The academic quads, dining halls and residence halls of the nation’s colleges and universities are about to get a new look.

The composition of the nation’s applicant pool and institutions of higher education are on the brink of drastic change, according to a recent study by the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE), a 15-state research coalition which examined U.S. birthrates and educational enrollment.

The total number of high school graduates is expected to peak this year at 3.34 million students nationwide. After this year, numbers will steadily decline until 2015. The study projected that in the Northeast, where Ithaca College derives most of its applicant pool, the class of 2015 will be more than 10 percent smaller than that of 2009.

“We’re entering a new period of time after a decade and a half of steady and large increases in the number of high school graduates that were being produced all over the country, and in every state and region,” said Brian Prescott, senior research analyst at WICHE.

Prescott said this decrease in the number of graduates was the result of a decrease in births in the early 1990s and a resulting decline in educational enrollment. The Northeast has steadily been losing almost two percent of its total population each year since 2000.

With losses in its traditional Northeastern white demographic, Ithaca College will be forced to target other applicant pools and regions of the country.

“It’s essentially a four-year residential institution for, by and large, white students,” Prescott said. “The pipeline for that group of students is drying up, particularly in the Northeast.”

As of Fall 2007, minority students made up nearly 11 percent of the College’s undergraduate students.  In 2003, these students made up only 8 percent of the college’s total enrollment.

This four-year jump is largely the result of steady increases in the enrollment of Hispanic students by roughly 10 percent because of greater influxes in Hispanic immigrants. The study also stated that Asian enrollment will increase by more than 20 percent.

In response to the predictions of WICHE and other research organizations, Larry Metzger, dean of enrollment planning, said the college is looking to rework how it attracts and retains applicants.

Metzger said President Peggy R. Williams has formed a committee dedicated to examining the college’s options as fewer students graduate from high school. The college is moving toward a more student-driven recruitment process using Internet programs such as IC Peers, he said.

“We continue to work on developing processes that enable us to personalize our relationship with students,” Metzger said. “One of the major transitions that we’ve done in the past few years is to get out of the way and let the current students tell the story.”

Junior Cornell Woodson, founder of the Unity Council, a support group and panel of clubs and organizations on campus, said he is delighted with how enrollment and applicant numbers are expected to affect the campus’ look.

“I would not have expected to hear this especially because the media always gives a very negative connotation to how things are,” he said. “To hear this is a great encouragement because I have siblings that I hope to see go to college and move outside of the urban environment, for example.”

Metzger said he feels the school will diversify because applications from minorities were at a record high this year, peaking at 2,108 applications. For the 2006–07 school year, there were 1,856 applications from minority students.

“We’re fortunate to see how the numbers are playing out for us,” he said. “The next number of years will provide some change in the right direction, as far as diversity is concerned.”

Prescott said colleges and universities such as Ithaca College will see noticeable changes in minority and regionally diverse enrollment in their applicant pools.

He said this increase comes as no surprise, and the college should anticipate some increases in the Hispanic population, which has steadily grown in Southwestern states such as Texas, Arizona and New Mexico.

“Virtually all states will experience … dramatic increases in Hispanic students and graduates,” he said. “The larger number of Hispanic students is concentrated in the Southwest, but in a state like Ohio for example, which hasn’t seen that many Hispanics, their growth rates are going to be phenomenal.”

Metzger said while minority applications will increase, numbers from other geographic areas are harder to predict and resistant to drastic change in private schools of the Northeast.

“Not all prospects are equal,” he said. “We know that there are certain profiles of students who are willing to travel the distance for college.”

Woodson said as the campus gains a more diverse student body, the Unity Council and other student groups will have an important role to play in bringing these newly expanded minority and regional groups together.

“We need to empower students, to support them and to be there for them not just academically,” he said. “… We need to get them to stop walking around in these little hubs of [students who are like themselves].”

John Rawlins, assistant director of the Office of Multicultural Affairs, said the changes predicted in WICHE’s study are likely to put diversity at the forefront of the minds of administrators, faculty and students.

“We’ve made some great strides in terms of all types of diversity. … It seems like a call to be very cognizant in the future with what we do around how we recruit students, where we recruit them from,” he said. “It’s going to remind us to make ourselves accessible.”

Prescott said this decrease in graduating students is likely to create more competition among institutions of higher learning to get the students they want. Colleges such as Ithaca need not focus on these qualified Northeastern, middle-class students, but on students from other areas and backgrounds, he said.

“We’re not going to get any movement in diversity by focusing in on the top performing students who can essentially get an education wherever they want,” he said. “It should focus on students whose attendance and success has historically been marginal at best because increasingly our workforce is demanding a high education attainment level.”

Metzger acknowledged that colleges like Ithaca will feel the effects of these predictions but said he is confident in how the college will benefit.

“In the educational environment it is important to have diverse opinions and perspectives, and this is the point at which you should be tested or exposed to differences that you may not have had before as a student,” Metzger said.