Univesity transfer students are now sought out...

As stated in another post I was a transfer student to Morehouse College from the City Colleges of Chicago in the last decade. While I think this is good news for transfer students - especially since the Ivy League Princeton University had accepted 13 for the first time since 1980 - there is a reason for this:

Transfer students, who make up 38 percent of all students in higher education, have always helped a university’s revenue by replacing students who leave after the first or second year. But behind the new interest in courting them lies one stark reality: Undergraduate enrollment is declining and has been for six years, according to the National Student Clearinghouse, a nonprofit education research organization.

That is because of a demographic shift as the number of high school graduates is projected to decline over the next decade, particularly in the Midwest and Northeast. In addition, when the economy improves, the job market becomes more attractive to some high school graduates than college.

As if that weren’t enough, fewer international students are enrolling in American colleges, after years of intensive growth, partly because of the nation’s more restrictive views on immigration and partly because English-speaking countries such as Canada and Australia are luring away such students.

Transfer students can offer the racial, ethnic and socioeconomic diversity schools are seeking. Of the 13 Princeton accepted — 10 of whom are enrolling in the fall — eight served or are currently serving in active duty in the military and eight, as the university put it in its news release, “self-identified as people of color.”

So this is as much about keeping enrollment at a university at a decent level in addition to looking into diversity. Not only racial diversity, though certainly for diversity of backgrounds such as military.

I must say, I wish the economy had been much better when I graduated from high school. Indeed I wish I had been more of a figure it out as I go about not just jobs, but as far as finding a job. Better yet sometimes I wish the schools had been a lot better with getting students ready for the real world college or not.

Of course there is more to it than that so read the whole thing.