Source:https://www.npr.org/2025/01/08/nx-s...f-fewer-college-students-mean-fewer-graduates
Archive.:https://archive.ph/63x8r
Pickup trucks with trailers and cars with yawning trunks pulled up onto untended lawns in front of buildings from which people lugged books, furniture, mattresses, trophy cases and artwork.
Anything else of value had already been sold by a company that specializes in auctioning off the leftover assets of failed businesses. At least one of the buildings was soon to be demolished altogether, its red-brick walls dumped into its 1921 foundation.
This was the unceremonious end of Iowa Wesleyan University, a 181-year-old institution that closed in 2023 after financial losses due in part to discounts it gave out as it struggled to attract a shrinking pool of students.
When a college closes, "all the things that are mementos of the best four years of a lot of people's lives are sold to the highest bidders," says Doug Moore, founding partner of a firm that has helped handle the logistics of shutting down four colleges in the last few years, including Iowa Wesleyan.
"The impact of this is economic decline," Jeff Strohl, director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, says bluntly.
As fresh data emerges, the outlook is getting only worse. An analysis by the higher education consulting firm Ruffalo Noel Levitz, using the latest available census figures, now projects another drop in the number of 18-year-olds beginning in 2033, after a brief uptick. By 2039, this estimate shows, there will likely be 650,000, or 15%, fewer of them per year than there are now.
These findings sync up with another new report, released in December by the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE), which says that the number of 18-year-olds nationwide who graduate from high school each year — and are therefore candidates for college — will erode by 13%, or nearly half a million, by 2041.
"A few hundred thousand per year might not sound like a lot," Strohl says. "But multiply that by a decade, and it has a big impact."
In the first half of last year, more than one college a week announced that it would close. Still more new research, from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, projects that the pace of college closings could now accelerate.
The news is not all bad. For students, it means a buyer's market. Colleges and universities, on average, are admitting a larger proportion of their applicants than they did 20 years ago, new research by the think tank the American Enterprise Institute finds. And tuition, when adjusted for inflation, is declining, according to College Board. (Housing and dining charges continue to increase.)
While the falloff in the number of 18-year-olds has been largely discussed in terms of its effects on colleges and students, the implications are much broader, however.
"In an economy that depends on skilled labor, we're falling short," says Catharine Bond Hill, an economist, a former president of Vassar College and the managing director of the higher education consulting firm Ithaka S+R.
She points out that, based on NCES data, the United States has fallen to ninth among developed nations in the proportion of its 25-to-64-year-old population with any postsecondary degree.
"We should be aiming for No. 1, and we're not," she says.
The diminishing supply of young people will contribute to "a massive labor shortage," with an estimated 6 million fewer workers in 2032 than jobs needing to be filled, according to the labor market analytics firm Lightcast.
Not all of those jobs will call for a college education. But many will. Forty-three percent of them will require at least a bachelor's degree by 2031, according to the Georgetown center. That means more jobs will demand some kind of postsecondary credentials than Americans are now projected to earn.
Still-unpublished research underway at Georgetown forecasts major shortages in teaching, health care and other fields, as well as some level of skills shortfalls in 151 occupations, Strohl says.
"If we don't keep our edge in innovation and college-level education," he says, "we'll have a decline in the economy and ultimately a decline in the living standard."
A scarcity of labor is already complicating efforts to expand the U.S. semiconductor industry, for instance, the consulting firm McKinsey & Company warns. It's a major reason that production at a new $40 billion semiconductor processing facility in Arizona has been delayed, according to its parent company.
A worker shortage of the magnitude projected for the coming one hasn't happened since the years immediately after World War II, when the number of young men was reduced by death and disability, Strohl and others say. And this worker shortage coincides with a wave of retirements among experienced and well-educated baby boomers.
But Hispanic college-going is below the national average and has been going down, U.S. Department of Education statistics show.
All of these things present "a combination of factors that we haven't seen before," says Emily Wadhwani, a senior director at credit-rating agency Fitch who works on higher education.
Among high school graduates, the proportion going straight to college has fallen, from a peak of 70% in 2016 to 62% in 2022, the most recent year for which the figure is available.
The only thing that will restore stability in the higher education sector, says Wadhwani, "is a renewed sentiment that it's worth it."
Demarée Michelau, the president of WICHE, calls these trends, "the most perplexing set of issues to face higher education planners and administrators in a generation."
There are other customers for colleges, of course, including international students, students who are older than 18 and graduate students.
But these other sources may not be enough to make up for the coming declines, experts say.
Now that Donald Trump is about to start a second presidential term, 58% of European students say they are less interested in coming to the United States, according to a survey conducted in October and November by the international student recruiter Keystone Education Group.
And despite colleges' attempts to recruit students over 25, their numbers have fallen by half since the Great Recession, the Philadelphia Fed calculates. Many older students say they are discouraged by the cost or have families and jobs, which colleges don't always accommodate, or they started college but dropped out and have little inclination to go back.
Archive.:https://archive.ph/63x8r
Pickup trucks with trailers and cars with yawning trunks pulled up onto untended lawns in front of buildings from which people lugged books, furniture, mattresses, trophy cases and artwork.
Anything else of value had already been sold by a company that specializes in auctioning off the leftover assets of failed businesses. At least one of the buildings was soon to be demolished altogether, its red-brick walls dumped into its 1921 foundation.
