A coming slump in high school graduates will not hurt Hopkins future classes but will rather improve them with an increase in minority students, according to administrators.
According to a recent study, the 2007-2008 school year will mark a peak in the number of high school graduates, which has grown rapidly to the expected 3.3 million peak since the early 1990s. But by 2022, half of the high school graduates will belong to a minority group.
"The grand sense of character of the student body becoming broader because of a change in vibrancy is the kind of diversity we want to happen," Dean of Admissions John Latting said.
Last week, the University announced a $5-million initiative to diversify Hopkins's faculty with more minority professors.
Latting said that the admissions office's applicant pool is certainly a snapshot of what is occurring nationally.
He also believes that these demographic changes are ethnically and geographically benefiting Hopkins, because he believes "it's good to not be quite so regionally based in where we get our applicants."
Although Hopkins classes will begin to include more minorities, it is unlikely that they will diversify entirely. Pamela Bennett, professor of sociology, noted some complications in the idea that high school populations and students applying to college will become "a majority of minorities." While highlighting growing "diversity" in the country is useful, the term draws attention away from two important facts.
One, it disregards the racial identity of Latinos, almost half of whom (47.9 percent) identified as "white" in the 2000 Census. Secondly, the largest racial-ethnic group projected to graduate from high school and seek college admission will remain non-Hispanic whites.
"According to the projections for the 2021-22 school year, non-Hispanic whites will comprise over half of the public high school student population, a figure that does not include students from private schools and those who are home schooled, which the authors rightly note are overwhelmingly white," Bennett said.
Annie Finnigan, public relations representative at the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE), the group that conducted the study, explained the study gives "state planners an idea of what's coming up."
"What's done with the data is up to the policy makers," she said.
According to Finnigan, it is not the numbers but the face of the graduating class that matters.
According to Bennett this expected growth of minorities in U.S. high schools, and the implications this growth has on the kinds of students who will be applying to college, are the WICHE report's most important findings.
"The implication, here, is that, in the future, colleges will evaluate a multiracial, multi-ethnic pool of applicants to a greater degree than they have in the past," she said.
The report describes primarily a growth in Asian and Hispanic student populations, with very little growth, and, in some cases, projected decline, in the black student population.
"In a sense, this population shift is completely consistent with the waves of immigration," Latting said.
In the past, increases in the black high-school population were accompanied by growths in the numbers of black students applying to college. Bennett believes it is prudent, therefore, to anticipate increases in the number of Asians and Latinos who will seek college admission.
