American Colleges Are Committing Suicide. Self-inflicted wounds, not changing demographics, are undermining the higher-ed sector.

James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal ^ | March 1, 2023 | Richard K. Vedder

[karpov]

The evidence is everywhere: American colleges and universities are dying. Not all will die very soon—indeed, probably only a modest portion will. But the trend is unmistakably downward.

Why?

Is it because, suddenly, Americans stopped having babies and therefore the market for students is drying up? While demographics do play a role (not only birth rates but also international migration), the bigger problems are largely self-inflicted—decisions made mostly within the academic villages constituting today’s modern colleges and universities.

Let’s start with a little evidence. Enrollment in universities has fallen consistently for years. National Student Clearinghouse data reveal that, in the span from fall 2017 to fall 2022, total enrollment fell by nearly two million, from 19,949,828 to 18,165,619. I cannot think of another period in American history in which this has happened, although regular, reliable enrollment data are not available for periods before, say, 1850.

Additionally, there has already been an uptick in the number of schools closing or merging with other institutions. As we read here, credit rating services like Fitch are warning of “more operating woes” in the future.

The massive pandemic funding that began in 2020 is ending, exposing universities to grave financial weaknesses. Massive federal relief is extremely unlikely, particularly with Republicans now controlling the House of Representatives and federal finances increasingly precarious because of massive deficits, rising interest rates, and unfunded liabilities.

So how are colleges killing themselves, committing unintentional suicide? Five ways.

First are the high fees they charge. The tuition fees of colleges today are nearly triple what they were a half-century ago after correcting for inflation. [Editor’s note: Cheers to UNC for freezing tuition for the seventh year in a row.] Since the 1980s, the rise in tuition fees has exceeded the growth in family incomes, meaning college has become less affordable.

[Jonty30]

Demographics can be dealt with, but damaged products cannot be dealt with.

[GrandJediMasterYoda]

“First are the high fees they charge. The tuition fees of colleges today are nearly triple what they were a half-century ago after correcting for inflation”

Which is completely, totally, utterly ignored by these Marxists who demand student debt be cancelled, most recently by the professional psychopath head of the teachers union Randi Weingarten who gets paid half a million a year.

[Political Junkie Too]

Here is the most recent post of my boilerplate on universities.

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Because colleges today are putting out a product that nobody wants. They are producing buggy whips.

I wrote this piece in 2020 from the perspective of college graduates not being able to pay off their expensive university degrees.

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I believe the problem is that universities are putting out a product that there is no demand for.

I believe it's a three-fold issue.

1. The job market isn't paying the salaries.
2. The students aren't pursuing the marketable degrees.
3. The universities are cranking out graduates without regard to whether the job market is there for the graduates. In other words, they are graduating buggy whips.

The causes for #1 are two-fold:

1. The jobs are being off-shored to lower-cost geographies.
2. The cheaper workers are being imported via H-1B visas and are displacing our graduates.

The causes for #2 are two-fold:

1. The students are choosing social-justice degrees with no anchoring in reality.
2. The K-12 schools are socially promoting students who either aren't ready for college or are better suited to trade studies.

The causes for #3 are two-fold:

1. The students have been socially indoctrinated to believe the only way to succeed is with a college degree, so everyone must now go to college.
2. The change to government-sponsored student loans has made it easy for universities to pad their enrollments in order to get the funding to sustain their tenures and research programs.

I believe that if there is a market balance between supply and demand then the price paid will equal the cost plus profit. If the universities were balancing the supply of graduates with the demand for graduates, this would mean that the graduates were being paid a salary that allowed them to pay off their loans plus their living expenses.

The fact is that the university degree market is completely unbalanced and out of whack. Young students may be making good decisions to pursue a degree, but many are too uninformed at that age to understand that the universities are glutting the market right now. The universities have built up a capital investment in professors and manufactured an inventory of graduates that can't be sold.

The university result will eventually be the same as a business selling unwanted products: their inventory of unsold graduates will lose their value (in terms of alumni donations, university brand reputation, etc.), and the university might eventually go out of business if they can't get new student enrollments because the word is out that their graduates are unemployable.

Is all of this the fault of the student loan scam? Is it the result of students making bad career decisions? Is it the fault of businesses that are looking for cheaper workers or exporting jobs? Is it the fault of universities hungry for students flush with loan cash that they keep taking them in regardless of the ability of the job market to absorb the graduates?

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This was written before the avalanche of "wokeism" has overthrown free speech and exposure to new ideas on our college campuses (it was starting, but not the frenzy it is now). It's a sad state that today's students think they know better than the professors.

-PJ

[kabar]

Half of the children 18 and under are minorities with each cohort that turns 18 a higher percentage minority than the previous one. Blacks and Hispanics are not performing well academically compared to whites and Asians.

Blacks and Hispanics are less likely to go to college. Hence the trend of declining enrollment by Americans. Colleges are making up the shortfall with foreign students. Add to that college costs that are increasing faster than inflation, which discourages attendance of both American and foreign students. The bottom line is the business model for colleges and universities is doomed in the long term.

[Jonty30]

I agree it is doomed, as it is currently structured.
They need to eliminate lecturers and go with some sort of mass lecturer who has superstar qualities to his ability to speak.

I think we need to consider more on the job training, like we used to do. Work for 10 hours and go to onsite school for two hours. Something like that.

