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Marked Absent

Kyle McIntosh

THE NATIONAL STUDENT Clearinghouse Research Center recently published a report on postsecondary enrollment for fall 2021, including enrollment at community colleges, undergraduate institutions and graduate schools.

If you’re a believer in postsecondary education, the headline numbers weren’t encouraging. Enrollment fell by 2.7%, or 476,100 students. Over the two years since the start of the pandemic, it’s declined by 5.1%, or 937,500 students.

While the report offers no reasons for these declines, my view is that colleges are struggling to justify their value proposition to students and their families, especially during a pandemic that’s disrupted in-person learning. As I’ve noted before, college costs are extremely high, creating a significant financial burden for just about any family.

Why should a family take on six figures of debt when a student can earn a good wage at age 18? A manufacturing company near me is offering entry-level workers more than $20 an hour, plus training and benefits. Only a high school degree—or its equivalent—is required. With opportunities like that available, it can be hard to justify the cost of college.

This may be the reason behind the big drop in liberal arts majors. The number of liberal arts majors at four-year institutions fell by 78,774 students, or 7.6%, in fall 2021. By contrast, those majoring in computer and information sciences increased 1.3%, and that followed gains of 5.6% and 4.5% in the prior two years.

It appears some students have decided they need to graduate with solid technical skills to justify their tuition bill. Over the next several years, I believe we’ll continue to see students shift to majors that should lead them to lucrative careers. I also suspect many universities—especially private ones—will revise their pricing and course offerings to make themselves more compelling to students.

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Randy Starks
2 years ago

I’ll tell you why, unless you major/minor in the STEMs, you are wasting your money. However, A BBA in Business will serve you well; however, you need to major in Accounting or Finance not Marketing. Purchasing & Logistics is also a good major and the University of Tennessee offers one of the best programs in that discipline. Lastly, you need to match your kids expectations and drive into a University that is not going to bankrupt the family, yet afford a good, not “woke” education. And, Community College to start is the best way to see how things go before going off to the big Universities to major in your chosen discipline.

Oh, if you are a Conservative, Independent or Libertarian middle of the road family, you have to research the liberal, leftist curriculums at any University that you consider and understand that your child will have to endure these liberals to get a quality education in the disciplines I outlined above. It’s just the way it is these days to get a passing grade in the humanities and social sciences, for now!!!

Steve Spinella
2 years ago

$55k average starting salary for college graduates equals about $27/hr. In demand fields may be up to 60% higher, so less lucrative fields may be as low as no degree. If a cost effective degree costs $55k, it might be recovered in 4 years. The typical worker might work 40 years. With those statistics, I think college is still likely a good long term bet for emerging adult students and those who care about them, even though it may not always work out. Of course, staying out of debt is also a good long term bet.
https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/compensation/pages/salaries-for-college-graduates-climb-amid-labor-shortages.aspx

parkslope
2 years ago

Your understandable interpretation of the report’s data for liberal arts majors, which appears on page two, is incorrect. Table 10 presents a detailed listing of changes in a large number of majors where it indicates that there was a 7.6% decrease in CIP major code 24: General instructional programs and independent or individualized studies in the liberal arts subjects, the humanities disciplines and the general curriculum. In other words, the “liberal arts” category noted on page two only includes students who did not major in a specific liberal arts discipline.
Table 10 indicates that enrollment decreased in most disciplines with a few exceptions, including computer science +1.3% (as you noted), psychology +2.5%, foreign languages 4.3%, philosophy & religion 2.4%, and communications technology +18.7%. Despite the increase in computer and information sciences, there were significant decreases in engineering -3.6%, math & statistics -5.6%, and business -3.6%.

