01-13-2022, 12:24 PM
Here's a story that at some point is likely to impact all of our cherished realignment scenarios -
https://www.axios.com/college-enrollment...6d3e0.html
https://www.axios.com/college-enrollment...6d3e0.html
Quote:Public two-year colleges remain the hardest hit sector since the pandemic began, with a 13.2% drop since 2019.
Students seeking associate's degrees dropped sharply, with enrollment falling 6.2% this year and 14.1% over the last two years.
(01-13-2022 12:46 PM)b2b Wrote: [ -> ]Hopefully more high schoolers are becoming interested in trades. 4 year university is a scam in a lot of ways. Much of that depends on the major though.
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(01-13-2022 12:33 PM)IWokeUpLikeThis Wrote: [ -> ]Quote:Public two-year colleges remain the hardest hit sector since the pandemic began, with a 13.2% drop since 2019.
Students seeking associate's degrees dropped sharply, with enrollment falling 6.2% this year and 14.1% over the last two years.
I would've thought the pandemic would help community colleges steal students from 4-year schools, if anything. That's what happened during the recession.
I think not having traditional classes during the pandemic is another factor killing enrollment. You can't understate the number of students who learn through conversation and experience in the classroom. That can't be replicated online. Online classes are moreso going through the motions to earn a credit than actual learning or experience.
While some colleges still technically hold traditional classes right now, they're where everyone is wearing a mask. You can't have quality communication and bonding that way.
(01-13-2022 12:33 PM)IWokeUpLikeThis Wrote: [ -> ]Quote:Public two-year colleges remain the hardest hit sector since the pandemic began, with a 13.2% drop since 2019.
Students seeking associate's degrees dropped sharply, with enrollment falling 6.2% this year and 14.1% over the last two years.
I would've thought the pandemic would help community colleges steal students from 4-year schools, if anything. That's what happened during the recession.
I think not having traditional classes during the pandemic is another factor killing enrollment. You can't understate the number of students who learn through conversation and experience in the classroom. That can't be replicated online. Online classes are moreso going through the motions to earn a credit than actual learning or experience.
While some colleges still technically hold traditional classes right now, they're where everyone is wearing a mask. You can't have quality communication and bonding that way.
(01-13-2022 12:33 PM)IWokeUpLikeThis Wrote: [ -> ]Quote:Public two-year colleges remain the hardest hit sector since the pandemic began, with a 13.2% drop since 2019.
Students seeking associate's degrees dropped sharply, with enrollment falling 6.2% this year and 14.1% over the last two years.
I would've thought the pandemic would help community colleges steal students from 4-year schools, if anything. That's what happened during the recession.
I think not having traditional classes during the pandemic is another factor killing enrollment. You can't understate the number of students who learn through conversation and experience in the classroom. That can't be replicated online. Online classes are moreso going through the motions to earn a credit than actual learning or experience.
While some colleges still technically hold traditional classes right now, they're where everyone is wearing a mask. You can't have quality communication and bonding that way.
(01-13-2022 12:46 PM)b2b Wrote: [ -> ]Hopefully more high schoolers are becoming interested in trades. 4 year university is a scam in a lot of ways. Much of that depends on the major though.
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(01-13-2022 12:49 PM)DavidSt Wrote: [ -> ]Depends on the locations. Azusa Pacific went from like 8000 a few years ago now over 10,000. In areas like the midwest and northeast with some declining populations, there are too many 4 and 2 year schools.
(01-13-2022 01:34 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote: [ -> ](01-13-2022 12:46 PM)b2b Wrote: [ -> ]Hopefully more high schoolers are becoming interested in trades. 4 year university is a scam in a lot of ways. Much of that depends on the major though.
Sent from my Pixel 3 using Tapatalk
Eh - I see this comment pretty much on every single article that I've ever seen about college enrollment, but it's a lot more nuanced.
To be sure, I agree that there's a lot of demand for trades and we need more people to fill those roles.
On the other hand, I think there's an assumption that people that don't go to college can simply go into the trades when that really isn't any more true than assuming that people that don't go to college can instantly make six figures by simply going to a coding bootcamp or, even better, simply start a business and be an entrepreneur (neglecting the fact the failure rate of startups is 90%).