[The Duke]

America’s colleges and universities deliver far less value at far greater cost. If America survives the social upheaval that is coming, then things will get better.

[maddog55]

It’s not higher education any more, it’s mass Indoctrination that people are sending their kids to get and at a very high price both literally and mentally.

A lobotomy would be cheaper and the results would be better.

[fieldmarshaldj]

Time to destroy the massive (mis-)educational industrial complex that turns out brainwashed, perverted, America-hating Stalinazi cretins who couldn’t run a lemonade stand.

[Erik Latranyi]

Brick & Mortar universities are outdated and unnecessary.

Online education is the key.

For hands-on work, cooperatives with businesses can fulfill the need as businesses use the latest technology and operate in the real world.

University professors have no real-world experience and exist in a theoretical world.

Lastly, online education and cooperatives eliminate the unnecessary teaching (indoctrination) of students.

[kabar]

Demography is destiny. Our K-12 schools are a disaster, especially the ones in our largest cities. They are populated by mostly black and Hispanic students who are Ill-prepared academically for college. Many drop out of school.

The native population is expected to add an average of 1.3 million people per year, compared with 579,000 per year for the foreign-born population living in the United States.

The non-Hispanic White population is projected to shrink over coming decades, from 199 million in 2020 to 179 million people in 2060— even as the U.S. population continues to grow. Their decline is driven by falling birth rates and rising number of deaths over time as the non-Hispanic White population ages. In comparison, the White population, regardless of Hispanic origin, is projected to grow from 253 million to 275 million over the same period.

https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2020/demo/p25-1144.pdf

[Gaffer]

I graduated from the North Avenue Trade School in 1980. It was based on the quarter system then but the GI bill payments I got for tuition and some of the books was enough to cover the cost.

IMO, the only real way to attend college in Georgia now is to qualify for the Hope Scholarship (funded partially by the GA Lottery, IIRC.)

[kabar]

See my post #11. I agree that colleges are not preparing students to enter the job market and that our K-12 educational system needs to be reformed similarly. We need an apprenticeship track for high school students to prepare them to work in the trades. Partnerships with business and industry could be used to facilitate the process.

But the elephant in the room is the changing demographics of the student body. The failure to provide adequate education for blacks and Hispanics plus cultural linguistic and economic factors will make us less competitive. And open borders are overwhelming our schools, hospitals, and prisons.

[Varsity Flight]

📂

[Liaison]

The professors are really pseudo marxists living off the back of thier students and the state. They feel for the people and march in the streets with the cause heads, give speeches on their populist themes but have the amenities, lifestyle, and power of the affluent.
They built their utopia on a Ponzi scheme.

[KarlInOhio]

Quick summary of the five points:

1. High costs with too much spent on non-academic staff, many of whom are not merely useless but are actively harmful to education.

2. Many attending college do not graduate or are underemployed after graduation. With higher admission and lower standards a bachelor's degree is no longer seen as a sorting mechanism.

3. Loss of freedom of thought. The left will crush those who oppose their orthodoxy.

4. Alternative training that is both faster and cheaper that is more directed rather than general. So much for the "education" vs. "merely training" I was beaten with in college when I complained about worthless gen Ed classes. Training is winning.

5. Employers are beginning to drop degree requirements as a barrier to entry.

[KarlInOhio]

Once you get above thirty or so students in a class where the students can interact and actively question the teacher, the size of the class no longer matters. Whether you have two hundred in a lecture hall or twenty thousand online you still only need one teacher. Thus why have one hundred professors teaching one hundred 200-person classes when you can have the best one teach the video class.

I had a relative who was a teacher complain (constantly) about how much athletes made and how little teachers made. She didn't like it when I told her to fire all but the top 300 teachers (about the number of players in the NBA at the time), have them teach video classes for every elementary and high school class and they could make millions. The rest of the staff in the schools would be like arena ushers and concession stand workers to keep the students in line and feed them lunch.

[Carl Vehse]

Colleges are headed for the "demographic cliff" in 2025.

[Carl Vehse]

"In other words, they are graduating buggy whips."

They graduating "morlocks and eloi".

[FLT-bird]

As others have pointed out, the cost is way too high. That can be fixed to a great extent by firing the vast majority of administrators. For an example of what the cost could be without all that administrative overhead, look at community colleges which for the most part, deliver solid value for money.

Secondly, worthless majors like most “studies” need to be eliminated. I have a radical idea. How about tracking how your grads do? What percent are employed within a year? In what fields and what are they paid per year on average? Getting rid of worthless majors would result in far better outcomes. That would be a strong selling point for students and their parents to come to that school.

Thirdly, strictly enforce academic merit. Not only require SAT scores but place greater weight on them. It doesn’t really matter what community service you did. What matters is your GPA and especially your standardized test scores. The latter are the key to comparing students from different high schools.

Fourth, a lot of classes in the first two years can be taught online. A friend’s daughter just got admitted to my alma mater, UF. She is required to take her first two years worth of coursework online. Alternatively, taking more state community college grads would be another useful sorting device. A school could graduate a lot more students that way. The actual bricks and mortar are the bottleneck.

Fifth, if you’re going to require diversity, then extend that to the most important kind of diversity which is diversity of thought/worldview. Effectively, this means Leftists need not apply for at least a generation. By that time, you will have some balance in the faculty restored. That will then take care of the Leftist dogma being strictly enforced on campus. Personnel is policy. Get rid of the vast majority of the Leftists.