College and the demographics cliff

https://www.chronicle.com/article/c...ons-a-future-with-far-fewer-faculty-and-staff
If it's behind a paywall for you, Wittenberg University is slashing programs and faculty to stave off closure. Less than 10 years ago, they spent tens of millions of dollars on a state-of-the-art athletic facility. They're D-3. The number of athletes on campus is up, but the number of non-athletes is WAY down.

 

There are a ton of small, private colleges in Ohio. I think I applied (and got accepted) to four of them as safety schools (Marietta, Muskingum, Heidelburg, Baldwin-Wallace). I have no idea how they stay open, especially considering how much stupider Ohioans seem to have gotten over the past 25 years, and how the state's population has plateaued.

 

Did some checking today. Almost every MAC school has seen steep declines in enrollment over the past decade.

 

In Ohio, they’re getting killed by community colleges, as are the privates in Micro’s post, which have gotten ridiculously costly.

 

Declining birth rate. Curse of the first world.

 

My late wife and I met while attending a MAC school. Our kids didn't want to go the four-year route, so they both went to the local community college and graduated debt-free. Neither wanted to have college debt after graduating - they saw how long it took to pay off their mom's student loan.

 

I don’t see how private colleges without national profiles survive.

 

Freakonomics has an episode about college costs and dynamics.

https://freakonomics.com/podcast/what-is-the-future-of-college-and-does-it-have-room-for-men-update/

 

Interesting read. I agree with many things, disagree with others.

Again, 65-year-old retired white male here. Your mileage varies.

A college degree is important for multiple reasons, but only if the cost of one is outweighed by the financial gain or improvement in lifestyle. If you're going to school just because everybody else is, or you don't really know what you're going to do with it once you graduate, then you're probably wasting time and money.

Ninety percent of all majors are useless. If you're not in STEM, the medical field or something else with growth potential, you're probably not going to do better than your parents by paying off student loans the rest of your life. Unless a degree moves you out of Inglewood and allows you to improve your living conditions.

Yes, a college degree for a woman is an advantage. But women have a societial obligation forced upon them that men do not -- start a career, get married and raise a family. You can have a career but get nagged about why you don't have children. Or be a mother but nagged about why you don't have a career. Or do both and basically kill yourself.

And a college degree for a men is an advantage, but only if you graduate in something that's in current demand. However, that target is constantly moving. You can still make a living with a media communications degree, but you'd better be flexible, mobile and tech savvy because what we traditionally thought of as "flacking out" may be the best gig available if you're social media coordinator or in-house rep for a Fortune 500 company.

If you're dreaming about being a columnist or writer or a talk show host, you'd better have great connections or a fallback option.

The "being a boy is a disadvantage" is the biggest bunch of crap. Smart doesn't come with a gender reveal. If you're male and aren't willing to take responsibility for yourself (sit still, shut up, listen, do the work), that's on you, not the system.

How far do you think you could get away with that in the military? That's about the most "boy thing" I can think of. More than a few drill instructors have gotten "boys" to behave over the decades, at least while in uniform.

And 98 percent of all 17 year olds have no clue what they want to do.

 

67 semi-retired white male here.

My parents had seven grandchildren. The five with college degrees are doing a lot better than the two who do not. Even if you wind up majoring in a field with limited career opportunities like political science the undergraduate degree was still worth it. Because a B,A. can get you admitted to a graduate school. Two of the three who majored in political science went on to a masters program in data science and another to law school.

And as near as I can tell job opportunities are pretty limited for most junior college graduates,

 

My buddy's son went to the public high school here, then Medill, graduated in 2017. He went right to a Chicago TV news gig, and has been a network correspondent for three years now. My buddy is a rep for a furniture company and was an undistinguished graduate of GW. Pretty sure the son did it all on his own.

 

That's my problem. How many companies base hiring on whether someone is a college graduate when there is no connection between the education and work?

I worked back office financial services. Nobody without a college degree was hired, but all you had to know was math you learned in elementary school. Sociology, history, English majors. All were welcome.

I think the college experience is good. But costs are out of control and the education isn't correlated to most jobs people take. A college degree is more a signal than actual proof of talent.