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.
If you know someone who wants to learn a trade look at the Apprentice School in Virginia Beach. They pay the students while they learn. It’s a ship building company but the it teaches multiple trades. https://www.as.edu/
I watched a short “man on the street” video last night (sorry no link). A guy was asking high school and one college grad simple question like “how many states are there”, “who is vice president”, not one could answer those basic questions. Sad, we are doomed.
Regarding item 4 those DOD,etc programs are already financially administered under the DFAR (DOD oriented rules subset of the FAR - Federal Aquisition Regulations). How much more DOD control do you want? Many of the topics come out through the SBIR\STTR program of which DOD is the lion’s share. (NSF participates with a wide range of topics!)
Why would anyone want to save them?
Like asking if we should save those piles of dog poop all over the front yard...
Burn them all down to the ground and send the professors to live in North Korea and Cuba.
In my department the professors generally teach a 4-4 load and teach all of their courses in person (or online). There are also a few full-time adjuncts (some with Ph.D.'s) who teach a 5-5 load. I realize there are doctoral institutions where faculty may have a 2-2 load or even less. We offer master's degrees but no Ph.D.'s.
No, it wasn't Joe Biden.
T.Y.!! its been a while, since loking at F.A.R.’s.
former DoD QA @ Grumman in NY.
I am not surprised. Again, I teach middle school and I am stunned by how utterly stupid the majority of students are.
Further, their parents (largely white, upper middle class professionals) are absolutely vapid idiots.
All of the kids insist they’re going to be important Tik Tok influencers, dancers, rappers, sports figures, etc.
They don’t need educations because they’re all special and only losers who don’t have talent need educations.
It is really scary.
We can thank hand held devices for a lot of this and the “everyone gets a trophy” mindset. My wife’s a teacher and I was a long time school board member so it’s not like I don’t have a perspective. The left’s “long march through the institutions” is now in full display.
Anyone who permits their children screens of any sort beside one weekly movie is committing child abuse imho.
Screens of all sorts harm brain development
All my little idiots can’t exist without their screens. Can’t think anything except what Tik Tok tells them to.
What grade does your wife teach? Private message me if you’d prefer not to say here. I’d love to talk with other people in education. I’m in deep cover — although there are conservatives where I am.
But so many of the teachers are mind numbed left-tards. I keep my views very quiet.
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