College enrollment is falling at a ‘concerning’ rate, new data reveals
College enrollment is falling at a ‘concerning’ rate, new data reveals
Fewer 18-year-olds are enrolling, especially at four-year schools. But the number of applications continues to grow
Summary
College enrollment among 18-year-old freshmen fell 5% this fall, with declines most severe at public and private non-profit four-year colleges.
Experts attribute the drop to factors including declining birth rates, high tuition costs, FAFSA delays, and uncertainty over student loan relief after Supreme Court rulings against forgiveness plans.
Economic pressures, such as the need to work, also deter students.
Despite declining enrollment, applications have risen, particularly among low- and middle-income students, underscoring interest in higher education. Experts urge addressing affordability and accessibility to reverse this trend.
Higher education is too expensive. Not everyone can afford it. Also, some people can't go to school full time because they need to work. I know some people would say these people should be able to do both, but that doesn't work for everyone. If you're someone who got a degree while working full time, good for you, but I've tried working full time and going to school and I found it to be really difficult. If there comes a point where people decide they have to choose between school and work, well, school is going to lose every time because school doesn't pay the rent.
I'm bracing for this right now. I'm working casual hours while I go to full time schooling but part of that schooling includes unpaid placements, I'm absolutely dreading not having income for basically half a year while i'm on the hook for tuition, bills/rent, transportation ect...
Yup, and since public schools only teach kids to regurgitate curated information, critical thinking and proper researching skills are paywalled.
I work full time and do school and its fucking exhausting.
You don't have any flexibility if you work and go to school at the same time. Extracurriculars are tough. Internships doubly so, you can also just forget them if they're unpaid and temporary.
The Baumol Effect is killing us here. The more productivity gains we make in manufacturing, IT, and other technology boosted fields, the more unaffordable education will get.
Wouldnt have anything to do with crippling debt would it?
The article says it has to do with declining birth rates
"The enrollment cliff concept came about within higher education after years of declining birth rates in the US, triggered by the Great Recession. Earlier this year, the CDC released data indicating that the US had hit a historic low in its annual number of births – declining 2% from 2022 to 2023 and then 3% in 2023.
“Since the most recent high in 2007, the number of births has declined 17%, and the general fertility rate has declined 21%,” the August 2024 data shows."
While Park said an [sic] seeing an enrollment cliff isn’t occurring just yet, [...]
None of those people are 18 yet. The 2007 kids, from when birth rates last peaked, are just now 17. The declining birth rate hasn't caught up yet.
The article says it's multifactorial, but predominantly cost and the need to work;
The cost of college is the number one barrier to enrolling in higher education for adults not enrolled in such a program, according to a 2024 report from Gallup and the Lumina Foundation. That report also found that for more than three-quarters of the more than 3,000 unenrolled adults polled, cost and the need to work were preventing them from pursuing further education.
Education to any level should be free at the point of use. Hell I'd even go as far as to say people should be given a (non-means-tested) grant if they go into higher education. We need more smart people.
The more educated & informed a society is, the more productive, safe and free it is. No one should deny themselves the education they otherwise want because they can't afford it.
But Trump loves the poorly educated.
Man this is the most anti capitalist way of looking at things. This is basically socialism. Not a single NA country would support this system for Europe it’s a different story tho.
Edit: you guys are idiots I’m literally telling you why it doesn’t happen and you downvote me. In my opinion USA is a third world country as long as healthcare is a for profit business. Capitalism is akin to peasants and lords all over again which is why unions form because the working class have to force it to be fair. You are living in a society that values money more than anything and therefore you are just a number they give you one as well to define your being.
They essentially described how the US primary education system works, and prerry much how secondary education worked until Regan.
That you think it's "socialism" and therefore impossible is a reinforcement of hard-right elitist propaganda.
Think about it: What is socialism? It's collectively funding or working on things via the government. There's many competing definitions but that's basically all there is to it.