Trade school is a multi-year investment with a lot of classes and training in the same manner as college. Depending on where you live, getting a job may depend on whether you're able to join the applicable local union, which isn't always a straight-forward process. The reasonable length of a trade career isn't going to be the same for the typical white collar profession because physical health and limitations eventually get in the way (e.g. it's absolutely nothing for an accountant or lawyer to work at 65, whereas trades people realistically need to plan to stop doing on-the-ground work in their 50s).
Of course, this is all assuming that you have the aptitude to perform well in the trades in the first place. I was a pretty good student in school... but I would have been *horrible* in the trades. Whenever there's a DIY project that has an expected time for completion, you pretty much have to double that time for me. That's just not how my brain works and I think that goes for a lot of people in the same way that not everyone can turn themselves into a computer scientist no matter how hard they try.
The upshot is that it's not really a one-to-one relationship between people not choosing to go to college being able to realistically switch to go into the trades. It's going to be a much smaller percentage that could realistically do so than what a lot of the Internet seems to want to believe.
At the same time, for all of the horror stories about students going into massive debt for college, you can see it very clearly in every single employment report going back for many years at this point: there is a DIRECT connection between having a college degree with higher earnings, higher employment rates, higher net worth and more choices for careers. It's not even close.
Now, that doesn't mean that EVERY college grad is better off than EVERY non-college grad. All of us can probably find examples of someone that is very successful that never finished college. My wife's wealthiest uncle by a wide margin is someone that never even finished high school. Yet, let's all make sure to not make the mistake of thinking that the anecdotal exception is the rule. When looking across hundreds of millions of people in the United States, it's very clear that college degree holders as a whole have advantages on every single financial and employment metric.
Finally, a lot of these articles always neglect the people that are really screwed: the ones that attended some college but never graduated. That is the group that ends up with a disproportionate amount of college debt while never getting a degree... which means that they never get the financial and employment advantages of degree holders as described above. Essentially, they're getting all of the downside of college debt without any of the upside of a college degree, which is the worst of both worlds. Those are the people that we all should be worried about as opposed to the sensational stories about people taking out hundreds of thousands of dollars for an Ivy League degree (as those people are going to end up just fine as a general matter).
(01-13-2022 02:24 PM)Big 12 fan too Wrote: [ -> ]It’s long been viewed that on-campus 4-year colleges would become luxury goods as online learning posed an existential threat. Covid an accelerant to this. And it being a luxury good isn’t going to favor the NIU types.
Realignment has a place in the conversation. It is much cheaper to offer top level on-campus athletics than it is change your academic profile. Increasing the AD budget $50 million to have product differentiation is a steal
(01-13-2022 01:34 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote: [ -> ](01-13-2022 12:46 PM)b2b Wrote: [ -> ]Hopefully more high schoolers are becoming interested in trades. 4 year university is a scam in a lot of ways. Much of that depends on the major though.
Sent from my Pixel 3 using Tapatalk
Eh - I see this comment pretty much on every single article that I've ever seen about college enrollment, but it's a lot more nuanced.
To be sure, I agree that there's a lot of demand for trades and we need more people to fill those roles.
On the other hand, I think there's an assumption that people that don't go to college can simply go into the trades when that really isn't any more true than assuming that people that don't go to college can instantly make six figures by simply going to a coding bootcamp or, even better, simply start a business and be an entrepreneur (neglecting the fact the failure rate of startups is 90%).
Trade school is a multi-year investment with a lot of classes and training in the same manner as college. Depending on where you live, getting a job may depend on whether you're able to join the applicable local union, which isn't always a straight-forward process. The reasonable length of a trade career isn't going to be the same for the typical white collar profession because physical health and limitations eventually get in the way (e.g. it's absolutely nothing for an accountant or lawyer to work at 65, whereas trades people realistically need to plan to stop doing on-the-ground work in their 50s).
Of course, this is all assuming that you have the aptitude to perform well in the trades in the first place. I was a pretty good student in school... but I would have been *horrible* in the trades. Whenever there's a DIY project that has an expected time for completion, you pretty much have to double that time for me. That's just not how my brain works and I think that goes for a lot of people in the same way that not everyone can turn themselves into a computer scientist no matter how hard they try.
The upshot is that it's not really a one-to-one relationship between people not choosing to go to college being able to realistically switch to go into the trades. It's going to be a much smaller percentage that could realistically do so than what a lot of the Internet seems to want to believe.
At the same time, for all of the horror stories about students going into massive debt for college, you can see it very clearly in every single employment report going back for many years at this point: there is a DIRECT connection between having a college degree with higher earnings, higher employment rates, higher net worth and more choices for careers. It's not even close.
