Not good for society. Understandable given how expensive higher education has become but not great that this is becoming a common opinion
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And these are big schools that will end up ok. What about all the small schools and the small towns they prop up? I worry about a new generation of rust belt towns and this time it isnât because the local steel mill shut down, it was the local college.
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Yep, I work in higher education and this is on the nose. Another stressor that will impact smaller and more regional colleges is a decline in high school students that started last year. This wonât have any real impact on more selective colleges.
International enrollment has been declining for almost a decade. Much of the decline is in students from China.
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This. The current graduating class is expected to be the peak in terms of # of students graduating from high school. Add in the drop in international student visas/applications, and the universities have a real existential issue coming in terms of demand for their services.
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My completely uneducated guess here would be
Harvard will backfill with what would be last years UVA and Duke students which will backfill with what would be last years Florida and Wisconsin students etc. down the line. Itâs only the schools at the bottom end that will be squeezed out by this, at least in the short term
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And this is largely being done by consolidation and not elimination. Majors are labels for a collection of courses. You could, in theory, cut a major in physics (it tends to be a small major), but you would still need a physics departments teach a lot of students because physics is a necessary bedrock of other majors.
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Yes and no. Pursuing your dream is great, but grown-ups need to be watching the outcomes.
If you pile up a bunch of debt getting a masters in social work, and then go into actual social work which pays like $60k/year after a decade of experience, youâre setting yourself up for a lifetime of financial hurt. Encouraging schools to not let kids do that isnât a bad idea.
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Hamphire College folding, Simonâs Rock of Bard selling its campus and moving somewhere cheaper, and Sweetbriar being on life-support suggests youâre correct.
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While I agree that accruing a quarter million in debt before embarking on a career path topping out at 70k/year salary isnât a good investment, thereâs a need for social workers, teachers, nurses and other professionals in jobs that donât pay as well as others. Maybe education for those might be more cost effective if done at trade schools or community colleges. But the tradeoff is people working them wouldnât have the experience of attending a full service university, meeting people from various walks of life and receiving a diverse liberal arts education, which is pretty useful life experience for a teacher or nurse or social worker.
Iâve got no answers for you, just stating observations and stepping back.
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I mean what you just described is a bad sign for society lol a society where education canât be pursued as end in and of itself is not in a healthy place
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Thereâs an anticipatory element to this as well. If a school even picks up a whiff of âmight not survive four more yearsâ⌠then enrollment will drop as a result and it wonât survive.
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Yes and no. On the one hand, kids can still get a reasonably priced 4-year degree. In-state, Christopher Newport is 31k/year including housing and a meal plan (which any parent knows wasnât free even when the kids were in HS), and apparently they average 10k/year in financial aid per kid. I have no idea how that math works out, but presumably expected net cost would be below 31k. Longwood is about the same. Its not Harvard, but they are perfectly good accredited 4-year colleges and at that price point, more free-ranging education is probably a societal good.
Wellesley, which one of my kids looked at, will be 96k/year next year. Education for the sake of education at that price just doesnât work. Youâre either going into something fantastically lucrative, your family is rich, or youâre brilliant enough that the school wants buy your attendance by offering you colossal financial aid.
Edit - But hereâs the real issue with âeducation for the sake of educationâ, it has to be pretty cheap to be a societal value add, or at least not extremely expensive. And the math is tough these days.
A college professor (presumably with a PhD) should be decently paid, right? Hopefully we agree the whole adjunct faculty situation is ugly. If youâve got 15-1 student to teacher ratio, and 1500 kids, you need 100 professors making⌠lets say 150k/year. Maintenance and other staff is maybe half that, and the administration is probably the cost of the faculty again. Then add in maintaining the buildings and providing financial aid to poor kids, etc etc and its really hard to get under 50k/year w/o a gigantic amount of government aid.
And the state wants the school to do things to pay back that investment, like produce people who can work jobs in the state like engineers and social workers. But theyâre probably a lot less enthusiastic about generally enriching education. Sure, its nice, but budget money comes from somewhere, and all the other social programs also have good arguments so they probably get that money instead.
At 50+k/year, education for educationâs sake is just too expensive. I point the finger at the rapid growth in well-paid university administrators, but Iâm sure they have good arguments for being necessary.
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Man I graduated from UVA 10 years ago and it cost me roughly 16-18k per year as an in state student (factoring meals, rent, and books). The idea 31k per year for CNU is considered reasonably priced now shows just how terrible of a state higher education is in. Itâs going to collapse
To be clear Iâm not saying pursuing education for the sole sake of it is feasible in the current environment. All the reasons you laid out I agree with. Itâs just sad that things have gotten to this point
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I donât disagree with you at all. I didnât go to UVA for undergrad, and I was on the student council of the my school my junior year in 1991. Our big topic back then was the well-above-inflation rate of tuition increase and trying to get the school to open its books or at least explain why prices increases so quickly was our big thing the entire year. The administration politely laughed at us and suggested we instead look into whether we should discourage students from drinking so much soda or something equally dumb.
That having been said, were you living at home, or maybe had a good chunk of financial aid? Because in-state tuition+room and board at UVA in 2015-16 was ~25k. Having looked into it recently (still excited that older daughter is transferring there in the fall), its probably like ~45k today. About 6% growth, annually. Which is brisk, but not as brisk at the 9-10% itâd be at 18k/year.
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It is ~$45K all in⌠so are VT/W&M. VCU & GMU & ODU are about $10K less than that for In-State.
My oldest son starts school at the Evil Empire in August.
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Iâm sorry for your loss.
Edit - (But, really, congratulations!)
Oh, I meant to ask you, have you ever refâed field hockey by any chance?
Edit2 - A couple years ago, younger daughter had a field hockey match at a school up by DC and a really fit Asian guy was one of the refs, I always wondered if it was you but I forgot to ask until now.
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He really wanted UVa⌠but the in-state acceptance rate with no legacy anymore was less than 12%.
He got VT engineering which was just below 25% acceptance in-state⌠so he isnât too upset.
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My parents had whatever predated the 529 plan. So my rate mightâve been based off the year they began paying into it
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Oh, sure. Itâll probably get me banned from the board for saying, but VT is genuinely good for engineering.
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Ah, that could be.
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