"Peak College" has passed. The first and second tier colleges will still do fine but many of the third tier colleges are doomed. They'll have to reinvent themselves as trade schools or corporate training centers or something if they want to survive. The job market for tenure track professors will get even tougher.
It’ll be impossible to replicate the college experience without some kind of shared stressor like classes and exams. It’s the same deal in military training where collective suffering is used to instill a sense of camaraderie amongst recruits from various places and backgrounds.
We really need to have alternate institutions that perform the same social function. It's too bad secret societies with mystic rites don't really exist anymore.
I never felt that, we spent a lot more time partying than stressing about exams.
I have not really made lifetime friends there either but I'm not a team player. If I were in the military everyone would hate me (like they did when I was forced to play team sports at school).
Honestly I would love to go back to college for studying $THING. And then I think about the kids there and decide I'd rather stay away. That and the stupid shit schools do to make sure you aren't using AI.
No thanks, I'd rather watch lectures on YouTube and go to the library. I don't need any diploma, I only want enrichment.
I've been following a conman fantisist for a number of years and of late he's gone full LLM powered and has been churning out graduate degrees from respectable sounding places. Years ago he merely claimed to have varrious degrees, but now with the help of chatgpt he's just pumping them out.
While I'm sure a few places care many very clearly don't.
It is crazy to see how much the birth rates dropped after the recession and how that is finally hurting colleges. I guess a lot of the smaller schools will just have to close if they cannot find enough students to enroll.
Technically, the number of high school graduates dropping wouldn’t have affected colleges yet if enrollment rates kept going up, but they have also declined (only a couple percent for now, but I bet that trend continues).
Also, seeing only 40% of high school graduates going to college is a wake up call to how much I don’t interact with people outside my bubble, because I don’t know anyone whose kids didn’t go to college in the last 20 years.
Surprised because I learned today UT Austin had so many applications(100K) that they can only issue 25% admissions and had to put off the rest 75% for one extra month. It made me feel college is still "crowded" to me.
"Good" universities (ie. public and private programs with either regional or national prestige) remain in demand. The issue is there are hundreds of no-name private and public programs that are becoming strapped of students.
It's hard to make a case to attend Western Illinois University or St Mary's College versus going to community college and transferring to your state flagship (eg. Grangier Guarantee [0] and TAG [1] respectively) or an Ivy or Ivy Tier (eg. NYU's CCTOP [2])
I also have no idea how you can legitimately claim to predict the birth rate. There is a trend to be sure but it's driven by several factors so this "heartwrenching" prognostication is ridiculous.
Meanwhile consider the value of a degree over the past 30 years. Colleges got sloppy and relied on the largess of the student loan program and not any genuine forward looking management, the degrees became lower quality, and the value to a graduate plummeted. Plus the Internet exists and has wide penetration throughout the US.
This is lame misguided fear mongering apologia. On brand for Bloomberg.
Maybe they’ll you know, lower their prices so more people can afford it. Haha.
"Peak College" has passed. The first and second tier colleges will still do fine but many of the third tier colleges are doomed. They'll have to reinvent themselves as trade schools or corporate training centers or something if they want to survive. The job market for tenure track professors will get even tougher.
Maybe third tier colleges can start rebranding and advertising the “Animal House Experience”
It’ll be impossible to replicate the college experience without some kind of shared stressor like classes and exams. It’s the same deal in military training where collective suffering is used to instill a sense of camaraderie amongst recruits from various places and backgrounds.
We really need to have alternate institutions that perform the same social function. It's too bad secret societies with mystic rites don't really exist anymore.
I never felt that, we spent a lot more time partying than stressing about exams.
I have not really made lifetime friends there either but I'm not a team player. If I were in the military everyone would hate me (like they did when I was forced to play team sports at school).
I like it, but can you imagine the liability issues with that business plan?
Hasn't that experience been long over? Recent generations are much tamer.
Maybe someday there will be more attention paid to adults. Every aspect of college seems built for 18 year olds.
I often think it would cool to maybe work for 5 years and then spend 1 year at college deepening or broadening knowledge. I would love that rhythm.
Not every college.
Especially if all of the 18 year olds disappeared or were diluted by olds.
Honestly I would love to go back to college for studying $THING. And then I think about the kids there and decide I'd rather stay away. That and the stupid shit schools do to make sure you aren't using AI.
No thanks, I'd rather watch lectures on YouTube and go to the library. I don't need any diploma, I only want enrichment.
> That and the stupid shit schools do to make sure you aren't using AI.
What makes you think they care? https://youtu.be/JcQPAZP7-sE?t=881
I've been following a conman fantisist for a number of years and of late he's gone full LLM powered and has been churning out graduate degrees from respectable sounding places. Years ago he merely claimed to have varrious degrees, but now with the help of chatgpt he's just pumping them out.
While I'm sure a few places care many very clearly don't.
It is crazy to see how much the birth rates dropped after the recession and how that is finally hurting colleges. I guess a lot of the smaller schools will just have to close if they cannot find enough students to enroll.
Technically, the number of high school graduates dropping wouldn’t have affected colleges yet if enrollment rates kept going up, but they have also declined (only a couple percent for now, but I bet that trend continues).
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cpb/college-enrol...
Also, seeing only 40% of high school graduates going to college is a wake up call to how much I don’t interact with people outside my bubble, because I don’t know anyone whose kids didn’t go to college in the last 20 years.
Surprised because I learned today UT Austin had so many applications(100K) that they can only issue 25% admissions and had to put off the rest 75% for one extra month. It made me feel college is still "crowded" to me.
"Good" universities (ie. public and private programs with either regional or national prestige) remain in demand. The issue is there are hundreds of no-name private and public programs that are becoming strapped of students.
It's hard to make a case to attend Western Illinois University or St Mary's College versus going to community college and transferring to your state flagship (eg. Grangier Guarantee [0] and TAG [1] respectively) or an Ivy or Ivy Tier (eg. NYU's CCTOP [2])
This is what TFA talks about as well.
[0] - https://grainger.illinois.edu/admissions/undergraduate/pathw...
[1] - https://admission.universityofcalifornia.edu/admission-requi...
[2] - https://www.nyu.edu/admissions/undergraduate-admissions/how-...
The US birth rate was steady from 1990 to 2010.
I also have no idea how you can legitimately claim to predict the birth rate. There is a trend to be sure but it's driven by several factors so this "heartwrenching" prognostication is ridiculous.
Meanwhile consider the value of a degree over the past 30 years. Colleges got sloppy and relied on the largess of the student loan program and not any genuine forward looking management, the degrees became lower quality, and the value to a graduate plummeted. Plus the Internet exists and has wide penetration throughout the US.
This is lame misguided fear mongering apologia. On brand for Bloomberg.
I was about to say the same with less accuracy.
Birthrates going up or down is not a crisis. The pathological desire for slave labor and cannon fodder, that is a crisis.
https://archive.today/m9Jyf
https://www.wiche.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/2024-Knocki...
https://sheeo.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/SHEEO_NSCRC_Col...
Pretty soon we'll call trying to have children "giving it the old college try."