In the mid-1960s, half the US adult population had not graduated from high school.
Today, about 40% have a college degree.
Along the way, we decided that we needed “College for All”.
This sort of made sense at the time due to the demographic of the post World War II “boom” in babies, when the nation’s fertility rate peaked at 3.75 in 1959. Twenty years later, in about 1980, this huge cohort was entering the job markets – and competing for jobs. The solution for employers was to start using a college degree as a filter on all the job applicants flooding into the market.
Since then, the percent of the young population that starts college has skyrocketed. Today we have far more college graduates than our economy needs – and far to few skilled trades workers, for which there is a big demand. We have the oddity of many skilled trades paying US $100,000 or more – while those with college degrees earn less – or cannot even find work in their chosen field, at all.
This brilliant video summarizes the problems and challenges – this is a must watch video – set aside a half an hour to watch. It is that good.
The era of growing college enrollments is at an end
Here’s the fertility rate curve – as you can see, for up to 20 years after the peak, just due to lots more young people, we had growing college enrollment.
We also had the effects from the Vietnam War era draft deferment for those enrolled in college (which led to the growth of graduate schools as students elected to stay in college for many more years). Then, as so many college educated flooded the labor markets, the college degree became a differentiator from all the other applicants. This filter effect has remained up to the present – today, 13+% of the population has a Master’s degree – on par with those having just a 4-year degree in about 1970. These effects combined leading to today’s large surplus of college graduates relative to labor market demand.
Further, due to excess demand, colleges and universities grew fat and inefficient – leading to higher and higher tuition and fees – because the market enabled them to do that at the time. The result is college became overpriced – and students took on debt to earn degrees that do not really offer an economic advantage. They lost wages during time spent in school, took excessive debts that now need to be paid off – and the economic advantages disappeared. (There are some fields of study for which college education is the right path – but there are many that have proven to be bad value – or even worthless economically. Plus, around 40% of students who are start college do not finish – they now have the past expense but little economic advantage for an incomplete degree.)
Now is not a good time to consider pursuing a career in college academics as a professor – that should be clear.
In January, as one of many examples, Sonoma State University in California announced the closure of their entire athletics program, the closure of six academic departments, and the end of 20 major programs. The school has lost 38% of its peak enrollment over about the past decade or so. San Francisco State U has lost about 15% of its enrollment over a similar time frame. Numerous smaller private colleges have closed, are closing and more will be closing.
Enrollment overall is down 15% from the peak and is forecast to decline by another 15% by 2030 – there are not enough young people in the pipeline due to our low fertility rate (1.62 last year).
