I wouldn’t waste my money sending my kids to a university if it weren’t for a STEM degree. Universities are a money-hole otherwise. Go in debt $50,000 to get a xxx-studies degree with zero payback? And these kids are said to be educated? They can’t do 8th grade business math! Via Joanne Jacobs:
Enrollments are way down at small, private nonprofit colleges, report’s Hechinger’s Jon Marcus. Even lower-cost public universities are working harder to fill seats.
It’s partly demographics: There are fewer people in the 18- to 24-year-old cohort, especially in New England and the Midwest.
The stronger economy has pulled older people back into the workforce, which means fewer students seeking career training at community colleges and for-profit universities.
Ohio Wesleyan University is trying to reverse declining enrollment.
“The number of students in colleges and universities has now dropped for five straight years, according to the National Student Clearinghouse,” writes Marcus. “This year is the worst so far, with 81,000 fewer high school graduates nationwide heading to places like Ohio Wesleyan, whose entering freshman class is down 9 percent from last year.”
Enrollment peaked in 2011. A slow upswing is predicted by 2023, projects the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, but “it will be comprised largely of low-income, first-generation-in-college racial and ethnic minorities,” writes Marcus. There will be no upswing in students whose parents can pay full — or nearly full — tuition.
Already, colleges are discounting tuition more deeply to lure price-sensitive students, writes Marcus. “Small private, nonprofit colleges and universities this year gave back, in the form of financial aid, an average of 51 cents of every dollar they collected from tuition. That’s up from an average of 38 cents a decade ago.”