UNC to cut 70 mill

[lawtig02]

Universities are also going to have to base long-term planning on the size of the cohort of college aged Americans starting to decline in the coming years.

https://www.npr.org/2025/01/08/nx-s1-5246200/demographic-cliff-fewer-college-students-mean-fewer-graduates

“…
This "demographic cliff" has been predicted ever since Americans started having fewer babies at the advent of the Great Recession around the end of 2007 — a falling birth rate that has not recovered since, except for a slight blip after the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Demographers say it will finally arrive nationwide in the fall of this year. That's when recruiting offices will begin to confront the long-anticipated drop-off in the number of applicants from among the next class of high school seniors.

But the downturn isn't just a problem for universities and colleges. It's a looming crisis for the economy, with fewer graduates eventually coming through the pipeline to fill jobs that require college educations …”

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This seems more likely to hurt less competitive universities first and eventually could lead to less competition for admissions in moderately competitive and eventually very competitive schools.

In addition to the demographic cliff, there is also a cultural rejection of college degrees that will reduce the applicant pool.

Huge and massively underreported story. Hard to see how dozens, maybe hundreds, of colleges don't have to close over the next 10-20 years.

 

[nycfan]

The apparent increase in advanced degrees among boomers (65+) is an actuarial thing, not an indication of higher degree attainment — people with advanced degrees tend to be better off financially and have longer life spans.

 

[donbosco]

I was late in life finishing my PHD (1999) and the word was as I entered the job market that we were looking at declining demand for professors because of demographics. Not everyone that I finished school with got jobs in higher ed but most did and it was the preferred path for the great majority (a few wanted to go into public history type employment and did) but the placement for grads of a school like Carolina has historically been pretty high. I can't really speak to the success of folks that come from schools with less developed reputations. (The cuts and actions of our BOT/BOG at present are very, very damaging to that reputation btw -- another facet of the damage that trumpism and its allied forces are doing to the world...in this case literally the value of all of our degrees in the world at large).

But the dire warnings have been around for some 30 years within the "trade" if you will. No doubt that the denigration of higher education, the attacks on expertise, the student debt debacle, and the defunding of higher ed for specious reasons trumpeted as if Truth, will cause many to forego college and university educations. That's an unexpected element to add to the story of demographic change.