Student enrollment at public colleges and universities is expected to increase 17 percent by the year 2014, according to a recent report by the National Center for Education Statistics.
The report, which was made available online Sept. 9 and will be available in print form Oct. 12, has been issued almost every year since 1964, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
Taking the overall 17 percent boost into consideration, the report projects that by the year 2014, 6,534,000 full-time students will be enrolled in all four-year public institutions. Currently, it is reported that 5,766,000 students are enrolled full- time.
This growth in college attendance will be fueled by an expected 10 percent increase in the total number of U.S. high school graduates, according to the report. Specifically, the report predicted that the number of public high school graduates in the Commonwealth will increase 18 percent between the 2001-02 and 2013-14 school years.
Commonwealth colleges and universities are expected to see these increases in their enrollment over the next several years, said Colette Sheehy, University vice president for management and budget. Sheehy said the Commonwealth continually prepares for increases in student body sizes as the State Council of Higher Education in Virginia forms enrollment projections with six-year time horizons and updates them every two years.
Those predicted numbers are then compared with demand projections, Sheehy said, which forecast how many students will want to attend Virginia institutions. Finally, the Commonwealth's public institutions are required to submit targets for the number of students they believe they will be able to accommodate.
Sheehy said at the time of the most recent update, the Council found that the public institutions were willing and able to take as many students as were projected to attend. In fact, Sheehy added that by the year 2012, there could potentially be excess capacity in the Commonwealth.
"The Board of Visitors has authorized a total enrollment increase for undergraduate, graduate and professional students at U.Va. of 1,500 over the next ten years," Chief Operating Officer Leonard Sandridge said. He added that the University's long range plans are based on these projections.
As far as supporting student growth financially, Sheehy said tuition will help, but the main question will be the level of support the Commonwealth is able to provide, and that depends on the financial position of the Commonwealth at that time.
The Commonwealth is "not in too bad of a financial position right now, but we have the experience where every ten years we have a recession, and that usually hits higher [education] pretty hard," Sheehy said. "If that hits within the next decade, there would be issues we'd have to deal with, but that's what we do. It wouldn't be anything new that we have not handled before."
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