines in the number of high school graduates – in large part as a result of long-predicted decreases in the number of White youth which outpace even the substantial increases among non-White student populations.
The overall number will plateau for most of the next decade
The racial/ethnic mix of high school graduates will continue to shift significantly toward a more diverse population
Private high school graduates continue to decline in number and share

6. U.S. High School Graduates
Overall Trend & Composition
(Projections)
Compared to SY
(Thousands)
3.44M
3.56M ('25)
3.30M
640 Hispanic
184 Asian/Pac. Isl.
32 Am. Ind./Alaska Native
474 Black
298 Private Schools
1,839 White
White
Hispanic
These two charts illustrate the projected national trends. The chart on the left shows the populations of public school graduates by race/ethnicity, plus graduates of private schools, from the first projected year to the last. The top black line shows the total and counts at several points in time over these 18 years. The line chart on the right indicates the year-over-year increase, or decrease, in each population of graduates over those years, compared to their numbers from the last confirmed school year,
In total -- after almost two decades of steady growth in the number of high school graduates averaging about 2% annually, the nation reached a high of about 3.44 million grads around Between now and about 2025, there is virtually no increase projected, except for a few years of small increase around 2025, when the nation will produce between 3.5 and 3.6 million high school graduates. After 2025, the number of high school graduates nationally is projected to decrease steadily, to about 3.3 million – or, about 7 percent fewer by the early 2030s. These decreases in the outer years arise from long-predicted contraction of the White youth population, and are compounded by dramatic birth declines for all populations during and after the great recession -- in other words, a recent “baby bust” over the last 7 to 8 years.
White public school graduates are projected to decrease by 17 percent by the early 2030s, about a quarter million fewer graduates than in Barely a decade and a half ago, around 2000, Whites represented 70 percent of all high school graduates. They are projected to be 52 percent of public school graduates by the end of the projections. Unforeseen increases in the number of non-White high school graduates could tip the balance to majority-minority within the span of these projections.
Hispanic high school graduates are the primary growth population, increasing almost 50 percent by 2025, from 640 thousand in 2013 to almost 900 thousand. During the growth years, the additional number of Hispanic graduates more than offsets the declines of White graduates. But then even Hispanic graduates are projected to decrease in number between 2025 and the early 2030s, as a result of the recent birth declines, which were greatest among Hispanics.
Asian/Pacific Islander graduates are the only population projected to increase throughout, but they are only about 5 to 7% of the total number of graduates nationally, so their numbers don’t shift the overall trend of decline.
Black high school graduates are about 15 percent of the national total and they will be relatively steady in number throughout the projections.
The numbers for American Indian/Alaska Native students nationally are very small compared to other students populations, but overall there is a decline.
High school graduates from private religious and independent schools are projected to decrease by about 26 percent, about 80,000 graduates, in reflection of their largely White student demographic, but also due to significant contraction among religious schools over the last decade or so.
We couldn’t produce separate counts for Hawaiian/Pacific Islander graduates or two or more races graduates, because of data limitations. But the available data indicated that Hawaiian/Pacific Islander graduates are about 7 percent of the combined Asian total in recent years, about 10,000 high school graduates. Graduates of multiple races have represented between 1 to 3 percent of non-Hispanic public high school graduates in recent years.
Black
Asian/Pacific Islander
Private schools

7. Significant Regional Variation
The national projections mask significant variation by region and among the states.

8. Significant Regional Variation
Total Public and Private High School Graduates
Here we see those regional differences. The number shown for each region is the region’s high point in the number of high school graduates.
The South is the engine of growth for high school graduates. By 2025, it will generate about 10 percent more graduates than in 2013 and is primarily responsible for the growth predicted for the nation around About 45 percent of the nation’s graduates will be from the South region by 2030.
The West overtook the Midwest region in terms of numbers of high school graduates produced, by 2010, and now produces about 30 percent of the nation’s high school graduates. The West region has long been the most diverse region. Perhaps the most surprising for the West is the rapid contraction in high school graduates that is projected after 2025, which arise from dramatic declines in the number of Hispanic graduates.
The Northeast and Midwest reached their high points for high school graduates in school year The number of graduates from these regions have already begun decreasing and will continue to decline throughout the projected years. I should mention that our definition of the Northeast includes the New England states, but also Pennsylvania, New York and Jersey, which could be considered Mid-Atlantic for some purposes.

9. The Northeast
Now we’ll look at the trends for the Northeast region and states.
The Northeast has generated about 640 thousand total graduates annually in recent past years [showing back to ]. It is not projected to reach that number again. Despite some year-by-year variation, the number of high school graduates from the Northeast will decrease 5 percent to about 607 thousand on average through Graduating classes in the early 2030s will be about 12 percent smaller in number than the highs around 2010, with about 563 thousand graduates on average.

