Minnesota high school graduates to "bottom out" in 2015
New projections show that states in the Midwest will experience a drop in high school graduates through 2015. Minnesota will follow the same pattern, "bottoming out" at approximately the same time before beginning a gradual increase. It will take until 2022 for Minnesota's graduate numbers to return to the levels they are at today.
These projections come from the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE), which has been tracking high school graduate numbers for 30 years. The data also show that the Northeast is beginning to resemble the Midwest in terms of decreasing numbers of graduates.
Among five Midwestern states, only Iowa will show a gain in high school graduates by 2015. By 2022, Minnesota will have the region's only other gain in graduates, at 2 percent over 2015 levels. While Iowa's number of graduates will increase 6.7 percent by then, Minnesota's other neighbors will still be in a graduate deficit. Overall, the Midwest stands to have fewer grads in 2022, the final year of the commission's projections.
A decrease in Minnesota high school graduates has been expected for some time. New is the projected increase between 2015 and 2022. This increase will likely be made up of immigrants and students of color, especially those of Hispanic ethnicity, whose numbers are rapidly increasing. These groups have a history of lower levels of enrolling in college.
As high school graduates of color increase, Minnesota must ensure that more of them enroll in and complete postsecondary education. This is critical to our state if we hope to have an adequate and highly educated labor force.
Consistent with previous projections, the commission's data show the highest growth in high school graduates in the South and West.
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While WICHE data is projected to 2022, only 10 years are used in this analysis due to the unpredictable nature of migration trends over time.