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Show Utah Foundation Completes Study On Population, Educational Trends Although enrollments in Utah's public elementary and secondary schools are expected to rise only moderately during the next decade de-cade and a half, enrollments in Utah's public colleges will soar during this same period. This was the conclusion reached reach-ed by Utah Foundation, the private pri-vate governmental research agency in an analysis of population popula-tion patterns and educational trends in Utah. . -- - i - The Foundation report points jut that reductions in Utah's birth rate during recent years is beginning to have a moderating ween now and 1980 if present trends continue. The Foundation Founda-tion study estimated that enrollments enroll-ments at Utah's public colleges will rise from 30,740 in 19(55 to a projected 57,700 in 1980 if existing exist-ing patterns and trends continue. Important factors in this expected ex-pected growth in public college enrollments over the next decade and a half are - - - I. The flood of babies born in the ye'i's immediately" iullawlnu World War II has passed through the elementary and secondary schools and is now beginning to reach the college level. effect on public school enrollments. enroll-ments. The study estimates that elementary and secondary enrollment en-rollment growth in Utah will be only about 5Vi between now and 1980. This compares with an increase of 75 during the past fourteen years. Enrollments in Utah's public colleges, on the other hand, are expected to nearly double bet- 2. An increasing proportion of high schools graduates are seeking seek-ing college admission. 3. Utah is attracting a rising proportion of out-of-state stu-1 dents. ! 4. Brigham Young University, the major private college in Utah has announced that it is placing a ceiling on future enrollments, which fact will add an added burden on the public institutions. Utah Foundation analysts point out that much of the population pop-ulation rise in Utah during the i past twenty-five years has been I in pre-productive (under 18) and the post-productive (65 and over) age brackets. The effect of these population shifts has been that the demand for public services (especially education) has been increasing, while the relative number of potential taxpayers in the generally productive, tax-producing tax-producing age brackets has been declining. As a result, government govern-ment costs have been rising and the tax burden has increased sharply. This in turn has complicated com-plicated Utah's efforts at industrial indus-trial development. The study also observes that not only has there been a sharp rise in state and local spending during the past quarter of a century, cen-tury, but that there also has been a decided shift in the purpose of such spending. In 1942 public education expenditures accounted account-ed for 34.2'r of all state and ! local spending in Utah. By 1965 the percentage going for public education had risen to 48.3. Public welfare spending, on the other hand, which was equal to 20.4',c of all Utah state and local I expenditures in 1942 had declined declin-ed to 6.2' i in 1965. An important impor-tant fact in this decline, according accord-ing to the Foundation study, ' , was the shifting of state welfare costs to Federal Social Security programs. |