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.
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.
You sound surprised to find out that not everyone here thinks capitalism is perfect.
Genuinely baffling anyone like that would even find this place.
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.
Yeah, and?
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.
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. 👏🎉
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.
Republicans hate all of those but thr police and military
Not to mention bank and corporate bailouts. Socialism for the rich, harsh darwinism for the poor.
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.
I didn’t read it as them saying it was a bad thing…
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."
2024-2007=17.
Your math is wrong. The birth rate drops haven’t hit college yet.
Most admin can be done with a high school degree. The college requirement for everything is absolutely bonkers.
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’m not very concerned
Congratulations on pricing people out of a college education, have fun with that.
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.
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
I would say it is concerning for the future of America maybe?
I dunno, just a wild guess.
Personally, I think the fact that people believe they need to go to college as a prerequisite to success is part of the problem.
I honestly think college is mostly a cultural staple for middle income families at this point. It’s four years of “discovering yourself” and postponing adulthood.
The benefits of a college education are pretty difficult to quantify, unless your intended career requires undergrad.
However, building a career from 0 is pretty painful, and I don’t think most people would have the stomach for it.
An individual person does not need to go to college to be successful, no.
A nation of people will want a certain % of its population to be at least college educated for a myriad of reasons that I don’t think I need to explain here (including to be successful).
When we see a trend of that % decreasing, it makes sense to take notice.
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I’m an old fart and I feel terrible about the cost of college for the past couple of decades. When I went, the max you could borrow was $2500/year on a GSL. But you could work very part time to afford it. Things started tightening with Reagan being elected. I didn’t get any work study year 2. But we could declare financial independence so years 3 and 4, I got Pell Grants, more work study etc. Every quarter, I’d get a check back from the Bursar after paying tuition and books. And that didn’t include my GSL.
I graduated with about $12k in student loans. $10k was my GSL and it was paid back at $105/mo for 10 years.
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.
Zoomers are unaliving the college debt industry
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
Hmmm I wonder if this has anything to do with the FUCKING ASTRONOMICAL TUITION
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.
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.
Which I personally feel sucks for personal growth. no way i woukd have survived my first year without being so far from home. Plus It was nice doing homework with everyone on whim instead of planning times.
Yeah the cost FAR exceeded the value for out of state tuition plus dorms. And as her dad, I’m only two weeks from no income. I am self employed and have been contracted with a small nonprofit, but my pay is ending and I don’t qualify for unemployment. All of my savings have been blown the last few years. Unfortunately when it comes to her college stuff, for now she’s on her own.
My partner got 70k in loans because parents were in the same boat at the time. Still paying them off almost 20 years later. Travesty anyone would be in this position.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
Lol can you give me those YouTube videos. I’ll watch them all really good and you can hire me
