US college enrollment has declined by “nearly 1.3 million students since spring 2020.” However, colleges have been losing hundreds of thousands of students per year since 2010 and many are facing bankruptcy. Go woke, go broke as they say. Many colleges, especially community colleges, would already be as vacant as your old DVD stomping ground if it were not for cash infusions from state governments.
In 2000 the Blockbuster Video franchise seemed like it couldn’t stop winning. When the company had a chance to buy an up-and-coming new service called Netflix it declined. Who would ever want to receive DVDs in the mail? Unfortunately, the CEO of Netflix did not understand that change was coming. In 2007 Netflix launched its streaming service. Over the next decade, Blockbuster would lose all its market share to more innovative competitors.
Colleges are falling into the same trap as innovative skills-based hiring continues to outshine the competition. Employers have realized the decreasing value of advanced education and attempted to rectify it. As we have shoved more people into degree programs the quality of that education has declined. This caused degree inflation and led to diminishing returns for college graduates as well as the employers trying to hire them. A high school degree used to be worth something. It might be time to throw it out as well.
University administrators are naïve in the belief that the student body will return. The decrease in college attendance has taken place for over a decade. This is not simply a result of our pseudo-pandemic. Evergreen State has lost half its student body since harassing Bret Weinstein back in 2015, but it was losing students before that as well.
H/T: Quillette
The chart ends in 2019. Since then the campus has dropped even more in 2022.
Total enrollment is around 2,000 students at Evergreen, down from more than 4,000 students about five years ago. [Chron]
Here is an example from an Evergreen student,
[…] Days after getting his diploma, and despite the big investment ($39,000 in student loans), he sought another credential to “stack” on top to make him more marketable. He enrolled in Udacity’s iOS Developer Nanodegree program, a five-course cluster from the online platform known for its techie skills focus. Cost: $900.
“I knew I needed help to land a job,” said Chibwe. In January, he was hired to develop apps at the National Center for Telehealth and Technology near Tacoma, Washington.
Chibwe’s experience underscores a new truth: The bachelor’s degree may be the classic pass to join the world of work, but increasingly it’s no longer enough. [HT: Heching]
Corporate human resources departments are adjusting once again to focus on job-relevant certifications. More private companies are looking toward alternatives to antiquated college degrees and that will continue to increase over the next decade.
Consider the job of software quality-assurance engineer. Only 26% of Accenture’s postings for the position contained a degree requirement. Likewise, only 29% of IBM’s did. But the percentages were dramatically different at Oracle (100%), Intel (94%), HP (92%), and Apple (90%). (H/T HBR) [HT: Forbes]
Since the advent of the industrial revolution, we have seen greater and greater divisions of labor. As colleges fail to innovate, they fall behind other services that are increasingly more personalized, innovative, and far less expensive.
In the 2000s US colleges and universities kept enrollment up by promoting their services abroad. Many US colleges even opened foreign branches. A huge confluence of foreign students, who sometimes paid three times the normal state tuition, came to America for high-quality education. Little did many of them know -- the rise of administrative activism has led to the demise of US education. Then in the 2010s even more US students continued to drop out of college. As the foreign student population declined colleges could not stem the tide.
Today colleges across the country are propped up by increased government funding and bailouts. College administrators remain ignorant and are convinced students will eventually return. This is shortsighted. Current educational leaders are failing to realize that a tsunami is coming in the world of educational technology. Innovative companies are set on providing alternatives to the college degree. And why wouldn’t they? Administrators have worked to keep students on campus longer by including many classes that are unnecessary for their desired career path.
Google may have started the trend with its Google Career Certificates. These “small-bite credentials” might be better than college learning. They are must faster to earn than your typical degree, less expensive -- and most importantly -- job-specific. Modern employers want people who can be useful right away. A paradigm shift is coming in the way we learn. Increasingly community-based platforms like Learnie are showing people that anyone with little knowledge can create a course and teach the world.
There are two major branches of thought on the purpose of education. One believes that education should be academic and the other believes education should be job-specific. These two branches are typically at odds. However, in recent decades the academic worldview has won out over the job-specific skills view. The correct answer is probably some amalgamation of the two worldviews. The early years of education should aim to produce well-rounded individuals and as they get older focus more on job-specific skills.
The private sector realizes high school and college are not preparing students to leave and be prosperous. Many colleges are cutting students’ hamstrings with woke indoctrination and identity politics. Therefore, it is time for inexpensive alternatives.
It is already possible to learn almost everything you would ever want to learn online. The Great Courses offers classes from far better professors than me, and it only costs $50/month. But right now, there’s no certification process. Coursera and EdX are educational services that do offer a certification process. Companies like Google, IBM, Intuit, Meta, and Jiffy Lube all use services such as this. More than likely, more companies will continue to adapt these services. Business degrees could certainly be offered in this manner. Most degrees require test-taking and paper writing. These could be administered at a relatively low cost using this model.
If you could do bite-sized, job-specific learning it would be tremendous for education in this country. Students should not be in school for as long as they are now. Students are having Paulo Freire’s Critical Pedagogy forced on them. The point of school is to educate, not to create Marxist political activists.
Another hurdle is the accreditation system. It is now as defunct and dated as the colleges themselves. Requiring diversity, equity, and inclusion guidelines would be ridiculous for education offered online for the cost of a streaming service. The overriding goal should be the private sector’s efforts to make education cheaper for the masses. Most accreditation systems have broad requirements for administrative services than are unnecessary.
After many of these public colleges have gone bankrupt, they could be repurposed for something useful to society. Maybe a system of tiny houses where homeless people could work a few hours to have a place to stay. Those administrators we fired in the previous paragraph could then go on to become social workers. Good luck to them.
The worst part of the modern education system is that it diminishes those who think outside the box in favor of those who function best as automatons. Due to this realization, “Skills-based hiring is on the rise, and 59% of employers are considering eliminating college degree requirements.”
College became too woke and lost out because of it. Smart people are shopping for alternatives. Many are job seekers and employers are gaining a better understanding of the usefulness of online certifications. In many ways, they are more helpful in finding gainful employment than the typical college degree. So, send your kids to trade school. Get them started in entrepreneurship. Find private certifications that meet real employment needs. Just don’t send them to college. Many bulwarks of American education are beginning to fail. However, if we avoid the trap of government bailing out failing organizations, we could all come out far better in the end.
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Excellent in-depth description of where we're at in the field of education.
One typo I noticed: "the CEO of Netflix did not understand that change was coming" - I'm sure you meant the CEO of Blockbuster.
Yet another destruction of a service to serve human.