Under that definition we're already living under socialism:
- Fire departments
- Police
- Infrastructure (roads, bridges, etc)
- Weather services
- USPS
- The entire military as a construct
With socialism the people get a say in how such things are run. In private institutions they don't. That's the biggest realistic difference.
Either way people are still paying for these things. If they're not really competitive then private industry will fleece the masses because that's what capitalism encourages (see: Healthcare). If there's a robust, competitive market then socialism can fall behind in things like innovation and price.
Whether or not something is funded-and-run by the government is irrelevant. What matters is the value. If government can provide a better value for a dollar than private industry it should. If the people don't like the result they can change it or use a private alternative.
Sure, they'll be paying extra (on top of taxes) for the private alternative but at least it's an option. If the government isn't providing an alternative to private institutions then there's really no option at all. Best anyone can do is vote with their wallet but as we can all see that just doesn't work in certain industries (in fact, entire caregories of need!) and services.
Yeah, and?
I live in the UK, a capitalist country.
The Scottish have this already, everyone gets free education including university, no strings. In England we only have it for people from lower economic backgrounds (via means tested grants to pay tuition), but still, we still do it for some people. It's not a remotely absurd idea.
Hell even most pragmatic capitalists would agree that a free-at-the-point-of-use education system is generally a good investment in the labour pool. If skilled workers are rare, they have negotiating power, and we know how much capitalists just love workers that are able to negotiate from a position of power.
This is basically socialism.
I love it when people participate in the Overton window right-wing ratchet and think they're just being pragmatic.
I didn’t even know this site had enough people to downvote someone this much this quickly. You’re breaking ground with your idiocy. 👏🎉
College makes you think critically. It’s good for society overall when more people go, but college administrators have basically turned these nonprofit organizations into money grubbers that have forsaken their original mission.
College is often sold to the working class as some kind of vocational training that will prepare them for highly sought after knowledge based careers. But really think about it: before the mid 20th century, who was the typical college student? Was it a person who had to worry about the consequences of unemployment even if they couldn’t find work?
The next question to ask yourself is: why did these people go to college anyway if it wasn’t for career reasons? And is it something valuable that we are losing as administrators make college more about jobs?
Most admin can be done with a high school degree. The college requirement for everything is absolutely bonkers.
The article says it has to do with declining birth rates
"The enrollment cliff concept came about within higher education after years of declining birth rates in the US, triggered by the Great Recession. Earlier this year, the CDC released data indicating that the US had hit a historic low in its annual number of births – declining 2% from 2022 to 2023 and then 3% in 2023.
“Since the most recent high in 2007, the number of births has declined 17%, and the general fertility rate has declined 21%,” the August 2024 data shows."
"Student loans" are now one of the most ubiquitous phrases in politics and it's synonymous with "a burden you can never escape" so it makes sense that the folks who can use assistance will avoid it. The entire fight about student loans has always been to highlight the cost and make some folks turn away from higher education all together. Education has always been under attack for as long as most of us have been alive and this is another front in the war.
First they attack public education and exhaust teachers with overwork with underpayment. Now the right wants to attack Academia, the source of science which shows how destructive the current system has become and how it will evolve. Elon will probably entirely axe FAFSA and funding for higher education, with the aim to have their endowments fed by wealthy elite who dictate what makes it onto a syllabus. The right is so fucking exhausting.
American student loans are a scam anyways. The interest rates are outrageous and the federal government subsidizing them, but then they get handled by private businesses in a system know for failure and fraud.
Student loan forgiveness shouldnt be a thing. It shows that the system is trash to begin with and the "forgiveness" remains arbitrary and is just a carrot on a stick.
Make a system where the loans are granted directly by the government and dont incurr interest. No for profit skimming middleman, no permanent debt. Offer a regulated bonus for people who pay back X% before Y years pass, so people are incentivized to pay back quickly, rather than delaying payback.
More importantly remove the outrageous enrollment costs per semester.
For me it seems as if those subsidized and guaranteed loans were a bad idea (a system with positive feedback) in their entirety.
The reason education costs are so outrageous is the market created by their existence. And the loans themselves are a perpetually growing moneymaking machine. It's like pouring water into Saharan sand.
