The demographic cliff is not news to anyone who has been paying attention to college enrollment or workforce needs. Nothing can be done about all the children who weren’t born in the last two decades, and it is unlikely that much can be done to improve the birth rate in the near future.
Many colleges and universities are attempting to offset the fall in American students by admitting more and more international students, but this approach has limits. The largest cohort of international students comes from China. Tensions with the Chinese regime will almost certainly mean that the U.S. government will significantly restrict that flow in the near future. Another expedient that many colleges and universities are pursuing is admitting immigrants, including illegal immigrants. But the number of immigrants qualified for college admission is nowhere close to filling the available seats.
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Other options are to lower college standards even further, downsize the number of colleges and the size of the remaining institutions, admit more adult students, support the rise of mega-universities and other forms of post-secondary instruction that by-pass traditional college structures, aim for apprenticeships and direct high-school-to-full-time-employment programs. All of these steps are already happening, and none of them can give comfort to the American higher education establishment. The demographic cliff has to be seen in the context of a whole series of other developments that promise to draw a curtain on the post-World War II rise of mass higher education in America. We overbuilt colleges and universities with the Baby Boom generation in mind and then continued to overbuild these institutions as the following generations bought into the idea that a college degree was a prerequisite for a good career and a satisfying life. Neither was true, but enough people believed these promises that higher education managed to sustain the illusion, even as the price of college grew extravagantly and the reality began to sink in that a college degree per se no longer meant that an individual had achieved much in the way of an education.
At some point, the public was going to re-assess the basic assumption that college was always the best option. That reassessment is happening, and it happens to be happening at the same time that colleges are beginning to struggle with the demographic cliff. I see several positive aspects of this situation.
First, it means that America must get serious about K-12 education, especially secondary education. For several generations, we have let our public schools become playthings for progressives interested in using them to promote faddish ideologies. The schools could do this in light of the willingness of colleges to admit students who have no more than superficial preparation for post-secondary education. But if a high school diploma becomes the terminal educational credential for more and more students, the schools will come under serious pressure to actually educate their students.
Second, it means a weeding out of colleges and universities that are little more than waystations for young people who haven’t yet figured out what to do with their lives. Fewer colleges will not hurt young people or the economy. We will simply foster better ways to match people to real opportunities and resources in a manner that will help everyone.
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Third, the traditional institutions of higher education will have to focus on what sets them apart from the institutions that are primarily focused on job preparation. There is nothing wrong with the nation having good institutions that focus primarily on career skills. We need such institutions. But the four-year college is not the best way to deliver that training,
Maybe this transition will entail a lot of re-branding in which former colleges rediscover themselves as rigorous job-training centers. But whatever happens, they won’t be able to sustain their current business models. The decline in the number of high school graduates, accompanied by other incentives for young people to look for non-college opportunities, will force a profound change in the post-secondary landscape of American education.
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This article was originally published at www.mindingthecampus.org