Thus I don’t think college enrollment data provide any support for the notion that students are rethinking the value of a liberal arts degree versus one in the applied fields. I also think it is too early to tell how the pandemic will affet future college enrollment.
https://nscresearchcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/CTEE_Report_Fall_2021.pdf

Kyle Mcintosh
2 years ago
Reply to  parkslope

Thanks for your note and for pointing out the many shifts that can be seen in Table 10 for the different majors. I used this data in writing my article, but given it was a short post I didn’t dig into the many different fluctuations. My overall focus was on where I saw the two biggest shifts in majors in terms of number of students as well as percentages between Fall 2019 and Fall 2021. As we look at this time period, we see that liberal art majors have fallen from 1.1M to 960K. While you do point out some other majors that have meaningful increases on a percentage basis, I didn’t see the numbers of students as being significant for these categories thus I didn’t comment on them.

For instance, psychology – which can be seen as partial offset to this liberal art major decline – only went up 44K students during this time when general liberal arts were off by 140K. It is the only major I see in the majors you note that could be seen as having a meaningful offset to the liberal arts decline I cited. Next time I’ll be sure to expand a bit more to include more facets of the report! 🙂

Jerry Pinkard
2 years ago

There is a severe shortage of trades people (plumbers, electricians, carpenters, etc). Young people can go into the trades and in a few years, be making as much or more than many college graduates, and without college debt. If we can get more young people into the trades, this will put an even bigger dent in college enrollment.

College is not for everyone. There are many smart kids who will thrive in the trades but no do well in the classroom.

Will
2 years ago
Reply to  Jerry Pinkard

Nor are they interested in the careers that follow college. That should be a BIG question that people ask: Am I (are You) interested in _______.

kristinehayes2014
2 years ago

As someone who has been employed at a college for nearly 25 years, I can think of lots of reasons why enrollment is declining. There are so many viable college alternatives these days. Programming boot camps. Online courses by Google and Microsoft that lead to valuable certificates. How about four free years of medical school (https://medschool.kp.org/admissions/tuition-and-financial-aid)?

Where I live, the wages for the most basic of jobs are also skyrocketing. Just last night, my husband and I went to see a movie in a theatre. They were offering $18.00 an hour (to start) for concessions workers. Many fast food restaurants in the area are offering up to $20 an hour for food prep workers. Construction workers and bus drivers are being offered thousands of dollars in bonuses just for getting hired on and working for a few weeks.

Perhaps many young people today are looking at their own parents–many of whom are likely to be first generation college graduates–and questioning the value of a degree and the associated debt.

steveark
2 years ago

Or it might be the plentiful good paying jobs you cite plus the start of what many college enrollment experts have been predicting for the last five years. The demographic cliff that is forecast to cut college enrollments by 15% in 2025. There are simply less college age adults every year due to declining birth rates. Gen X, Y and millennials aren’t getting married and aren’t having kids. That’s a long term trend only just now showing up in schools. As the chair of a community college board of trustees we’ve always seen swings of much higher than 2.5% when the job market was good, and that makes sense for the reasons you’ve pointed out. But we see even bigger drops ahead as we run out of college age adults. Universities and colleges are going to have a rocky path ahead.

Steve Spinella
2 years ago
Reply to  steveark

It makes sense to me that community colleges are likely to face this most intensely as I think they are generally (but not always) perceived as an alternative for those who opt out of “more prestigious” options. As those options face this cliff, they are likely to poach your target population in various ways to address their own shrinking enrollments, adding additional pressure to your models.

parkslope
2 years ago

The enrollment decline in community colleges has been greater than the decline in four-year colleges which suggests that more is going on than concerns about the cost of college and the value of a bachelor’s degree.

Public two-year colleges remain the hardest hit sector since the start of the pandemic (-13.2% or 706,100 students over 2019).
https://nscresearchcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/CTEE_Report_Fall_2021.pdf

Last edited 2 years ago by parkslope
Chazooo
2 years ago
Reply to  parkslope

Seems odd since they are the much less expensive alternative to the 4-year programs.

R Quinn
2 years ago

You may be right, but I also think all the rhetoric about a student loan “crisis” rigged system, for profit colleges and the stories of people with degrees working in low paying jobs is not helping.

Perhaps we have reached the point where people realize that just graduating college after four – five- six years of being there is not a guarantee of anything and that you have to have something of value to offer employers and society.

Will
2 years ago
Reply to  R Quinn

Amen. I wonder how other, happy cultures deal with this…….

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