Drop tuition, bitches.
How are they going to get money to pay for teaches, tech, classes, etc? Shit costs money and you need to pay your people because they need to put a roof over their family's heads and feed them.
Been a while since I was I paid but the cost creep is insane. I recall going up 7% In a year. That's a hard pill to swallow.
Yeah, it's because academia has become a for-profit business first, and an educational centre second.
"Academia" is casting a wide net. Academic administrators are different than academics
You need some likbez going on. Start with likCEOs.
Hmmm I wonder if this has anything to do with the FUCKING ASTRONOMICAL TUITION
My daughter did one semester and has spent the last year paying off debt from it, she paid off the big bill at least. She wants to go back, but this time at least she's listening to us about paying in-state tuition and not living in the dorms etc.
And some of these schools have incredibly large endowments. The tuition should account for the cost of the professors time (and they should be paid fucking well) and whatever minimal costs for using the facilities would be split amongst the thousands of students. But the tuition money goes to the administration and other money pits that do absolutely nothing to benefit the students.
Congratulations on pricing people out of a college education, have fun with that.
Don't feel even an ounce of sympathy for these assholes. As someone who works adjacent to academia, we've been talking about the "enrollment cliff" for a few years now. The solution universities have come to is that they should cut admissions requirements to make sure anyone with money can enter their institution, and then do as much creative accounting as necessary to cover up students' failing grades. They'd rather become degree mills than look at the real problem; their tuition costs.
As a post-doc, I was selected for a leadership academy that put me in close contact with upper administration at a public university. We would meet weekly and have a project to work on over the course of the two month experience.
During our discussions, I was always curious about how they used data in their decision making. So one day I asked how are our students doing in the long run? How do we assess the effectiveness of the education we are providing them?
They did not know, they do not collect such data. What was most shocking to me, though was the degree of resistance that they put up to even talking about the idea of creating such feedback systems.
Shortly thereafter I left academia forever with a lingering sense of disgust at the willful ignorance of any institutinalized academic.
My university calls and asks for money on a weekly basis and has the audacity to employ current students to do it. I feel terrible for the kids. They have a script asking these questions. What do I do now? What advice do I have for them?
I used to be normal and tell them to study and go to office hours. Now I tell them the University does not care about them or their success/failure. They only care about being paid for 4 years. I always end with telling them : if you or your loved ones are going into any debt at all for this...leave.
I know that I must sound like some disillusioned alumni that was screwed by the system and an outlier. I'm not. I am doing objectively better than most of the people I graduated with. But if I am one of the few success stories of my many peers, and my University knows absolutely nothing about my strategies after undergrad, then how can they hope to advise students to do the same?
I just see the scam for what it is, and hope I can be a catalyst for at least a few kids to get out before financial ruin. You can get an amazing education from community college/studying at home/khan academy/trade schools. It is all in how much you apply yourself and has nothing to do with how much you paid.
Eh. I don’t really want my school knowing everything about me. I shouldn’t need to provide them my data and they shouldn’t ask for it.
Yes there should be accountability etc. but the deal was that I’d pay them for an education and that’s what I got. If Big Alma Mater wants to know whether I’m “successful” then too bad, that’s not part of the deal.
In an ideal world: Oh no! Some of those useless administrators might have to be let go if they aren't getting the tuition or attendance they budgeted for!
In reality: They will cut the music program, funding for clubs or anything else beneficial to students before recognizing the glut of useless admins.
In college there's no need for a music department unless there's a class offered, in which case you need the music department? Or maybe we play the administrative skin flutes until they sing or something?
Sounds to me like people are realizing that the price of college isn't worth it. You take on thousands in debt that can't be discharged in bankruptcy, you get a degree that doesn't guarantee a job.
The lie of college for all is only meant to generate profit for schools and lenders.
And don't get me started on textbook scams in college to prohibit used book sales
My prof back in university wrote his own textbook and gave it to us for free.
Best prof I ever had.
My professor wrote his own textbook and sold it to us to supplement his salary.
