The incredible shrinking future of college

[Coach Andy Mac]

In 2021, Shippensburg University won the NCAA Division II Field Hockey championship, completing an undefeated season with a 3-0 victory over archrival West Chester. The “Ship” Raiders also won it all in 2018, 2017, 2016, and 2013, which I know because I saw it written in big letters on a banner festooning the fieldhouse on Ship’s campus in south-central Pennsylvania when I visited last month.

Ship was in fine form. Young men and women wearing logoed Champion sweatshirts bustled between buildings. There was a line at the coffee shop in the student union. It was the kind of bright-blue autumn day that you would see on a brochure.

There was no way to tell, from the outside, that Ship was a shrinking institution. Or that the problem is about to get a lot worse — not just here, but at colleges and universities nationwide.

In four years, the number of students graduating from high schools across the country will begin a sudden and precipitous decline, due to a rolling demographic aftershock of the Great Recession. Traumatized by uncertainty and unemployment, people decided to stop having kids during that period. But even as we climbed out of the recession, the birth rate kept dropping, and we are now starting to see the consequences on campuses everywhere. Classes will shrink, year after year, for most of the next two decades. People in the higher education industry call it “the enrollment cliff.”

read more:  https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/23428166/college-enrollment-population-education-crash

[untphd]

On 5/2/2023 at 9:25 AM, Coach Andy Mac said:

In 2021, Shippensburg University won the NCAA Division II Field Hockey championship, completing an undefeated season with a 3-0 victory over archrival West Chester. The “Ship” Raiders also won it all in 2018, 2017, 2016, and 2013, which I know because I saw it written in big letters on a banner festooning the fieldhouse on Ship’s campus in south-central Pennsylvania when I visited last month.

Ship was in fine form. Young men and women wearing logoed Champion sweatshirts bustled between buildings. There was a line at the coffee shop in the student union. It was the kind of bright-blue autumn day that you would see on a brochure.

There was no way to tell, from the outside, that Ship was a shrinking institution. Or that the problem is about to get a lot worse — not just here, but at colleges and universities nationwide.

In four years, the number of students graduating from high schools across the country will begin a sudden and precipitous decline, due to a rolling demographic aftershock of the Great Recession. Traumatized by uncertainty and unemployment, people decided to stop having kids during that period. But even as we climbed out of the recession, the birth rate kept dropping, and we are now starting to see the consequences on campuses everywhere. Classes will shrink, year after year, for most of the next two decades. People in the higher education industry call it “the enrollment cliff.”

read more:  https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/23428166/college-enrollment-population-education-crash

Over the past 20 or so years, just under 80 percent of the colleges that have closed were for profit schools. 

[Coltonw83]

College degrees are going to be more necessary assuming AI and robotics continue to advance and become more efficient. Completely unskilled labor (not talking trades) seems more likely to be to shrink in size than the need for a college degree. UNT also just had its highest enrollment ever, so I don’t think we’ll be hurting in that department.

[Dannymacfan]

13 minutes ago, Coltonw83 said:

College degrees are going to be more necessary assuming AI and robotics continue to advance and become more efficient. Completely unskilled labor (not talking trades) seems more likely to be to shrink in size than the need for a college degree. UNT also just had its highest enrollment ever, so I don’t think we’ll be hurting in that department.

Yeah I keep hearing that college enrollment keeps shrinking and yet UNT's keeps going up.  What is the deal with that?  Is it that we are doing more online or perhaps the UNT Dallas school?

[untphd]

15 minutes ago, Dannymacfan said:

Yeah I keep hearing that college enrollment keeps shrinking and yet UNT's keeps going up.  What is the deal with that?  Is it that we are doing more online or perhaps the UNT Dallas school?

Since 2020 over nine million people have moved to Texas .