The seniors who started classes in Minnesota high schools this week are part of the biggest graduating class this state will ever produce: 67,286 in 2026. That is the peak. Every projection after it points down — to 58,295 by 2041, a 13.4 percent decline — with most of the drop landing between 2035 and 2041.
This is not a forecast that can be wrong in the usual way. Those children are already born. You can count them.
Minnesota's colleges, its employers, and its legislature are about to spend fifteen years competing for a shrinking pool of eighteen-year-olds, and almost nothing in the current debate is organized around that fact.
We are already losing the ones we have
Of Minnesota residents starting college for the first time, 14,676 of 40,172 — about 37 percent — enrolled outside the state, per federal enrollment data. Minnesota has the sixth-largest net outflow of students in the country, about 7,393 more leaving than arriving.
A note on numbers, because this series doesn't paper over conflicts: the State Demographic Center, using Minnesota's own student-tracking data, put the out-of-state share at 31 percent for 2022 high school graduates who enrolled in college that fall. The federal figure is 37 percent of resident first-time undergraduates. Different denominators, same direction. I've used both elsewhere in this series and I'm flagging the difference rather than quietly picking the bigger one.
Either way: roughly a third of the students we raised and educated for thirteen years enroll somewhere else, mostly across a border, often at a tuition-reciprocity discount we ourselves negotiated.
Meanwhile, the price went up and the state's share went down
At the University of Minnesota, the Regents approved a 6.5 percent resident tuition increase for the Twin Cities campus in fiscal 2026 — the largest in a decade — followed by another 3.8 percent. Sticker tuition went from $15,148 to $16,744 in two years; total cost of attendance from $30,817 to $34,458. The state appropriation was flat across both bienniums.
The U is also absorbing a federal shock: 72 federal research awards terminated, $22.3 million, affecting 220 personnel as of April 2025, with sponsored research budgeted down $85 million — 10.2 percent. The institution responded with a 7 percent academic scope reduction and 350-plus positions in fiscal 2026, and $44.2 million in cuts and about 230 jobs in fiscal 2027.
At Minnesota State — the 30 colleges and universities most Minnesotans actually attend — enrollment fell from 126,094 full-year equivalents in 2019 to a trough of 105,497 in 2023, and has genuinely recovered to 114,791 in 2025. That's real growth and deserves saying. It is also still 9 percent below 2019, with the universities 14.3 percent below.
The 2023 Legislature bought a two-year tuition freeze for $292.9 million. When it lapsed, tuition rose 5.5 percent and then 6.25 percent. And here is the line that should be a headline: in fiscal 2027, tuition revenue overtakes state support at Minnesota State for the first time — 50.1 percent against 49.9 percent. Twenty-six institutions plus the system office are drawing down reserves.
A public system in which students pay more than the public does is, at some point, no longer a public system. We're crossing that line next year, quietly, without a vote on it.
The free-tuition program worked. Then we repealed the way to know.
North Star Promise covers tuition and fees at Minnesota public and tribal colleges for families under $80,000. Its projection was 11,000 students at $23.2 million.
It served 53,567 students at $108.2 million — nearly five times the students, more than four times the cost. For a program aimed exactly at the eighteen-year-olds we keep losing, that is not a failure. It's evidence of demand nobody measured properly, and it is the single most encouraging number in this article.
Now the part that made me put down my coffee. The 2026 Legislature repealed the reporting mandate — the requirement that would have produced retention and graduation data for North Star Promise students. The state is spending nine figures a year on a program whose central question is does this keep kids in school and get them to a degree, and it just eliminated the obligation to find out.
I have written twenty-two of these articles now, and this is the purest example of the pattern in all of them: Minnesota is consistently better at appropriating money than at measuring what the money did. That is not a partisan failing. It is a habit, and it is expensive.
One clarification I owe you, because it's being conflated in the debate: the projected shortfalls of $102 million, $131 million, and $239 million that get attached to North Star Promise in political arguments belong to the Minnesota State Grant — a different program. Every state projection through February 2026 shows North Star Promise inside its appropriation; it finished 2024–25 about $2.9 million under. And because it is a last-dollar program, a shrinking State Grant actually raises the North Star bill. Legislators have asserted the causation in the opposite direction. That's their claim, and it doesn't match the state's own accounting.