I grew up being repeatedly told that college is absolutely necessary to get a good job and a secure future. And because you've been told it's necessary, they can get away with such a sharp increase in tuition costs. What are you gonna do, not go? Nah, you're gonna sign on the dotted line and put yourself into debt like all the adults told you to.
I've got a degree in a good field that's supposed to pay well. But the job market is such a mess that I never actually got my foot in the door - everything that claims to be entry level asks for five years of experience in a piece of software that has only existed for two years.
College used to be an investment, now it feels more like a gamble.
I faced that for an extended time after graduating with a Bachelor's. There were so many jobs asking for impossible experience, or jobs vaguely related to my field at exploitative pay that required a Bachelor's. I did manage to find a decent job (still shit pay) but only because of a connection.
For my college, tuition would not be impossible with an ok job. When I read the headline I read it more as younger people seeing college as a scamthat can't even get you a job after the ordeal of all the schoolwork and money lost.
The purpose of a system is what it does.
Higher ed as currently constituted keeps young troublemakers distracted during their wild years and then burdens them with long term debt obligations.
Before we began recognizing the humanity of women (and their usefulness in the labor force), the preferred method of social enslavement was early child birth. Student debt seems to be a good replacement as a social control mechanism.
Add to that, corporations don't want educated workers. They want indebted workers who are desperate.
Living In Company towns
Not sure why you're being downvoted. I'd read a study for this if there was one published.
That’s the point if the saying I started my comment with.
There is no written policy stating that student debt will be used as a tool of social control. That’s the ‘quiet part’.
However there are numerous data sources showing the impact of student debt on people’s choices. Such as https://clp.law.harvard.edu/knowledge-hub/magazine/issues/student-debt/debt-takes-a-toll/
The meaning of the saying is that it doesn’t matter one bit what you SAY the system is for, stop instead and look at what outcomes are actually produced.
A common example is when the drumbeat starts for a new war, we hear through media that the purpose is to bring freedom or somesuch. It only takes a little scrutiny to discover that a small number of people stand to make a lot of money off the war.
bad news for democrats and our society at large
This country doesn't prioritize education and then we wonder why people like Trump get elected.
Colleges are also trying to address this by seriously lowering standards.
One thing I make money doing is essentially getting intellectually disabled people through college. I’m not ragging on my clients, but it’s become very clear to me that universities are less interested in educating these people than they are taking their parent’s money.
I was looking through one of the discussion forums for one of my clients’ English classes and it was genuinely horrifying. I’m talking R1 university, and the majority of the posts were either “AI” generated or were written at a middle school level.
I noticed that too. I was thinking about how housing was getting more and more restricted on campus to cater to ever greater numbers of first year students. And then it dawned on me that the second, third, and fourth year groups weren't growing by much. In fact the second you got out of first year classes it was suddenly possible to have 15-20 person classes in main requirements.
I wonder how many other universities are treating first year students as cash revenue? Bringing in as many as they can, knowing they won't make it past spring semester?
It's prolific, for certain. I have been reading research papers for a laboratory class (3000 level) that are written over the entire semester with a group. They contain errors so horrific that I don't understand how the student passed any writing class. There were entire paragraphs without a single complete sentence, and others where another paper was cited without any connection to what was being said.
I'm not joking when I say that our response at the academic/instructional level during the COVID pandemic has ruined the intellect of a segment of the population. Combine that with the push I saw ten years ago while working in lower grades to pass students to the next grade regardless of their capabilities and the greed of colleges to get those first year students, as Maggoty mentions, and it's a perfect storm.
The problem is that with the quality decline of high school education college education has become all but a requirement for white collar jobs. Yes, the skillset you've been taught is going to be painfully out of date, but the fact that you have enough preserverence (and money ) for college means that you at least won't be autofiltered by employers.
As an employer who hires folks in the data science field, I’ve become more disappointed in recent college graduate job-readiness every year for the last decade. At this point I’d prefer a resume to say “watched 100 hours of YouTube videos about data science” over a masters in the field.
