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Where are we going and is that where we want to go?

Rare public discussion of that question hit the news recently. “Starting next year, the number of high school graduates will begin to fall in Mississippi,” began the story in Mississippi Today. “In Mississippi, this trend, called the ‘enrollment cliff,’ will force the largely tuition-dependent colleges and universities to compete for a shrinking pool of students.”

Low birth rate and population decline trends have long term consequences.

IHL Commissioner Al Rankins told legislators that universities have been “talking about the enrollment cliff for years” with a working group focused on regional universities. Kell Smith, the director of the Mississippi Community College Board, said his board does not have a strategic plan for the enrollment cliff but some of the individual community colleges might.

“Very simply – how can we fix the problem to prepare for 15 years from now?” asked Rep. Donnie Scoggin, chairman of the House Universities and Colleges Committee.

“When can we expect a report to detail those recommendations and strategies for the future,” Sen. Scott DeLano, vice chair of the Senate Universities and Colleges Committee, asked Rankins.

Do you see the paradox?

The questions should be the other way around. Universities and colleges do not have the means or mission to address those trends so should be asking legislators, “what is the state’s plan to address our low birth rate and population decline trends?”

Of course, these are not the only long-term trends impacting Mississippi – rural to urban migration with its associated brain drain and aging population effects, retail trade migration from brick and mortar to online with at-home delivery, automation in manufacturing and agriculture, growing dependence upon digital technology and related infrastructure, climate and epidemic trends, global supply chain changes and growing costs, and so on.

So what is the state’s plan to cope with such trends?

Well, we don’t really have one. Our last real try at one was adopted in 2004 by the Bureau of Long Range Economic Development Planning. It mirrored the 2003 Blueprint Mississippi plan developed by a public private partnership led by the Mississippi Economic Council and chaired by Dr. Robert Khayat. (Blueprint was updated in 2011).

But even Blueprint, which acknowledged an aging population and brain drain, did not suggest state plans to counter or cope with most of these trends. And, of course, state leaders ignored key elements that were proposed, e.g. “promote health care as an economic driver.”

As a result, universities and colleges along with other agencies, communities, and businesses must go where the trends take them whether they want to go there or not.

Bill Crawford is a syndicated columnist from Jackson.