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.