Number of US Students in College Decreases as Political Views Discourage Foreign Students

This is a rambling commentary pulling from an Angry Bear writer and two articles. I believe I have it all in order. Most recently Joel discussed Academia with an eye on colleges, “The end of the golden age for academia.” As he points out:

“Recent months have brought terminations of 120 staff members at Boston University, 24 at WPI, and 5 percent of the non-faculty workforce at Clark University in Worcester, or around 30 people. Southern New Hampshire also laid off 60 employees in June, and termination notices have been handed out at the Harvard Kennedy School, Babson College, and the shuttered Great Barrington campus of Bard College.”

*snip*

“Regardless of the reason, staff are the most costly — and perhaps, the most easily cut — line item in universities’ budgets, said Sandy Baum, a senior fellow at the left-leaning Urban Institute.

“Colleges and universities are facing all kinds of differing levels of disaster,” Baum said. “Personnel are just a huge share of the cost of running an institution. There’s no way they can save a lot of money without cutting their personnel costs.”

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Another issue? The high school graduate demographic is shrinking. Also college and university tuition rates are growing unsustainably (as Joel states in his commentary). Also, Tr_mp political and personal attacks on immigration targeting race and differences “is discouraging foreign student enrollment. These students more than likely pay full tuition, subsidizing tuition for domestic students.”

An approximate 41 percent of international graduates of bachelor’s, master’s, or doctoral degree programs in the United States remain in the country long-term. The lean is towards those with Masters and Doctorate degrees. The US does benefit from their contributions to the US economy.

How ever and in particular, those students can afford the costs of an education more so than US citizens. How ever and in particular, Trump attacks on people of different nationalities does make it difficult. They are less likely to stay much less come to the United States for an education.

This will all change as Tr_mp vents about nationalities, race, etc. and takes action to discourage foreign students..

It is projected that colleges will see a decline in students as the next tier of US attendees are smaller than previously.

Graph Source: “The Looming Higher Ed Demographic Cliff by State,” EAB

“U.S. Colleges Are About to See a Big Decline in Applicants,” New York

As freshmen settle in for their first year of college, their arrival on campuses marks a milestone higher education has long dreaded: this incoming class is the last big one before a prolonged decade-plus drop off begins.

Starting this year, the graduating classes of high schools across the country are getting smaller, the result of fewer people having children during the Great Recession and the years after. Even after the economy rebounded, the birth rate kept dropping. The COVID pandemic led to another sharp decline.

This is the beginning of what college officials call the “demographic cliff.” Higher education is one of the few industries that can predict its future customer base far in advance. When college leaders look at the projections of high-school graduates, they see down arrows only every year through 2041 — by then totaling a 13 percent drop overall to 3.4 million high-school graduates from nearly 3.9 million this year.

This doesn’t sound like bad news to everybody though. What alarms campus officials suggests an opportunity to many parents who assume the shift will work in their favor, improving their kids’ odds of getting into top-ranked schools or securing bigger breaks on tuition from colleges desperate to fill seats. Just this spring, before the enrollment cliff really hit, several colleges sent out surprise financial-aid packages to students who had already committed elsewhere in an effort to lure them in after coming up short in attracting enough freshmen to fill empty seats.

That may happen in some contexts. But higher education isn’t monolithic —even though we talk about college like it is — and the reality of what’s coming for teenagers and their families is complicated by geography and a college’s position in the larger market.

At an industry level, the demographic cliff is likely to leave the U.S. with a very different higher-education landscape from the one we know today with nearly 4,000 schools. Some colleges will close, merge, or be acquired by stronger players. Many others will limp along eventually resembling malls with vacant stores — bringing in just enough money to keep going but not enough to maintain their buildings or provide the kinds of services that add up to a good student experience.

For families already navigating a college-admissions process reshaped in recent years by test-optional policies and the growth of early applications, the demographic cliff adds yet another wrinkle. Should students take that shot at the elite schools on the chance they’ll be slightly easier to get in to? Will tuition discounts become more generous, but where? And how can families be sure the school they eventually choose will still have the resources to invest in facilities and programs after their kids arrive on campus? These are questions that students and parents didn’t need to ask a decade ago; now they will define both the college search for teenagers in the near term as well as the future of higher education in the U.S..

Also read: “New report finds higher ed sector shrank by 2 percent,” Inside Higher ED.