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.
That’s interesting. It would be more interesting if universities didn’t use tuition to rebuild their sport complex every ten years.
Oh that’s a whole other issue: inter-university competition. They’re all competing with each other over the same pool of students. Each one spends money to attract students away from the other schools who then spend money to attract them back.
They’re competing for very specific students too though, the kind that become big giving Alumni.
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.
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…
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.
Not to mention bank and corporate bailouts. Socialism for the rich, harsh darwinism for the poor.
Republicans hate all of those but thr police and military
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.
You sound surprised to find out that not everyone here thinks capitalism is perfect.
Genuinely baffling anyone like that would even find this place.
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."
2024-2007=17.
Your math is wrong. The birth rate drops haven’t hit college yet.
“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?
Racketeering.
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.
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.
They’re in line with other loans.
Which is the problem. Loans used to be 3%, now they are 7 to 8%
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.
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.
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.
It is difficult to express the depths of my disappointment of any human assembly above about 2000 people.
Let us common shitheads figure out how to properly home/pod school kids or something. It only takes 2-3 hours average to educate a small passel to the point of independent learning.
I know my university at least gathered that data after I graduated. Kept getting emails about if I had gotten work in my field, salary, etc. I never answered and I have no idea if they would even make use of it but there was an attempt. This was 20 years ago.
I suspect it wasn’t actually the university contacting you, but instead it was the alumni association.
Alumni associations aren’t usually a direct unit of the university but sort of an auxiliary org. Alumni associations want the data to further their own interests but they are primarily interested in you as a source of donations. They are often at odds with central administration, a difficult relationship because the associations do gather funds but have an agenda that is often at odds with the administration.
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.
I think ya might have missed the point
Sorry we just passed the law. You can expect an Alma Mater SWAT team to show up and torture you for the information.
Jokes on the SWAT team. Every time I move my alumni association immediately finds me and sends me lovely brochures asking for money. They already have my data and probably yours.
They have time to google. Not magic, just time and mandate to use the resources at hand.
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.
This country doesn’t prioritize education and then we wonder why people like Trump get elected.
