Click here: to donate by Credit Card
Or here: to donate by PayPal
Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794
Thank you very much and God bless you.
Posted on 09/06/2026 6:10:38 AM PDT by MinorityRepublican
American colleges and universities are panicking, for good reason.
Enrollment across all of academia has been dropping for years, and starting now, there will be fewer and fewer college-aged people every year for the forseeable future.
Colleges are scrambling for a way to survive. Big schools are slashing their course offerings. Small schools are making desperate plays to find a niche in a shrinking market.
The bitter irony is this: American colleges and universities brought this crisis on themselves.
The Baby Bust has a thousand causes, but some of the most significant anti-natal cultural and economic trends were created by America’s colleges and universities.
From anti-family feminism to extended adolescence, through unreasonable expectations and mountains of debt, colleges created conditions that put their own survival at risk by turning out graduates who were indisposed to creating the next generation.
In 2007, the public had 4.32 million babies, and a Total Fertility Rate of 2.12 babies per woman — right about the “replacement level” at which a population can hold stable. Since then, the number of babies born has dropped nearly every year, reaching 3.61 million in 2025, giving us a Total Fertility Rate of 1.79.
As a result, there are fewer Americans under 18 than there were a decade ago. We’ve passed Peak Child as a country.
The Baby Bust began 18 years ago, which means that last Spring’s high school graduating class was the largest one for the foreseeable future. Basically, every year for at least the next 18 years, the number of potential college freshmen will fall. The high school class of 2044 will be about 16% smaller than the class of 2026 was.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonexaminer.com ...
|
|
Click here: to donate by Credit Card Or here: to donate by PayPal Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794 Thank you very much and God bless you. |
Their problem is that the product has gone to hell.
That's why I am so dead set against college football playoffs, transcontinental conferences, the transfer portal, "name-image-likeness," weekday games, and extending the season past New Years Day. Maybe University of Chicago president Robert Hutchins had a valid point when he had his school drop football and leave the Big Ten in 1939 and called on all universities in America to do the same.
We are already learning that fewer kids are playing football in high school, and that down the road we aren’t going to produce enough high-quality players, and therefore universities and the NFL will look more and more to foreign-born players, and set up “factories” in places like Africa.
I say in 20 years, more than half of football players will be foreigners.
I prefer a SEC University over an elite university in the north.
Even if the professors are woke, college students are less likely to be indoctrinated due to the dominant culture at SEC universities.
Not so much for the state funded secondary universities. My nephew was on a golf team that travelled a few hundred miles in shuttle buses. The flagship university up the road was flying the team down to play in Florida during the winter months..
Just typing out thoughts as read the article and the comments. What if we were getting closer to the post scarcity economy with AI and robots. One comment even mentioned growth not population being needed. I’m not advocating this just pondering, at what point would it make sense to end all welfare and entitlement programs and replace with universal basic income? I mean for everyone and then have paying jobs for those that require a human. Star Trek is based on such a post scarcity society. With so much debt accumulated and welfare programs such a large part of it, why not eliminate all of them in lieu of ubi? Please don’t roast me I am thinking past my lifetime and into the future like my grandkids and theirs. I’m no longer 25 like when I joined and never thought I would see AI, but I discuss issues with it daily now.
Patriots said that about offshoring and legal immigration (H-1B visas) and no one cared.
“Maybe young people are getting the message that it isn’t a great idea to take out and be saddled with loans of around $100,000 or more.”
especially for degrees such as wymin’s 19th century underwater basket weaving studies ...
or you can do all of that and eventually go to work as a Lowe’s clerk like one of my nephews did ... [my GOOD nephew is an amazing young man: hard worker and natural entrepreneur]
Listen to the sounds of decadence and decline.
This is what it sounds like when doves cry
I'm sure we can do it right now. Of course, we'll have to reform Social Security (you'll collect it only if you truly need it and you do not have financial assets).
they talked the Goose into taking birth control...
they talked the Goose into taking birth control...
...and abortions...
I believe Elon Musk has expressed thoughts going in that direction. Robots will do just about all the work, the concept of “money” will go away, and people will just live in a post-scarcity society.
Of course the idea can be criticized and potential problems could be identified. But these sorts of ideas are not ridiculous.
And a note for the young: socialism isn’t the thing that will get us to a wonderful post-scarcity society. A very rich industrialist who owns many factories might help us get there because he’s pursuing his own interests. But a tyrannical government headed by someone with a degree in lesbian dance theory who simply wants to burn down western civilization is not going to have the skills that take us to a good place. At all.
Correct. But what will it look like?
During the freshman years of my college, the dorms were overly packed with first-time student residents - anticipating some to drop out early. I don’t know if this is norm for other colleges.
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.