Lauren C. Moye, FISM News
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The latest statistics show that college enrollment is continuing to decline even after a sharp decrease in correlation with the COVID-19 pandemic. At the heart of this decline is the question, “Is a four year-degree really worth the time and money investment?”
Undergraduate program enrollment in the U.S. has declined by 1.1% this fall according to preliminary data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. This means that since the start of the pandemic in 2020, undergraduate enrollment has declined by 4.2% overall.
The preliminary data was collected on roughly 10.3 million undergraduate and graduate students. While it gave statistics on how different data subsets like gender, race, or college type were impacted, the research doesn’t reveal why potential students are opting not to attend.
Dr. Jed Macosko, president and research director at Academic Influence which helps pair students with their best-matched program, noted two main factors behind why students are not taking that plunge: “One, of course, is cost. The second is declining numbers of people of college age.”
For potential students, it’s a risk that may not pay off with a higher-waged job. Additionally, they see that studies might be interrupted by life events which would leave them with student loans and no degree.
“People are less likely to pay for that risk or take that risk because they’ve seen in the news that others have taken that risk and are now under crushing student debt,” Macosko said.
Strada Education Network research showed that in the spring of 2020, 59% of Americans ages 18-65 who had not pursued higher education believed that additional education would advance their career, and 50% thought college would be worth the cost. However, those numbers had fallen to 46% and 32%, respectively, by the fall of 2021.
Strada said these growing doubts have been confirmed in other “surveys from the Federal Reserve System, YouthTruth, ECMC Foundation, and Third Way/ New America.”
Meanwhile, the cost of college has increased substantially in the past two decades. U.S. News reports a jump from an average of $3,738 average annual tuition cost to $11,631 between 2002 and 2022 for an in-state college.
Meanwhile, some industries have dropped degree requirements in recent years for some mid-skilled and even high-skilled positions in a bid to fill empty positions. While the IT industry has seen the most dedication to this movement, Harvard Business Review and Emsi Burning Glass conducted joint research on this “structural reset” and found that some positions in finance, sales, legal assistants, human resources, and other career fields had dropped college education requirements.
Macosko did push back against research on declining college enrollments, noting that online programs are actually trending up in this area. He cited factors that helped to lower the perceived risk as a cheaper tuition cost, more flexibility, and a greater ability to finish the degree.
He did warn that “students need to be more a self-starter” to be successful in this route.