On the Lighter Side (Sort of): SIUC will have 64,000 students!

In the midst of doom and gloom, here is something on the lighter side (in a perverse way). It is a lesson in not projecting current trends onto the future, because some historian of the future may find your forecast and mock it (but wish it were true!).

In my office, I found a cache of old documents. One caught my eye: A projection (dated 1970) on what enrollment would be in 1980. The forecaster projected that SIU-Carbondale's enrollment would increase from 23,000 in 1969 to 32,500 by 1980 (click to enlarge).

Oops! If he had projected it to the present, SIU-C enrollment would be approximately 64,500 in 2012!

Ceteris paribus