As the Chronicle of Higher Education reported recently, college enrollment dropped by 475,000 students last fall. Since the COVID pandemic began two years ago, undergraduate enrollment has plunged by 9.2 percent.
A look at college enrollment over the last 10 years shows an even more dramatic decline. Dahn Shaulis, writing for Higher Education Inquirer, reported that college enrollment is down by 20 percent or more in 18 states during the past decade. Unless conditions change, Shaulis writes, most states will see enrollments drop by 25 percent in the 20226-2027 academic year when compared to enrollment levels in 2010.
COVID is blamed for the recent enrollment exodus. Doug Shapiro, Executive Director of the National Student Clearing House Research Center, said that students "are continuing to sit out in droves" due to the pandemic, which has forced colleges all over the U.S. to switch from face-to-face instruction to an online teaching format.
But there are larger forces at play. As Shaulis explained:
Enrollment declines are the result of several interrelated economic and demographic shifts. Reduced populations of college age people, economic distress, growing inequality, and migration are some of the interacting factors.
And there is another factor at work--difficult to quantify. Young people have begun to figure out that a college education is too damned expensive and often does not lead to a good job. Liberal arts majors, in particular, often find that their college degree was not a ticket to the good life. Instead, it was a trap that ensnared them in debt and sentenced them to a life of penury.
Perhaps that is why the number of students majoring in the liberal arts declined by almost a million students last fall, a drop of 7.6 percent from the previous year (as reported by CHE).
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| We're outta here! |
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