10. Northeast Region High School Graduates
Overall Trend & Composition
(Projections)
Compared to SY
(Thousands)
630K
562K
121k
+59%
111k
+46%
White
76k Hispanic
White
White
Hispanic
356k White
Hispanic
Hispanic
Black
Black
On the left you see the projected relative composition of the Northeast’s high school graduating classes by race/ethnicity. The line chart on the right shows the relative increases or decreases in the number from each population—in the thousands.
Hispanic high school graduates from the Northeast states increase by almost 60% by their high point around 2025, from about 76 thousand to 121 thousand – and then the number contracts somewhat in relation to the recent “baby bust”. The number of Asian/Pacific Islander high school graduates will also increase about 40%, from 37 thousand to between 50 and 55 thousand after But these increases are not enough to offset the absolute sheer declines of White graduates, which are projected to decline year-over-year virtually without pause -- from a little over 350 thousand to just about 270 thousand between 2013 and the early 2030s—a decrease of about 25 percent over these almost 15 years.
The Black student population is relatively stable at 70 to 75 thousand graduates per year through 2025, until they also decrease in number in the outer years in relation to the recent “baby bust”. There are between 15 hundred to 2 thousand American Indian graduates in most years. For class of 2013, non-White graduates were about 34% of total public school graduates; they will be about 46% of the total by the early 2030s.
Private high school graduates were recently about 13 percent of all graduates in the Northeast. Their numbers will decrease about 25 percent, from around 85 thousand in 2012 to 60 thousand by the early 2030s.
Asian/Pacific Islander
305k
-16%
Asian/Pacific Islander
Black
271k
-26%
Private schools
Asian/Pacific Islander
Private schools
Private schools

11. Private School Enrollment Declines
Private high schools in the Northeast produce almost 30% of the nation’s private high school graduates. For that reason, I’ll spend a minute behind-the-scenes showing the reason for the declines in Northeast private high school grads. This view of school enrollments explains why there is such a dramatic decline underway for private high school graduates overall – but not necessarily with all types of private schools.
Catholic schools accounted for 60% of all private school enrollments in school year , and their enrollment declines through school year are the primary predictor of reduced numbers of private school graduates over the next 15 years. Catholic school enrollments are shown by elementary, middle and high school grade level enrollments in the left chart, making clear the 47 percent decrease in elementary enrollments over these years -- and 35% decrease in total enrollments. The tall chart on the left shows total private high school enrollments by grade level, at several points between SY to SY
The smaller charts on the right side depict the same information for other religious and private nonsectarian schools -- at about the same relative scale (400 thousand in each chart compared to 800 thousand in the Catholics chart). Other religious and nonsectarian private schools in the Northeast have fared much better over the period, and are in fact gaining students in recent years.
NCES Private School Survey, Northeast state enrollments by school typology.

12. High School Graduates by State
% Change from Class of 2015
Class of 2025
Class of 2032
New York 2%
-5%
Pennsylvania 0%
Massachusetts -1%
-10%
New Jersey -3%
-14%
Rhode Island -7%
-20%
Vermont -8%
Maine -9%
-18%
Connecticut -10%
-21%
New Hampshire -11%
-23%
Finally, I’ll give a quick look at each of the states in the Northeast. Did you know?--on the website, you can browse each state’s trends in our online State Profile Dashboards. Copy the link that you will see in the Question/Chat box -- [DEMI] -- and take a look. Use the Question box to send us feedback or questions about what you see.
This table shows the states’ relative trends with graduates over the next 10 to 15 years. The states that contribute the greatest numbers of graduates towards the Northeast region’s total are basically stable out to 2025 and beyond. Whereas the remaining states’ high school graduating classes are already contracting in size and decline pretty dramatically by the early 2030s.
Revised Slight differences from slide 12 in recorded webinar.

13. High School Graduates by State
New York
206K / year on average
Virtually no change to then 6% by
Non-White 12% to 57% of Public Total
Pennsylvania
137,200 on average, 3% by ‘32
Non-White  3% to 25% of Total
New Jersey
100,500 on average, 16% by ‘32
Non-White  13% to 56% of Total
Massachusetts
72,000 on average, 12% by ‘ Non-White  17% to 44% of Total
The states here are ordered by greatest to least number of graduates. You see New York at the top, used to demonstrate the bullet points that are shown with each states’ chart – 1, which is the average number of graduates projected per year from Class of 2014 to Class of And, 2, how much non-white graduates will increase as a percent of all graduates. New York ranks as the third-highest producing state in terms of number of high school graduates, and contributes about a third of the region’s total. It is projected to have a relatively stable output throughout the projections series, then declines slightly in the outer years related to the baby bust. On the other hand, it also exemplifies the trend of diversification. Already about 45% of public school graduates are non-White. This will increase to about 57% of the total over the next 15 years, as the White population decreases while the non-White population increases. Pennsylvania generates almost a quarter of the region’s graduates. It is projected to have relatively flat production of high school grads through 2025 but end with about 9 percent fewer graduates by There is strong growth of Hispanic and Asian graduates, but it is in relatively smaller numbers compared to the majority White population. New Jersey generates about 17 percent of the region’s total, and among these larger Northeast states, has the greatest declines. There will be about 16 percent fewer graduates from New Jersey by the early 2030s; but, it mirrors the rate of diversification in New York, with non-White graduates increasing from 43 percent of the public school total to 56 percent. The number of high school graduates from Massachusetts will decrease gradually out through the early 2030s, down 12 percent by 2032, driven by a 30 percent decrease in the number of White graduates. At the same time, the number of Hispanic and Asian graduates increase rapidly.