And these poor people have 100k in student loan debt with no marketable job skills and are competing against 10s of thousands of other recent grads with no marketable job skills and college has created a lose-lose environment.
No wonder enrollment is dropping, the cost of the education is absolutely not worth it and people are starting to see it.
When I interview new grads, I'm not concerned about detailed knowledge of certain technologies. I'm trying to figure out how quickly they can learn. My favorite question is to ask "what was the hardest bug you've ever had to solve?".
Yep. “What’s the most interesting project you’ve been a part of” is my favorite. Same vane, opened the door to so many follow ups.
So often it’s “how do you translate temporal data for a random forest model” and then see run headlights as I have to explain the word temporal and then how feature selection for machine learning actually works.
They are literally only taught the Python code now, with no explanation of why, how, or when certain tools are appropriate. Real “Bang on a nail with a screwdriver long enough” level education.
All of my best hires for SE and related positions have been drop outs or self-taught folks. Sometimes there were minor gaps in knowledge of some of the fundamentals, leading to some wheel-inventing but on balance they were far more capable than the average Comp Sci graduate.
The worst hires, almost without exception, were those with graduate degrees. All hat no cattle.
Lol can you give me those YouTube videos. I'll watch them all really good and you can hire me
I'm no expert, but I'm having a hard time not thinking this is a recipe for a major generational housing crisis. We're telling kids the "key" to success is getting that fancy college degree, when in reality it's just a bunch of debt and no job prospects.
When are we going to start factoring in the actual cost of a 4-year education? Tuition's through the roof, student loans are suffocating people under 30, and we're telling them "just do it" for the 'sake of their own future'?
And another thing - what's with all this emphasis on getting a "degreed" person out into the workforce? Can't we teach 'em something in high school? Do we really need to be training 20-year-olds to fill up our 40-something year-old retirements?
Because if they can sell the lie of needing college, they can also sell the lie that only those people can make the AI prompts for the businesses of tomorrow! Gatekeeping, essentially
Wonder if it has to do with all the “college bad. Why go to college for $100k for a $40k job…” social media trends and the “get rich on social media” trend, along with the fact that college can be really expensive.
Incoming graduates saw an entire generation go to college at the highest rates ever just to find a job market that left a record number of them with debt still on their name more than a decade later.
What were once institutions devoted to academia, have become corporate training camps ran by a board that runs the institution with a corporate mentality, and they enrich themselves commesurately.
Concerning? To whom? The people who profit massively off of students, many of which are going deep into debt?
Think of how stupid the average person is and now imagine how stupid they are if they are 5% less educated on average
The American environment of work is going to get a little wild over the next few years. If your job isn't a blunt necessity like an Arborist, or Fireplace technician or something, I'd consider leaving.
u?
I'm a mechanic. We make our own rules. World goes to shit? Inflation gone insane!? Don't care. Pay up or no car.
Until nobody can afford to own a car...
looks around
...right now?
It's a little early.
It's not really concerning when it's just plain impractical to go unless youre pursuing stem.
A thing that upset me when I went to college (15ys ago) was all the fluff electives I had to take. More than half of my classes were not associated with my major. I was looking into getting a masters a few years ago and one of the requirements was American History, again! I learned all of American history in elementary school, and all of it again in middle school, and all of it again in high school and again for my bachelors and I need to do it again for a Masters? Add along more sciences and math classes for an art related major. While I understand in building well rounded students, a lot of it seemed like it was meant to just beef up the number of classes I needed to pay for.
The number of electives needed was also enough where you only had two options.
- Keep your part time job and take additional winter, summer or night clases and pay extra to get them in.
- Have no job and fill your whole schedule with classes (each class was 3hrs long)
What you're describing sounds like a liberal arts school. That's kind of the point, at least for undergrad.
Not OP, but no actually. My degree is an ABET accredited B.S. and I had to take about a years worth of classes (over the course of the four years) that had nothing to do with my degree (e.g. psychology, sociology, philosophy, etc.) Their "rational" was that it was to make students more well rounded human beings and members of society.
