Projecting Headcount and Credit Hour Enrollment by Age Group, Gender, and Degree Level

Political debate about how the changing age distribution of the population would affect higher education enrollments led presidents of Michigan's constitutionally autonomous state universities to sponsor "systemwide" enrollment projections based on calculations of the participation rates and credit hour loads of 66 student subgroups that were defined by age, gender, and degree level. The 1985 figures' were applied to cohort population projections in order to assess the impact of an aging population on the enrollments of 1990, 1995, and 2000. "Recession" and "recovery" regression models were then developed and used to explore the 1974-1985 relationship between enrollments and economic variables and to generate alternate projections.