14. High School Graduates by State
Connecticut
38,500 on average, 26% by ‘32
Non-White  14% to 46% of Total
Maine
13,900 on average, 22% by ‘32
Non-White  12% to 19% of Total
New Hampshire
14,600 on average, 26% by ‘32
Non-White  6% to 14% of Total
Rhode Island
10,700 on average, 19% by ‘32
Non-White  16% to 46% of Total
Vermont
6,600 on average, 18% by ‘ Non-White  9% to 15% of Total
Here are the trends among the smaller Northeast states, each of which are projected to have 17% to 26% fewer graduates by And none of which are expected to exceed current numbers of graduates around 2025, when the nation and many other states see a brief new high. In most cases for these states, it is evident from the charts that the declines are largely a result of contraction in the number of White high school graduates—the blue portion. Connecticut and Rhode Island have substantial non-White populations, but even rapid increase in their numbers is not enough to offset much larger decreases of the White population. substantial number of non-White graduates. The other states here will also experience rapid increases in non-White graduates, but in relatively small numbers. (In Maine, we speculate that the robust increase of Black high school graduates you can see in the chart may include substantial increase from refugees from African nations.)

15. www.knocking.wiche.edu Report State Profiles Download Data
I will conclude my portion by pointing you to our website at where you obtain a variety of information, including the report, printable data dashboards, downloadable data, and prior webinars and presentations.
Before turning this over to our panelists, I am going to pause for a moment to issue a thought-provoking Poll question—and check for any questions in the queue. [DEMI] Our poll question is: “Which trend is most challenging for your work?” 1: Increasing number from "new" student populations, 2: Overall reduction of youth/graduates, or 3: Something else. Take a minute to answer that, and tell us if, and how, these trends have been showing up in your work, using the Questions box.
PAUSE FOR QUESTIONS, IF ANY

16. Implications Ross Gittell Nyal Fuentes Peter Francese Chancellor
New Hampshire Community College System
Nyal Fuentes
College and Career Readiness
Massachusetts Dept. of Elementary and Secondary Education
Peter Francese
Demographics and Consumer Markets Writer
Francese.com
We will now move onto our panelists. Panelists, if you could please check that your audio device is unmuted.
3:50 p.m. Panelist portion begin. The New England Board of Higher Education’s Associate Director of Policy & Research, Candace Williams, will say a few words about the trends.
5-7 minutes each panelist, across two responses
Now I will ask each of our panelists shown here to take two or three minutes to briefly describe your organization and role, and give us your primary impression about these trends.
Ross, I’ll turn to you first. (2-3 mins)
And Nyal, you are up next to briefly introduce yourself and give us your primary impression about the trends. (2-3 mins)
And Peter, could you introduce yourself and what you know of these trends. (2-3 mins)
Ross, I’ll turn it back to you. Would you give us a little more detail from the community college perspective?--particularly given your engagement with workforce development and skills development.
Nyal—I’d like to hear what you think about some of what Ross and Peter have raised. [Possibly -- community college role in first-generation attainment; programs such as TRIO to improve those options for first generation students; early college designation; focusing in geographically concentrated populations.]
Peter, I’ll give you the last word before we open for audience Q&A. Would you speak about the broader implications of college cost and affordability in terms of the Northeast states’ economic and population vitality?
[2:20 Mountain/ 4:20 Eastern STOP FOR AUDIENCE Q&A]

17. Questions Thank you! Peace Bransberger pbransberger@wiche.edu
[2:20 Mountain/ 4:20 Eastern STOP FOR AUDIENCE Q&A]
We will now open it up for your questions.
2:30 p.m. Mountain / 4:30 p.m. Eastern
We are out of time. I’d like to extend a big thank you to our panelists for taking the time to be with us today, and to all of you for attending and contributing such thoughtful questions. There will be a very brief evaluation as you exit the webinar, which we hope you will take the time to complete. If you submitted a question that we didn’t get to, we will you to follow up. I will leave the webinar open for about five minutes to receive any more questions through the question box. You will receive an notification when the recording is available, please share it with colleagues who were not able to attend today. Please feel free to us at You can sign up for notifications about the Knocking at the College Door projections including any additional reports we may produce or upcoming events at Have a great afternoon!