This was the unceremonious end of Iowa Wesleyan University, a 181-year-old institution that closed in 2023 after financial losses due in part to discounts it gave out as it struggled to attract a shrinking pool of students.
When a college closes, "all the things that are mementos of the best four years of a lot of people's lives are sold to the highest bidders," says Doug Moore, founding partner of a firm that has helped handle the logistics of shutting down four colleges in the last few years, including Iowa Wesleyan.
"The impact of this is economic decline," Jeff Strohl, director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, says bluntly.
As fresh data emerges, the outlook is getting only worse. An analysis by the higher education consulting firm Ruffalo Noel Levitz, using the latest available census figures, now projects another drop in the number of 18-year-olds beginning in 2033, after a brief uptick. By 2039, this estimate shows, there will likely be 650,000, or 15%, fewer of them per year than there are now.
These findings sync up with another new report, released in December by the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE), which says that the number of 18-year-olds nationwide who graduate from high school each year — and are therefore candidates for college — will erode by 13%, or nearly half a million, by 2041.
"A few hundred thousand per year might not sound like a lot," Strohl says. "But multiply that by a decade, and it has a big impact."
Fewer students means fewer colleges
This comes after colleges and universities already collectively experienced a 15% decline in enrollment between 2010 and 2021, the most recent year for which figures are available, according to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). That includes a drop-off of more than 350,000 during the first year of the pandemic alone, and it means there are already 2.7 million fewer students than there were at the start of the last decade.In the first half of last year, more than one college a week announced that it would close. Still more new research, from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, projects that the pace of college closings could now accelerate.
The news is not all bad. For students, it means a buyer's market. Colleges and universities, on average, are admitting a larger proportion of their applicants than they did 20 years ago, new research by the think tank the American Enterprise Institute finds. And tuition, when adjusted for inflation, is declining, according to College Board. (Housing and dining charges continue to increase.)
Ripple effects through the economy
The likely closing of more colleges is by itself a threat to the economy. Nearly 4 million people work in higher education, the NCES reports. Though the most imperiled colleges tend to be small, every one that closes translates to, on average, a loss of 265 jobs and $67 million a year in economic impact, according to the economic software and analysis company Implan.While the falloff in the number of 18-year-olds has been largely discussed in terms of its effects on colleges and students, the implications are much broader, however.
"In an economy that depends on skilled labor, we're falling short," says Catharine Bond Hill, an economist, a former president of Vassar College and the managing director of the higher education consulting firm Ithaka S+R.
She points out that, based on NCES data, the United States has fallen to ninth among developed nations in the proportion of its 25-to-64-year-old population with any postsecondary degree.
"We should be aiming for No. 1, and we're not," she says.
The diminishing supply of young people will contribute to "a massive labor shortage," with an estimated 6 million fewer workers in 2032 than jobs needing to be filled, according to the labor market analytics firm Lightcast.
Not all of those jobs will call for a college education. But many will. Forty-three percent of them will require at least a bachelor's degree by 2031, according to the Georgetown center. That means more jobs will demand some kind of postsecondary credentials than Americans are now projected to earn.
Still-unpublished research underway at Georgetown forecasts major shortages in teaching, health care and other fields, as well as some level of skills shortfalls in 151 occupations, Strohl says.
"If we don't keep our edge in innovation and college-level education," he says, "we'll have a decline in the economy and ultimately a decline in the living standard."
A scarcity of labor is already complicating efforts to expand the U.S. semiconductor industry, for instance, the consulting firm McKinsey & Company warns. It's a major reason that production at a new $40 billion semiconductor processing facility in Arizona has been delayed, according to its parent company.
A worker shortage of the magnitude projected for the coming one hasn't happened since the years immediately after World War II, when the number of young men was reduced by death and disability, Strohl and others say. And this worker shortage coincides with a wave of retirements among experienced and well-educated baby boomers.
But Hispanic college-going is below the national average and has been going down, U.S. Department of Education statistics show.
All of these things present "a combination of factors that we haven't seen before," says Emily Wadhwani, a senior director at credit-rating agency Fitch who works on higher education.
Concerns about the value of a college education
Falling enrollment, meanwhile, has been made worse by a decline in perception of the value of a college or university degree. One in four Americans now says having a bachelor's degree is extremely or very important to get a good job, the Pew Research Center finds.Among high school graduates, the proportion going straight to college has fallen, from a peak of 70% in 2016 to 62% in 2022, the most recent year for which the figure is available.
The only thing that will restore stability in the higher education sector, says Wadhwani, "is a renewed sentiment that it's worth it."
Demarée Michelau, the president of WICHE, calls these trends, "the most perplexing set of issues to face higher education planners and administrators in a generation."
There are other customers for colleges, of course, including international students, students who are older than 18 and graduate students.
But these other sources may not be enough to make up for the coming declines, experts say.
Now that Donald Trump is about to start a second presidential term, 58% of European students say they are less interested in coming to the United States, according to a survey conducted in October and November by the international student recruiter Keystone Education Group.
And despite colleges' attempts to recruit students over 25, their numbers have fallen by half since the Great Recession, the Philadelphia Fed calculates. Many older students say they are discouraged by the cost or have families and jobs, which colleges don't always accommodate, or they started college but dropped out and have little inclination to go back.
