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College enrollment plummets
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Gamenole Offline
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College enrollment plummets
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
01-13-2022 12:24 PM
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IWokeUpLikeThis Offline
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RE: College enrollment plummets
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
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DFW HOYA Offline
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RE: College enrollment plummets
Further down from the headline: "That's driven in part by changing demographic patterns that mean fewer college-age adults."
01-13-2022 12:42 PM
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b2b Offline
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College enrollment plummets
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 12:46 PM
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Gamenole Offline
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RE: College enrollment plummets
(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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I agree! We've tried to shove college at everyone for far too long, when what's really needed is further education beyond high school in some form. Many tradesmen will make far more, and have far more job security, than your average liberal arts grad from a four year university.
01-13-2022 12:49 PM
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DavidSt Offline
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RE: College enrollment plummets
(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.

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 12:49 PM
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CliftonAve Offline
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RE: College enrollment plummets
(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.

Here in Ohio a lot of people that may have picked the community colleges are going to the branch colleges at the 4 year schools. They are offering discounted tuition (50% or more) and can place you at the main campuses after two years if your GPA is high enough. If you don’t want to go to the main campus you can get your Associate’s degree.
01-13-2022 01:08 PM
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Frank the Tank Online
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RE: College enrollment plummets
(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.

Nope. Very much the opposite. Community colleges in the vast majority of places got crushed during the pandemic.

What you're seeing is a classic "Tale of Two Cities" situation with a complete difference between higher-ranked schools versus lower-ranked schools. At the top end, there's a massive flight to quality. Applications to elite schools and brand name flagships/flagship-equivalents are higher than ever and there are more people willing to pay full price for such schools than ever, which means that admissions to those schools are tougher than ever. Make no mistake about it: whenever you see these broad-based national stories about concerns about future college enrollment, they absolutely do not apply to the elite schools (like the Ivy League) or the vast majority of P5 schools.

The brand name schools are stronger than ever and it makes sense because (a) the ROI is still very clear on getting degrees from such schools and (b) the types of students that would be admitted to those schools and their respective parents would NOT be the ones to even give two seconds of thinking of not going to college regardless of cost (outside of the unicorn genius that gets into Harvard and then drops out because they're founding Microsoft or Facebook).

It's all of the tiers below that level that are having enrollment issues. Those schools are enrolling students that are more likely to have financial and academic challenges in attending and graduating from school within a reasonable period of time. As a result, they're the ones that are way more likely to stop attending college or make the decision to not attend at all.
01-13-2022 01:08 PM
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Frank the Tank Online
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RE: College enrollment plummets
(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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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 01:34 PM
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teamvsn Offline
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RE: College enrollment plummets
(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.

That's the figure that shows when you google it, from 2016. But it's wrong.

APU's 20-21 Fact sheet shows about 4500 undergraduates, but more tellingly, only 624 freshmen started classes that year. That's a huge drop in enrollment, and it happened for a variety of reasons. But the one most unique to APU was a controversy that caused many of it's traditional base of evangelical alumni and incoming students to lose confidence in the school. You can google it if you want. They still haven't recovered yet, but I think they will.

But apart from APU, this article seems to use selective stats. It's true that demographics are falling but not as dramatically as enrollment. They mark 2012 as the year of comparison, but it's long been understood by economists that when there's a recession (in 2008), college enrollment booms. This is because when it's hard to find a job, staying in school looks a lot more attractive. And will help you find a job when you get out. It's a nice way of taking shelter in a bad economy. It takes 4 years to complete, and by 2012 the economy was recovering to some degree, so fewer potential students were enrolling, many were graduating, and many were leaving early because the job market improved.

Add to that: tuition keeps going up, many people are starting to see many Universities as indoctrination centers, and Covid creating an inferior educational experience.

We've had a lot of turmoil since 2008. Demographics will continue to be an issue, but if things ever settle down, only then will we be able to make a solid comparison, and it should be to historical levels, not a peak year like 2012.
01-13-2022 01:48 PM
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quo vadis Offline
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RE: College enrollment plummets
Demographic changes, exacerbated by covid-19 restrictions that have largely drained campus life of its pleasures.
01-13-2022 02:11 PM
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RE: College enrollment plummets
(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).

Completely agree with the bolded. The amount of effort and resources elite universities place on supporting matriculated students is impressive. It may be incredibly competitive to get accepted, but once enrolled there is a significant difference in quality. It’s not the curriculum that is necessarily different…it’s the overall support system. Driving higher graduation rates is not just an NCAA objective, it applies to all students.

All the power conferences have universities with strong profiles. Even when the B12 needed to expand with the best football programs available, it was impressive how they also managed to enhance the general academic profile of the conference. Each of the additions brought solid academic reputation, enrollment size and/or research heft. Not sure that the general decline in potential students will equally impact the P5.
01-13-2022 02:24 PM
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Big 12 fan too Offline
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RE: College enrollment plummets
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 02:24 PM
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RE: College enrollment plummets
(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 02:37 PM
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Wedge Offline
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RE: College enrollment plummets
(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).

This. College is not a scam. Luring people into borrowing massive amounts of money for some college or program from which only 25% or 35% of students ever graduate, and then making people who didn't graduate pay off the loans -- that is a scam.
01-13-2022 02:46 PM
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Big 12 fan too Offline
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Post: #16
RE: College enrollment plummets
(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.
You interpreted that to mean 1-to-1 replacement. That was not the contention.

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.
(This post was last modified: 01-13-2022 03:09 PM by Big 12 fan too.)
01-13-2022 03:08 PM
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RE: College enrollment plummets
(01-13-2022 03:08 PM)Big 12 fan too Wrote:  
(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.
You interpreted that to mean 1-to-1 replacement. That was not the contention.

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.

I'm not disagreeing that there are plenty of schools (mostly private but some public) that are redundant and will close as the echo boomers age out of college.That being said, the numbers aren't as high as folks think, since the cost/benefit of completing a college education is still greater than not pursuing some sort of post secondary education (including trade schools that lead to careers that, while paying good incomes, physically wear out folks quicker). To me it's like folks investing in index funds. There hasn't been a better way of gaining enough return on investment to ensure your future on a continuous, long term basis.
01-13-2022 03:42 PM
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Post: #18
RE: College enrollment plummets
(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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I agree 100%.
01-13-2022 04:31 PM
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Attackcoog Offline
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Post: #19
RE: College enrollment plummets
(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

Its certainly true that the likely earnings for many 4-year degrees is lower than many trades. Auto mechanics and welders are more than capable of making very solid salaries that can exceed $100K a year these days. Yes---they may have to work more than 40 hrs a week to hit those kinds of numbers---but many with degrees are working more than 40 hours a week as well.
(This post was last modified: 01-13-2022 05:31 PM by Attackcoog.)
01-13-2022 05:30 PM
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RE: College enrollment plummets
(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.

Exactly. Online learning has proven to be an inferior product. There will still be a decline in enrollment and culling of schools because of demographics, but not as great as predicted. All the K-12 kids in the last 2 years will want something better, something real, for their college experience. And that's the key phrase: college experience. Online learning is in no way a college experience. It is a "content only" option that has it's own merits, and place, but it isn't a college experience.

I think an even more significant factor than the culling of campuses will be the competitive pressure this environment brings. The ones who survive will be the ones that can either deliver more for the money, or deliver the same for less money. Campuses in the last few decades have become known for the frills provided to students; I think many will retrench and deliver more of the "spartan" experience I experienced in the '80s. And the kids will be better off for it.
01-13-2022 05:33 PM
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