While I appreciate the sentiment in theory, I have to disagree with it in practice. For people like me that find those topics interesting already it seemed like a waist of time and money. While I did learn some new concepts it's mostly stuff I had already learned in my free time or would have come across sooner than later. For most of the other people (who tend to be uncurious outside of their specific niche skill set or interests) most of the information and lessons end up being lost on them as it doesn't really stick.
I'm sure they were some people it was beneficial for, but I doubt it was the majority.
Then again I'm not sure my view of the college experience was very typical. I was basically taking care of myself in some capacity by middle school and got a full time job during highschool in IT after my junior year via the trade program. I was living on my own and working full time while going to school full time. I'd go from work where the next youngest coworker was 10 years older than I was and people twice my age respected my opinion and person to classes where I was treated like an irresponsible child.
However, I would then over hear or observe other students taking about how surprised they were by various aspects of living away from home or "being an adult" and I couldn't help but just think ".... yeah that shouldn't be surprising, are you dumb?" (never said out loud or to them, I knew I was in the minority with my experience, but it was surprising).
As someone who has a STEM degree and works in a STEM field, I have the exact opposite opinion. I did not know my major for ~2 years (though I was leaning in a direction), so I took a number of courses that I otherwise would not have needed. And I am SO FUCKING GLAD that I did as I now have an actual well-rounded education. I truly don't even think you are aware of what you've missed out on.
Interacting with engineers on a daily basis, it is immediately obvious to me just how damaging it is to silo education so much. These people are incapable of thinking critically about anything outside their very specific area of expertise.
Good luck trying to discuss politics with an engineer.
I now have additional student loan debt that I would not have otherwise had. But it was 100% worth it. The most useful courses that I took were completely unrelated to the degree I ended up getting.
How much do those extra classes cost and why is it the responsibility of the a job certificate program to have those? Those extra classes could be taken at your leisure after you have a job.
Good luck trying to discuss politics with an engineer.
I have never had a problem finding a stem major with political opinions. Most far more radical then what you'd be comfortable.
Electives requirements for a masters is bonkers. I was trying to do one in ed and one school I talked to was really picky about what they'd give me credit for (like I needed a Shakespeare class and my undergrad tragedy class didn't count even though we read a bunch of Shakespeare in it). After everything they said I'd basically need 3 years for it. I said thanks but no thanks and went and found a school with a 1 year masters program haha
It’s a bit ridiculous. I think many majors could probably be done in 25-50% less time. You doing it in 1yr vs 3yr is a good example of it.
Zoomers are unaliving the college debt industry
If I were a young person considering whether to get a degree, I'd think really hard about whether it's worth selling myself into what is essentially indentured servitude for increasingly long odds of landing a "good" job in a neo-feudal hellscape ravaged by climate change.
Is that in line with fewer potential students being available? The last millennials are done with school now and the generation replacing them aren't as numerous.
Because it's a fucking scam.
Unless you’re going into a field that requires it for licensure, there’s no point. You can always demonstrate skill instead. And while that isn’t good enough for a lot of people to hire you, it’s often good enough to start your own business.
Combine that with diminishing human rights and increasing corporate rights. It starts to make sense to become a corporation yourself rather than a formally educated worker. More pay, more protection, more freedom of choice, and less debt.
Governments give tax breaks on things they want to see more of.
I'm not very concerned
I so hope this is true. We have an extremely anxious teenager waiting for his early decision results expected out this week. I hope for every advantage he can get
We don't need lots of educated people to make products anyway. Mostly just need one engineer to design something, then a bunch to industrialize it and then a mass of people to man/woman the industrialized system that makes the part....ordering, configuration management, incoming inspection, part distribution, manufacturing (assembly work), packaging, shipping, etc, etc. 1 engineer at the top makes a shit ton of people or can make a shit ton of people have a job. So don't need a lot of engineers. But it sure would be nice if you had lots of engineers working together. That's best for having airplanes whose doors don't pop open via the DFMEA process and other such design tools.