Posted on 11/13/2019 6:35:05 AM PST by karpov
Nationwide, higher education enrollment has been trending down for several years. According to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, 2019 was the eighth straight year of decline, with an overall drop of nearly 10 percent since 2011.
The reasons for this are many, including political, economic, and social factors. But the main one is demographic: Fewer students are graduating from high schools—not because graduation rates are down, but because birth rates fell by about 4 percent from 1990 to 2001.
Unfortunately, it’s only going to get worse. The number of live births in this country began another steep decline in 2008 following the Great Recession—one that is still ongoing. As a graph created by the National Center for Health Statistics and published in Bloomberg clearly illustrates, 2018 saw 12 percent fewer births than 2007, with no rebound in sight.
All of this means that, while college enrollments might fluctuate somewhat over the next several years, in 2026—when the children born in 2008 and after begin reaching college-age—enrollments will plunge.
As The Chronicle of Higher Education points out, and the Bloomberg article affirms, “The Great Enrollment Crash” will disproportionately affect community colleges, mid-sized regional universities, and small liberal arts colleges, twenty of which have closed their doors just since 2016. The well-endowed, elite privates will no doubt be just fine, as will large state flagships, with their popular football teams and waiting lists. But many smaller schools will be hurting—and more will probably join the “defunct” list.
The challenge for those institutions, then, is to devise a plan for surviving the crash.
Unfortunately, most of the advice they’re receiving from The Chronicle of Higher Education, Bloomberg, and elsewhere involves doubling down on what they’re doing now
(Excerpt) Read more at jamesgmartin.center ...
Easy they will lower standards!
The worse the “balance sheets” are for the college\university the lower the standard’s will go!
That will include state schools who have lived and grown well beyond their means for their respective states to support.
I did not read the article. I don’t need to.
The answer is plainly-obvious and already adopted in our college town, dominated by a well-known state college:
I hear more Chinese spoken in grocery aisles than Spanish...
Stop hiring political appointees?
2nd - Cut all courses that have no application outside academia,
3rd - Replace 80% of professors with people having at least 20 years experience in the real world. 4th - Prohibit the use of marble in the construction of any facilities.
They could start by eliminating useless course, like “Gender Studies”, “Womans Studies”, “LGTQ Studies”, and teach the Classics, not condemn them.
And, they need to provide counseling to all students to force them to define the marketable skills they expect to obtain and provide tracks to them.
In short, they need to become an Educational Institutione, not an Indoctrination camp!
Some Public colleges are actively recruiting more and more students from communist China and Muslim Krapistans etc. and adding special English teaching classes for them plus a full range of welfare assistance and other support programs
Mass Immigration has been the Public College cure.
Take your tax money. Give it to foreigners with easy, dumbed down curriculum.
That is the University’s business plan.
Screw your children.
Screw you too.
Give your money to foreigners.
It is simple really. Ingenious.
STEM programs, Management, and Health Care will survive
A true liberal arts program, without the “woke” indoctrination may still be valuable.
When I lived in Europe back in the 1960s and '70s, all things American were celebrated.
Held in highest esteem was the American education system. Europeans were thrilled with the American enthusiasm for the search for truth and the free exchange of ideas--for their own sake--but also because of all that they can produce.
"The more the student argues with the professor," they enthused, "the more delighted he becomes! Because the Americans are teaching how to THINK--how to THINK for oneself! And how to search for TRUTH--and how to find it!"
(This was in contrast to the traditional European teaching method, which was to accept without question whatever the professor taught.)
Fast forward to the 21st century. All this exceptionalism in American education has collapsed. American education has become indoctrination to political propaganda. Truth--truth for its own sake--is held in contempt. The free exchange of ideas has been crushed. Dissenting opinion is anathema.
1. Back in the late nineties technology had already reduced the cost of a professional music studio like the three to five million dollar (depending on whether or not you included the value of loaner instruments as part of the studio) Sun Records studio for maybe seventeen thousand dollars, and the patchwork of music download stores created an international distribution channel.
2. By the two thousands, Internet sites began challenge and rapidly replace traditional news outlets which were pretty much all subsequently liquidated or bought up by oligarchs as trophy propaganda outlets.
3. Starting in 2008, Sony's PRS series electronic readers began to make paperless books viable. The 2010 launch of iPad brought thin, general purpose platforms into the book replacement mix and a war of distribution channels followed which saw the big publishers bloodied (both from a public relations standpoint and from a punished by the justice department standpoint) so here we are today with growing editor and illustrating industries which are separate from the publishing industry and a varied crowdfunding industry which allows authors to purchase editing and illustrations outside of selling their copyrights to some publisher.
4. Academia. Academia with its vast campuses and crappy dormitories and private police forces appears to be teetering at the top of the obsolete business model waterfall. I think that this will be an interesting ride. Climb into your barrels.
I would love to see THIS system CRASH and burn.
I’m not so sure colleges can teach the classics anymore. How many professors know them today?
They’ll lower standards and add more ‘grievance’ classes. Any idiot can teach ‘gossip and hate’... AND any fool can pass those classes.
They can teach these kids an actual skill they can translate to dollars.
A new EE can’t get a job with their BSEE anymore. However, if you master a CAD system you can.
I can tell you one thing there’s no way in hell I’m ever paying $50,000 a year for my kid to go to college. No way. No how
Your point about not necessarily arguing with the professor but asking questions is very important !
I was a chemical engineering student at Berkeley in the late 1980s and nearly all of the students were Asian
and they were all taugt to sit and say nothing and just absorb material and study study study
and I would ask questions and they would glare at me
But the professor would be very glad and always say to me “thank you for asking that question that’s very interesting”’ and let’s diverge little bit on that particular part of organic chemistry that this student just brought up
When you’re at university you are paying the salaries of these professors
many of my professors at Berkeley were Nobel laureate- very very brilliant man and loved to be engaged!
take that as very important advice for any of your kids that are ever going to university
1a - starting with the Dean of Diversity and his/her/xir minions.
Example: Ohio State employs 88 diversity-related staffers at a cost of $7.3M annually
https://www.thecollegefix.com/ohio-state-employs-88-diversity-related-staffers-at-a-cost-of-7-3m-annually/
There’s a BIG FUTURE in Remedial High School.
Particularly if you can get a government grant to subsidize it!
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