What the degree is actually worth — and where
The most useful thing I can tell a Minnesota family is that the expensive answer is not automatically the right one.
A two-year HVAC associate degree from Hennepin Technical College returns $62,012 two years out — beating every bachelor's program at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities except the top four. Minnesota's statewide median wage is $27.97 an hour as of early 2026.
The honest counterweight, because a campaign article that only sells trade school is doing the same thing as a guidance counselor who only sells four-year degrees: nationally, about 43 percent of two-year programs produce negative return on investment. The credential is not the point. The specific program at the specific school is the point, and Minnesota publishes that data.
I also want to flag three ROI figures circulating in Minnesota debate that I checked and could not verify — a $71,700 associate-degree nursing figure, a $32,540 parks-and-recreation bachelor's figure, and a claim that Minnesota ranks second nationally in a think-tank ROI ranking that does not appear to exist. They're persuasive-sounding and I'm not using them.
What we can do
Restore the measurement. Reinstate North Star Promise reporting and publish retention and completion by institution. A program this successful deserves to be defended with evidence, and a program this large should never be un-auditable.
Compete for the 37 percent. We negotiated tuition reciprocity that makes leaving cheap, and we have a free-tuition program most families under $80,000 have still never heard of. Market North Star Promise in every Minnesota high school as aggressively as North Dakota State markets to our seniors.
Decide what "public" means before fiscal 2027 arrives. If tuition is about to exceed state support, the Legislature should say out loud whether that's a choice or a drift.
And publish program-level earnings data where families will see it — on the application page, not buried in a dashboard. The single best consumer-protection act in Minnesota higher education would be telling an eighteen-year-old what graduates of that exact program actually earn, before they sign the loan.
The class of 2026 is the largest this state will ever have. Fifteen years of smaller ones are already born and counted. What we do with the next few budget cycles decides whether Minnesota spends that stretch recruiting its own kids back — or explaining why they left.
First the facts. Then the fix.
Sources
WICHE, Knocking at the College Door, 11th edition (Dec. 2024) — Minnesota's projected peak of 67,286 high school graduates in 2026, declining to 58,295 by 2041. NCES IPEDS residence-and-migration data (Fall 2022, Table 309.20) — 14,676 of 40,172 Minnesota resident first-time undergraduates enrolling out of state, and Minnesota's net outflow ranking; the Minnesota State Demographic Center's April 2024 migration report, using state student-tracking data, separately reports 31 percent of 2022 Minnesota high school graduates who enrolled in college doing so out of state — the two measures use different denominators and both are reported here. University of Minnesota Board of Regents dockets — fiscal 2026 and 2027 tuition rates by campus, cost of attendance, and the flat state appropriation; University disclosures on terminated federal awards ($22.3 million, 72 awards, 220 personnel, April 2025) and the sponsored-research reduction; fiscal 2026 and 2027 budget reductions and position counts, with Inside Higher Ed reporting on the fiscal 2027 figure. Minnesota State system enrollment (full-year equivalent) for fiscal 2019, 2023, and 2025; the 2023 tuition freeze appropriation of $292.9 million and the subsequent 5.5 percent and 6.25 percent increases; the fiscal 2027 crossover at which tuition revenue reaches 50.1 percent of the system's revenue against 49.9 percent from state support; and the count of institutions drawing on reserves. North Star Promise statute and amendments; projected participation of 11,000 students at $23.2 million against actual participation of 53,567 students at $108.2 million; the administrative discontinuation of the supplemental award for 2025–26; the 2026 repeal of the program's reporting mandate; and state financial-aid projections showing the program within its appropriation, finishing 2024–25 approximately $2.935 million under. The $102 million, $131 million, and $239 million projected shortfalls attach to the Minnesota State Grant program, not North Star Promise. Return-on-investment figures for Hennepin Technical College and University of Minnesota programs from Minnesota program-level outcomes data; statewide median wage of $27.97 from Minnesota DEED (Q1 2026); the national finding that approximately 43 percent of two-year programs show negative return.
Three ROI figures circulating in Minnesota debate — a $71,700 associate-degree nursing return, a $32,540 parks-and-recreation bachelor's return, and a claimed second-place national ranking from a think tank — could not be verified and are not used. Minnesota state agency sites and the Star Tribune blocked automated retrieval; affected items were obtained through archives or are cited by headline and date. Corrections: campaign@madgettformn.com.