University enrollment is declining nationally. Texas campuses are seeing the opposite.

Photos: The top paid college leaders in Texas

Texas is bucking a national trend towards lower college enrollment.

Keep going for a look at the highest paid people leading Texas universities. Photos: The top paid college leaders in Texas

Texas is bucking a national trend towards lower college enrollment.

Keep going for a look at the highest paid people leading Texas universities. Photo: Steve Gonzales, Houston Chronicle Photo: Steve Gonzales, Houston Chronicle Image 1 of / 41 Caption Close University enrollment is declining nationally. Texas campuses are seeing the opposite. 1 / 41 Back to Gallery

New data from the National Student Clearinghouse shows that Texas universities are bucking a national enrollment slump, enrolling 1.7 percent more students year over year as universities nationwide saw a 1.5-percent decline in student enrollment.

The changes in part follow demographic shifts nationally and in the Southwest reported by the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, a regional nonprofit that released an in-depth study in December.

Changes in the national birth rate mean that the number of high school graduates will not grow through the early 2020s, causing universities nationwide to feel an enrollment pinch -- with fewer high school graduates, there's a smaller pool from which to recruit. By 2020, there will be about 3,000 fewer public high school graduates than there were in 2013, according to that group.

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But in that time period, the number of public high school graduates in Texas is projected to grow by several percentage points per year, amounting to a 22.6 percent growth between the 2011-12 academic year and 2024-25, the commission found. In the next decade, the Lone Star State will gain 2 percentage points in the share of high school graduates nationally – at the expense of California, which will drop by one percent.

Universities across the country may be envious.

Jon Marcus at the Hechinger Report chronicles a frantic effort to enroll new students at Ohio Wesleyan University, a small liberal arts college in Ohio:

“More money has been put into financial aid, the process of transferring to the college is being streamlined, and the ink is still wet on contracts with Carnegie-Mellon University and a medical school to speed Ohio Wesleyan students more quickly to graduate degrees. The number of internships is being expanded, along with short-term study-abroad opportunities. The university is considering freezing, lowering or slowing the rate of increase of its tuition and fees, which are now $44,690.

All of these changes are a response to a crisis few outside higher education even know exists: a sharp drop in the number of customers bound for small private, nonprofit colleges like this in particular, and also some public universities and other higher-education institutions.”

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He notes that the gains in graduates that are projected to come will be in students who are the first in their family to go to college and ethnic minorities – which historically need much more institutional support to graduate and have been underrepresented at many institutions.

The National Student Clearinghouse reported that Texas institutions enrolled 1.39 million students last spring, up from 1.37 million in spring 2016. New Hampshire was the only other state with enrollment growth above 20,000 students, the group reported.

Meanwhile, Michigan, New York and California universities lost between 18,000 and 20,000 students each, seeing the largest drops in the country.

The gains in Texas come as universities and colleges around Houston have set lofty enrollment goals, as enrolling more students leads to more tuition revenue and state funding from an enrollment-based formula.

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"The Houston area is one of the most dynamic areas of the country in terms of growth overall -- I can't help but believe that's entering in," said Peter Bryant, an enrollment manager at Ruffalo Noel Levitz, in an interview last fall on Lone Star College's enrollment growth.

(He wasn't available for an interview on Monday but said in an email that broader trends had not changed since our conversation in the fall.)

The most successful institutions that manage enrollment, he said at the time, understand the market segments and look ahead several years down the road.

Nearly 8,600 students enrolled at Texas Southern University this semester – a 5.75-percent increase from last spring’s enrollment. Partly driving the increase was a 47-percent increase in new students transferring from community colleges.

Austin Lane, TSU’s new president, said in the fall that better relationships with local community colleges would play a pivotal role in growing enrollment, which had declined since 2012. His goal is to expand enrollment to 15,000 students by 2020.

UH-Downtown is three years into an ambitious strategic plan that also focuses on enrollment growth – up from 14,251 last year to 18,000 by 2020.