Official Sees No ‘Tidal Wave’ of College Growth

Projections of a “tidal wave” of students in California colleges over the next several years are widely overstated, the state’s legislative analyst reported Thursday.

Even as the children of the baby boom generation move through their college-age years, the analyst found, growth at California’s colleges and universities will be “steady and moderate . . . and manageable.”

The 18-page report, “Higher Education Enrollments: Is a Tidal Wave Coming?” was written in response to alarming projections of student enrollment growth by the California Post-Secondary Education Commission and the state Department of Finance.

The co-chairmen of the state’s Citizens Commission on Higher Education also said recently that “California stands in front of a tidal wave of demand for new college enrollments but has no realistic long-term plan for meeting it.”

But Legislative Analyst Elizabeth Hill said the tidal wave metaphor is misplaced, and concluded that “from the perspective of accommodating growth, the state faces less of a challenge than in the past.”

If 1996 college-participation rates among Californians continue, the analyst projects, total enrollments in 2005 will be 2.1 million, or 4.8% above peak enrollments of 1991. Those figures, however, represent annual growth of only 0.3% from 1991 to 2005.

“Such growth, rather than of tidal wave proportions, would actually be dramatically lower than the 2.7% annual growth in enrollments . . . between 1970 and 1991” at community colleges, state universities and the University of California system, the report concluded.

Gov. Pete Wilson’s Finance Department has projected an enrollment growth 11% higher than the legislative analyst’s at community college, 16% higher for state universities and 7.4% higher at the UC system. But the report concluded that “none of the projections are sufficiently large to suggest” a tidal wave of new students.

The analysis of enrollments since 1970 found that while increasing numbers of 18-to 24-year-olds are attending college, the college participation rate for adults 25 and older is declining.

The report said the higher projections assume that college participation rates will increase significantly between 1996 and 2005. The analyst’s figures assume that 1996 rates will continue into the future.