What Are You Doing to Survive the Enrollment Cliff?

Years after the publication of Nathan Grawe’s 2017 book Demographics and the Demand for Higher Education, there is still extensive discussion about how to best approach the impending enrollment cliff. Writing in The CPA Journal, Copley and Douthett (2020) cite research indicating that the college-age population will decrease by 15 percent between 2025 and 2029 as a result of the recession-related dip in the birthrate some 17 years earlier. Some types of institutions and some regions of the US will be hit harder hit than others. Institutions that have built a fiscal strategy on the assumption of steadily increasing enrollments will have a serious wake-up call.