Another New Normal

Private education in general has been a declining market in the United States for the past several years. With adverse demography (read: fewer school-age children) in many, perhaps most, markets, schools are battling ever fiercer for the same students. the below graphic plotting private (both independent and parochial) enrollment from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) documents that the trend is nation-wide, despite a few markets to the contrary, and the forecast through 2025 is what is really interesting.What these data suggest is that after a period of slow decline, private school enrollment is plateauing at a "new normal", Around 1 million students below 2003-04 levels. This confirms something we have long suspected: that the pre-2003 years were something of a bubble for private schools, and that the period since has been a regression to the long-term mean.