That’s the prediction in a story in the Philadelphia Inquirer. Why? Demographics: “Fueling the current college admissions frenzy are the ‘baby boomletters’ born in the late 1980s and early 1990s. By 2009, the last of them will reach college age, heralding the first sustained decline in the number of graduating high-school students in nearly two decades.” I have no reason to doubt the numbers. It will probably be even worse as more people figure out that many of the academically “disengaged” students who now leave high school gain very little from college coursework that doesn’t require them to develop their intellectual abilities.