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Colleges feeling the pinch as enrollments plummet; pandemic cited but there’s more to it

April 6, 2022 | | Print Article

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Graduating college with crushing student loan debt and few or no marketable skills perhaps have given American families second thoughts about higher education’s return on investment.

According to  The Washington Post, “Hundreds of thousands have left the college pipeline amid pandemic turmoil and the lure of jobs. This scenario, in turn, has prompted a “daunting” cash-flow challenge for these institutions, which might be the key subtext of the article published by the Jeff Bezos-owned publication.

Apart from STEM degrees, some would-be applicants are apparently opting for in-demand, high-paying jobs in the skilled trades rather than undergoing four-years of on-campus Marxist indoctrination.

Many schools switched to remote learning (without a reduction in tuition) during the COVID pandemic. Mask and vaccine mandates are also on the agenda for students returning to campus to resume their studies in person.

In its article headlined “Colleges scramble to recruit students as nationwide enrollment plunges,” which you can read in its entirety for the full context, the Post is also lamenting that the gap year, when high-school graduates take time off before continuing their education, has become perpetual.

“Colleges across America face a daunting challenge: Their student head count has shrunk more than 5 percent since 2019, according to a national estimate, as debate over the value of higher education intensified during the public health crisis and economic tumult,” the news outlet reported.

“That’s an enrollment loss of nearly 1 million students. Some drifted out of college, while others never started. Many colleges are on an urgent quest to keep current students and recover their lost freshmen. At stake are not only the education and career prospects of huge numbers of young adults, but also the financial health of regional colleges and universities. Once students leave, they often don’t return. Gap years can become permanent.”

Federally guaranteed student loans have not, for the most part, provided colleges and universities with an incentive to significantly cut the overhead, such as reducing the non-teaching bureaucracy, which includes equity gatekeepers.

State-supported, i.e., taxpayer-subsidized, colleges and universities, are far less expensive than private counterparts. Of course, some students are fortunate enough to receive full or partial scholarships.

According to the Post, “The promise of social mobility, at an affordable price, draws students from low-income families to public colleges and universities. They see the bachelor’s degree as a ticket to a better life.”

Separately, that highly credentialed, often Ivy League-educated, media and political class have not been exemplars of competence especially in recent years may also be a factor in the disillusionment of pursuing a formal degree.

Bachelor degrees “are neither a prerequisite for, nor a guarantee of, career success. But research shows they are powerfully correlated with good jobs,” the Post noted.

It also conceded, however, that “Now, many potential college students are feeling the pull of the job market. The nation’s unemployment rate edged below 4 percent in February, and employers are offering higher wages and benefits for entry-level jobs that don’t require a college degree.”

Parenthetically, some universities, even at the graduate-degree level, have abandoned standardized testing and/or lowered standards to fill classroom seats.

Although obviously a lot of retirements have occurred since then, observers have quipped in the past that universities served as a hiring hall for otherwise unemployable 1960s-era hippies or various radicals.

As has been chronicled, to date it is very difficult for otherwise qualified non-leftists interested in pursuing teaching as a career to get hired or obtain tenure at the university level. Established professors also encounter issues.

Citing a Georgetown University study, the Post explained that “the median lifetime earnings of those whose highest credential is a bachelor’s degree was $2.8 million, with the top quartile making at least $4.1 million. For those with only a high school diploma, the median was $1.6 million, with the top quartile at $2.2 million or more.”

The director of Georgetown’s Center on Education and Workforce, the research entity that conducted the study, told the Post that “the bachelor’s degree ‘is still the gold standard, especially over the long term.'”

“That vision can be a tough sell,” the Post admitted, however, about the current value proposition.

Various influencers and others are opining on the Post story. Here is a sample:

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10 thoughts on “Colleges feeling the pinch as enrollments plummet; pandemic cited but there’s more to it”

  1. How likely is it that the Georgetown University study included costs of education when determining “the median lifetime earnings”. I will suggest that when you include the outrageous fees of some Universitys’ the difference in lifetime earnings between someone with a bachelor’s degree and a high school diploma can be negligible.

  2. When kids listen to friends whine about their LOANS and PAYMENTS and NO JOBS some of them might actually LISTEN!! I guess all those “womynz and black studies” jobs must have dried up!!

  3. College is a waste of money. Your children can stay home and watch the Liberal, Communist, immoral, demonic, MEDIA so-called News, especially CNN, MSNBC, N.Y.Times, and our Communst Demorat and (RINO) Fake Republican politicians, and get the exact same Demonic Education you desire.

  4. My well established plumbing contractor has a daughter in med school and he is paying cash for her tuition. Yep..cash. Liberal arts schools with leftist professors offer nothing meaningful or useable.

    1. What’s the significance of paying cash? Don’t get me wrong cash is king plastic sucks.

      1. He planned and saved for his kids education instead of being dependent on the government to provide tuition at an inflated price, leaving those students with a debt as big as a home mortgage, for which the libs can thank Bathhouse Barry!
        I’m an old fart. I went to college and paid as I went. When I finished, I had no debt and I paid for it myself. My point. There was a time when a college education was actually affordable. No. I didn’t go to a Ivy League college. I lived at home and worked to pay my tuition. That option no longer exists. At the end, I had a degree and marketable skills.

  5. I sincerely hope that every non-conservative college goes bankrupt!

  6. Parents aren’t going to pay for brainwashing and activism. Just like all the garbage being taught from pre-K on up- certainly don’t expect parents to support anything that doesn’t involve reading, writing, and arithmetic with a dash of social studies to learn how to survive in a workplace.

  7. Lower the cost, cut the brainwashing, get someone who CAN TEACH, and make degrees that can help someone to get a job and NOT a badge in virtue signaling. I went to college in the early 1970s. A good number of my professors were the absolute worst at teaching. Some were awesome. Others were decent enough, but even then, they were pushing this Leftist belief system–and thus we have a bunch of Baby Boomers who’ve never grown up and been able to enter the real world. Many teach at colleges and universities these days. It’s so much more comfortable and safe in their little world.

    1. Glendale College 1978, we were given a text book called, “democracy for the few”
      Being young and stupid, I thought that was a great book. I kept it and tried reading it when I was 40 and wow, what a bunch of leftist crap.

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