Now, that doesn't mean that EVERY college grad is better off than EVERY non-college grad. All of us can probably find examples of someone that is very successful that never finished college. My wife's wealthiest uncle by a wide margin is someone that never even finished high school. Yet, let's all make sure to not make the mistake of thinking that the anecdotal exception is the rule. When looking across hundreds of millions of people in the United States, it's very clear that college degree holders as a whole have advantages on every single financial and employment metric.
Finally, a lot of these articles always neglect the people that are really screwed: the ones that attended some college but never graduated. That is the group that ends up with a disproportionate amount of college debt while never getting a degree... which means that they never get the financial and employment advantages of degree holders as described above. Essentially, they're getting all of the downside of college debt without any of the upside of a college degree, which is the worst of both worlds. Those are the people that we all should be worried about as opposed to the sensational stories about people taking out hundreds of thousands of dollars for an Ivy League degree (as those people are going to end up just fine as a general matter).
(01-13-2022 02:37 PM)whittx Wrote: [ -> ]You interpreted that to mean 1-to-1 replacement. That was not the contention.(01-13-2022 02:24 PM)Big 12 fan too Wrote: [ -> ]It’s long been viewed that on-campus 4-year colleges would become luxury goods as online learning posed an existential threat. Covid an accelerant to this. And it being a luxury good isn’t going to favor the NIU types.
Realignment has a place in the conversation. It is much cheaper to offer top level on-campus athletics than it is change your academic profile. Increasing the AD budget $50 million to have product differentiation is a steal
The assumption that online learning is close enough to an in-person experience to warrant taking exclusively online programs has not proven to be true for most students. Maybe for the college as commodity folks but not for people that have experienced both. Unless the cost of a residential experience skyrockets even faster than it has already or if the virtual classroom experience improves to a degree that is difficult to Imagine, a larger than expected percentage of folks will continue to seek the in-person option.
(01-13-2022 03:08 PM)Big 12 fan too Wrote: [ -> ](01-13-2022 02:37 PM)whittx Wrote: [ -> ]You interpreted that to mean 1-to-1 replacement. That was not the contention.(01-13-2022 02:24 PM)Big 12 fan too Wrote: [ -> ]It’s long been viewed that on-campus 4-year colleges would become luxury goods as online learning posed an existential threat. Covid an accelerant to this. And it being a luxury good isn’t going to favor the NIU types.
Realignment has a place in the conversation. It is much cheaper to offer top level on-campus athletics than it is change your academic profile. Increasing the AD budget $50 million to have product differentiation is a steal
The assumption that online learning is close enough to an in-person experience to warrant taking exclusively online programs has not proven to be true for most students. Maybe for the college as commodity folks but not for people that have experienced both. Unless the cost of a residential experience skyrockets even faster than it has already or if the virtual classroom experience improves to a degree that is difficult to Imagine, a larger than expected percentage of folks will continue to seek the in-person option.
The fixed costs of the on-campus infrastructure and decreasing state support of many universities simply cannot absorb decreasing enrollments that comes with cheaper alternatives for education.
(01-13-2022 12:46 PM)b2b Wrote: [ -> ]Hopefully more high schoolers are becoming interested in trades. 4 year university is a scam in a lot of ways. Much of that depends on the major though.
Sent from my Pixel 3 using Tapatalk
(01-13-2022 12:46 PM)b2b Wrote: [ -> ]Hopefully more high schoolers are becoming interested in trades. 4 year university is a scam in a lot of ways. Much of that depends on the major though.
Sent from my Pixel 3 using Tapatalk
(01-13-2022 02:37 PM)whittx Wrote: [ -> ](01-13-2022 02:24 PM)Big 12 fan too Wrote: [ -> ]It’s long been viewed that on-campus 4-year colleges would become luxury goods as online learning posed an existential threat. Covid an accelerant to this. And it being a luxury good isn’t going to favor the NIU types.
Realignment has a place in the conversation. It is much cheaper to offer top level on-campus athletics than it is change your academic profile. Increasing the AD budget $50 million to have product differentiation is a steal
The assumption that online learning is close enough to an in-person experience to warrant taking exclusively online programs has not proven to be true for most students. Maybe for the college as commodity folks but not for people that have experienced both. Unless the cost of a residential experience skyrockets even faster than it has already or if the virtual classroom experience improves to a degree that is difficult to Imagine, a larger than expected percentage of folks will continue to seek the in-person option.