Posted on 05/29/2022 6:17:01 AM PDT by MtnClimber
Some key reforms could restore accountability in higher education, making colleges affordable and focused on actually educating students.
American colleges and universities continue to lose students steadily.
The latest statistics confirm their continuing decline. Here’s some headline numbers:
The number of total enrolled postsecondary students declined 3.3 percent year-over-year, the most significant rate of decline in enrollment since 1951. This number has declined nearly 10 percent since 2010, from 21 million to 19 million.
College enrollment totaled 15.9 million undergraduate students nationwide in Fall 2020, a 4.3 percent decline year-over-year. This number has declined more than 12 percent since 2010, from 18.1 million to 15.9 million.
Full-time college enrollment has declined more than 11 percent since 2010, from 13.1 million to 11.6 million.
Community college enrollment declined by 10 percent in 2020 alone. California’s community colleges lost 17 percent of their total, about 300,000 students, between Fall 2019 and Fall 2021.
Men are barely 41 percent of students enrolled in college, they are six percentage points less likely to complete college than women, and the hemorrhage of male enrollment continues unabated.
The proportion of college-age Americans (18-29) enrolled in higher education has been declining since 2016. Seventy-five nonprofit colleges and universities have closed or merged since 2016, more than one percent of the total.
In other words, the structural crisis in higher education that the National Association of Scholars (NAS) diagnosed early in the COVID pandemic, in our Critical Care recommendations, continues to afflict American higher education. America’s colleges and universities cannot staunch their bleeding, no matter how many transfusions of taxpayer dollars they receive from the federal and state governments.
The higher education establishment and its political allies recommend different “reforms” that boil down to increasing government subsidies for American higher education. No-strings debt forgiveness is the most popular such reform in 2022—and it is especially popular with colleges and universities because it means they can continue to produce college graduates who cannot hope to pay back their college debts, and stick the taxpayer with the tab. When you’re in a hole, you’re supposed to stop digging; the current debt-relief plans are jackhammer shovels.
America’s current model of higher education cannot be sustained. Woke seminaries, made even more repellent to students of all races by the current determination to impose loyalty tests to the so-called “anti-racism” ideology, provide at best a hollow credential for a white-collar job. They simply aren’t worth the money—and ever-increasing numbers of Americans realize that. Students and parents are voting with their pocketbooks and their feet.
American universities, abandoning their civic mission, have attempted to make ends meet by enrolling ever greater numbers of foreign students—but the number of foreign students declined by 15 percent during the pandemic school year of 2020-2021, and there is no sign those numbers will rebound. Many colleges and universities also have abandoned standardized tests for their admission requirements, disguising the frantic search for paying students as equity—but in doing so they have abandoned the attractiveness of college for young Americans who actually want something more than remedial courses from a college. American policymakers should focus on major reforms that make American higher education worth the price.
The leftists have destroyed them. If the leftists remain, there is no saving them.
The answer is “No, they can’t be saved, but perhaps the STEM departments can be.” “Saving” would require wholesale elimination of departments, firing of 90% of “administrators”, and eliminating affirmative action. That won’t happen. A non STEM degree (I’ll include finance and accounting here.) TODAY is negative value added.
Nope
With billions in endowments they aren’t going anywhere.
Going to college was the biggest mistake of my life. I was talking with an executive in the organization that hired me out of college. I asked if I could have gotten hired by the organization as a clerk out of high school. He said I would have had a good shot. Had I started there as a clerk, I would have paid my dues, learned how to put in an honest day’s work, and eventually transferred to the professional ranks. I learned nothing useful from college. I’ve been successful from what I’ve learned on the job.
Those extra five years I would have had (with pension credits and 401k contributions) would look really good right now as I get close to retirement.
College also turned me into a hardcore leftist, which messed up everything in my life for years.
No. Send your male children to trade schools...we will need them to FIX the mess created by progressive/marxist college students.
With billions in endowments they aren’t going anywhere.
Most schools are stuck in a vicious circle. The number of desirable students is decreasing, so they have to scrape the bottom of the barrel. As the article notes, many schools are trying to increase enrollments by dropping standards and dumbing down courses. This makes college less attractive to students that actually want to learn. It also imports a population that is a lot more challenging to educate because many lack the skills for even remedial courses. These students will not pass and will just be left with debt.
A great consolidation has to occur and probably will over the next 10-20 years.
Wrong question.
Should ask, how do we best educate the next generation.
Universities are not the only answer.
Sadly, they can’t.
Full admission — I’m a middle school English teacher and our country is doomed. This current generation of middle graders are lost — and while I do what I can to help guide them, and there are a handful of really good kids, the majority are vapid idiots (and their parents are as well.)
To quote the great sage, Bender J. Rodriguez, “We’re boned.”
I want a new car.
Women's IQ's are clustered around the mean... in time this will cause a dumbing down of our University systems and an unwillingness of the public to support them.
yes.
1. since colleges charge fees, under any other name thought of, stop federal subsidies, period.
2. since colleges are supposed to be on the cutting edge of knowledge, no tenure, since tenure is not based on new knowldge, but past laurels, which become obsolete.
3. students in any of the S.T.E.M. programs receive tax breaks, because the wages/salaries in those fields are above minimum wage, and are needed.
4. any college research projects connected with the military or space programs, be absorbed into DoD/NASA, and all the staff be placed under federal control, and include the non-tenure clause.
America's public school system must be totally dismantled and rebuilt. Rebuilt without federal meddling and without unions.
2-Require professors to personally instruct 75% of their classes.
3-Require all courses of study document their contribution to a career path.
4-Any costs associated with "student loan debt forgiveness" shall be borne by the University.
5-The entire campus shall be a "free speech zone".
A college degree is just as valuable as a nursery school diploma.
A college degree is just as valuable as a nursery school diploma.
They have already been destroyed.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.