The Left watered down college degrees. Between Affirmative Action Racism and other Leftist indoctrination, potential students realize these schools offer nothing worth learning compared to what students can learn on their own online.
I work in a community college and have watched the decline over the last thirty years. The majority of the students now want a technical degree in healthcare, HVAC, CDL, Welding, Plumbing etc.. They want hands on training, they don’t want to be bothered paying for history or typical gen-ed classes, and they want to be in and out and working within a eighteen months or less.
The old guard gen-ed professors are still bucking the trends and demanding all take their classes regardless declaring they are educators not there to train people for jobs or careers and they are starting to lose their power and it’s accelerating.
That being said the online classes started roughly a dozen years ago and with covid accelerated and they are proving to be worthless. Lots of students getting A’s and passing yet can’t perform in the real world. Online classes work, but for certain areas and certain, go getter students. If you are taking a six or eight week online class you will find it is nothing more than busy work with little to no instruction. You are nothing more than an enrollment number and $ to administration.
Community colleges will survive because of the technical side of education and training however, the typical public/private four years college/universities are going to face hard times because the students realize that four year degree is not worth anything and cost a lot of money to obtain.