The Morning Rant: Great News! Fewer High School Grads Proceeding to College as Enrollment Continues to Decline

Here’s some news to gladden the hearts of those fed up with all the awfulness that surrounds higher education these days. Over the 2+ years since the start of the Covid panic, from spring 2020 to spring 2022, college enrollment has dropped almost 10%.

Despite my revulsion about the unscientific Covid protocols, it was my hope that the universities’ enthusiastic embrace of Covid sharia would repel future students. It seems to be happening. We can hope that the prestige and importance of universities will be another casualty of Covid.

The College Enrollment Decline Worsened This Spring [Forbes – 5/26/2022]

Undergraduate enrollment decreased by more than 662,000 students - or 4.7% - from spring 2021, bringing its total two-year decline, roughly corresponding to the period of the Covid-19 pandemic, to 1.4 million students, a decrease of 9.4%. The decline was even steeper than the 3.1% decrease in undergraduate numbers seen last fall.

Starve the beast.

Declining enrollment means declining revenue for the university cartel. It means that the Marxists in charge of our colleges will have to decide which radical administrators to let go due to budget cuts. It means that fewer teenagers will be subject to anti-western-civilization indoctrination. It means the shackles of student debt will not be tied to those who abstain from college.

It all means that those who prosper from the university industrial complex are facing hard times. Where I live, in Tennessee, the higher education establishment is getting scared.

Administrators sound an alarm: Half of Tennessee high school graduates aren't going to college [Knox News – 5/23/2022]

Nearly half of Tennessee's high school seniors aren't going to college or technical school right after they graduate — the lowest rate in the past 10 years.

…only 52.8% of high school graduates from the class of 2021 enrolled in a college or technical college after they graduated.

That rate is down 4 percentage points from the year before and down 11 percentage points from 2017, according to the report from the Tennessee Higher Education Commission.

So just a few years ago 64 out of 100 high school graduates were going straight into further schooling (aka “post-secondary education”) but now only 53 out of 100 are. From the colleges’ perspective, that is actually a 17% reduction! (11 divided by 64 = 17%.) Nice.

As of 2019 — the latest data available — nearly 47% of working adults in Tennessee have a college degree or technical certification.

This state is absolutely humming economically, with less than half of its citizens possessing degrees or technical certifications. (And a great many of those degrees provided no job skills.) By trying to push a huge majority of high school grads into post-secondary education, it seems like “Higher Education, Inc.” is counting on some tuition revenue from those who they know will ultimately drop out.

Is there anything more cruel than pushing someone into higher education and saddling him with a mountain of debt, after which he ends up with debt but without a degree.

Aside from the whole debate about attending college or not, why are we obsessed with the notion that college (or technical school) must start at age 18? Unless the purpose of going to school is “the college experience” (which is really just an expensive party for 18-22 year-olds), the late teens are probably the worst age for higher education.

My two closest friends from my freshman year at college failed out before the middle of their sophomore years. They then got real-life experience by working in restaurants and retail, before returning to college in their early 20s, by which time they now had the discipline to attend class every day. They went on to graduate and have successful careers. In addition, those couple years of restaurant and retail work provided them other valuable lessons in business and life.

The same applies for those who seek careers in the trades, which, by the way, pay better than most degrees in the social sciences.

An 18 year-old just out of high school would do himself a favor by working several different jobs at that stage of his life before fully committing to one trade, technical career, or college major. On the job, he is likely to find out that he thrives at certain skills. If, after a couple of years, he finds himself being drawn in a certain direction, it would be better to attend technical school or college at that time.

Even without technical training, those with a work ethic and common sense are likely to thrive. Leadership and talent will sort themselves out and produce foremen, entrepreneurs, and even executives. I am close to one person who went to work in a hotel kitchen upon high school graduation. From that position he rose to become an executive in a chain of country clubs. Another person I know started doing construction as a teenager and is now a millionaire real estate developer. Neither attended a day of college.

Yes, many careers require the education that is received in college – STEM obviously, and also things such as architecture, accounting, etc. But even then, way too much of the traditional 4-year business degree is electives and “the college experience.” There has got to be a better and cheaper way, but that’s an essay for another day.

For now, let’s celebrate that more and more high school graduates are demonstrating their intelligence by not proceeding straight to post-secondary education.

(buck.throckmorton at protonmail dot com)

posted by Buck Throckmorton at 11:00 AM

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