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.
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.
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?
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."
Drop tuition, bitches.
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…
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.
Yup, and since public schools only teach kids to regurgitate curated information, critical thinking and proper researching skills are paywalled.
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.
I love it when people participate in the Overton window right-wing ratchet and think they’re just being pragmatic.
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.
This is basically socialism.
This is basically socialism
You say that like it’s a bad thing?
And K-12 is just an arbitrary number. Paying for college would just be extending what we already do.
“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.
Is it a scam when it’s your only option? Seems more like a gouge to me.
It’s on the same level as loan sharking
Yeah, but you generally don’t have the choice of either going to a loan shark or not being able to have the career you want for your life.
I’m just thinking ‘scam’ is the wrong word when no one except the wealthy have any other real option. The military and athletic scholarships, I guess?
It is cheaper to live in Europe for the duration of the degree. I have friends who did this.
The interest rates are outrageous
They’re in line with other loans.
It’s outrageous that a loan for higher education comes with an interest rate at all. The increased productivity of a college graduate should cover the need to profit off the loan. Extra silly because as a graduate you only see compensation for a paltry fraction of that increased productivity.
Depends, some are some aren’t.
However, in my opinion, the thing that makes student loans crazy is how the payments are structured.
With other big lifetime loans (mortgage, car, etc.), they are structured with a fixed term and the interest is factored in from the beginning. You pay $X a month for Y years, and that’s it, it’s all paid off. All you have to do is keep up with those payments, and you know how much they’ll be from the time you agree to the loan.
Student loans are structured more like credit cards. If you just pay how much they tell you to, interest will accrue, the loan grows, it capitalizes, and the term is indefinite. You can pay on it consistently for decades and never make any progress.
There’s practically no assistance to figure out how much you really need to pay, and sometimes even attempting to overpay to cover the interest doesn’t help, as they’ll apply the extra towards the next payment instead, and so extra interest still accrues.
They’re in line with other loans.
Which is the problem. Loans used to be 3%, now they are 7 to 8%
7% is a scam. You wouldnt buy a house on 7% interest rates. And an education seems to be a safer investment. Especially for the government that should have an interest in education to drive the economy.
Where do you think housing mortgage rates were a couple of years ago?
They used to be at 3-4% in 2019-2020. Holy hell, you are at almost 7% now. Let me reprhase then: the US is a scam. 7% on a 30 year mortgage means you pay about 40% interest in total on the loan amount.
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).
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.
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.
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.
bad news for democrats and our society at large
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 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.
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.
Because it’s a fucking scam.
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.
