Talk:Academy City/@comment-2A02:C7F:9C3B:B000:B93B:B49B:D6FA:A4F9-20180723051040/@comment-34962159-20180723102001

First, have you read up to the most recent volume? If you haven't, avoid this reply as it contains major spoilers.

To put it simply, the answer to your main question is yes, students would graduate as espers. There are no signs that any of the students are expected to lose their powers upon graduating.

As for the other questions, bear in mind that the Power Curriculum Program has not always been as effective as it is in the present (previously mentioned in one of All fictions' comments below). Very few adult espers have appeared in the series. The seven Level 5s are all middle to high school aged, and there were no Level 5s before them. From this, we can infer that the large number of espers is a very recent phenomenon. No matter how much of a genius Aleister or the Kiharas are, they wouldn't be able to come up with the modern PCP out of thin air - decades of research would be needed to get to the current stage.

Another thing is that the vast majority of espers are Level 0s or the not-much-more powerful 1s or 2s. They aren't going to have much of an impact on the outside world as they can't do much with their powers and there's minimal incentive to study them. It's just that the series tends to focus on the more powerful espers (Level 3 and up).

As for Aleister's plan, I doubt that he's going to wait until a large amount of espers and/or the Level 5s graduate. He spends the series advancing his plan and achieving some of his goals. And even if the esper population starts decreasing (unlikely, given that Aleister has the Archetype Controller and can use it to make sure that Academy City gets enough new students), Aleister is used to failure and can always wait until a more favourable time.

Finally, all of these questions are now moot, given the dissolution of Academy City in NT Volume 19.