Supply of College Students Dries Up

[Weatherman2020]

Universities are laying off people because they’re going broke.

“Colleges and universities across the nation have faced financial hardships due to COVID-19. Decreased enrollment is a contributing factor because institutions rely on tuition payments for their budgets.”

Gee that’s funny. Make higher education even more hellish by treating zero risk students like plague rats and less of them want to pay for the privilege. If they had any economics professors left admin could ask them about “incentives”.

University lays off 100 professors due to COVID

William Paterson University will lay off 100 full-time faculty over a three-year period, including tenured professors.

www.campusreform.org

 

[Dont Taz Me Bro]

They're probably better off going into skilled trades anyway. Higher education seems to be anything but these days.

 

[EvilCat Breath]

Hmmmmm. First they expelled the unwoke. Then there is the raging war on vax freedom fighters. Then there was the purge of straight white men and rhe women who love them.

Colleges have excluded themselves into irrelevance. Then there is the fury of the alums who just got sick shit of colleges replacing core subjects with diversity.

Bottom line? Broke colleges and universities.

 

[Stryder50]

Is Everything an MLM?​

In a pyramid scheme, the integrity of the whole is contingent upon the retainment of each individual part; at the same time, growth can only through continual expansion of the base.
....
She’s referring to the overproduction of PhDs: too many people coming through grad school, and too few sustainable academic jobs. And as anyone in any field understands, when there’s way more qualified applicants than jobs, the existing jobs can demand more of applicants (more qualifications, less money) while applicants lower their own expectations (for compensation, for benefits, for job security, for course load and service, for location).

So why don’t academic departments just decrease the number of PhD students they accept? Because those students have become an integral cog in the contemporary university. A report by the National Research Council on"Addressing the Nation's Changing Needs for Biomedical and Behavioral Scientists" found that the number of new PhDs awarded every year “is well "is well above that needed to keep pace with growth in the U.S. economy and to replace those leaving the workforce as a result of retirement and death." The report suggests that there should be no increase in the number of PhDs, but does not call for a decrease: “to change suddenly the numbers of people could be very disruptive to the research that’s going on at the present time.”

Put differently, those PhD students are providing (cheap!) labor in labs; to decrease the flow of incoming students would necessitate a dramatic rethinking of the funding/viability of various labs. The Humanities don’t have labs, but they do have massive numbers of undergraduate courses that need teaching. In English programs, it’s some version of “comp,” or composition; in foreign language programs, it’s intro language classes; in communications, it’s public speaking. Many of these courses are mandated “core” in some capacity, ensuring an unwavering stream of students, and an unwavering demand for (again, very cheap) graduate student labor to serve them. To decrease the number of graduate students, again, would be to decrease the supply of cheap labor. To rectify the loss, you’d either have to hire adjuncts or more professors (both more expensive than graduate students) or decrease the number of admitted students (and a loss, to the university, of an income stream).

Some schools start PhD programs — even though they know that their institution is not prestigious enough to place its graduates in “good” jobs, unless they are truly stellar — as a sort of labor generator: lure students with the promise of tuition remission, and you’ve got at least four years of their labor. Some MA programs also provide tuition remission in exchange for TA’ing; others are simply “money makers,” with no opportunity to TA, just the opportunity for 10-40 students pay full tuition, even if the chances of moving on to a PhD program (or full-time employment in their field) is small.

We talk a lot about how “for-profit” colleges (Cappella, Phoenix, dozens of others) exploit students’ internalized belief that the only way to pull themselves and their families up through the capitalist system is a degree — no matter if they have to take out massive amounts of debt to do it, no matter if they’re steered towards degree programs (massage therapy) in which there’s little chance to find employment that will even cover your loan payment, let alone allow the student to pull themselves up the class ladder. (Of course, a degree can provide that route — but usually it can be obtained for much, much less at the local community college.)

For first generation college students with little or no inherited knowledge of how college or student loans work, for-profit colleges can be incredibly appealing. They target you; they tell you that you could have a different life, a secure life, a career, everything you’ve dreamed of, just by enrolling. (For the twentieth time, read Tressie McMillan Cottom’s Lower Ed for an in-depth account of how for profit colleges target, recruit, and exploit these populations)
...

Is Everything an MLM?

In a pyramid scheme, the integrity of the whole is contingent upon the retainment of each individual part; at the same time, growth can only through continual expansion of the base.

getpocket.com

 

[Unkotare]

Community college numbers are better, but a shit economy discourages continuing education at the higher levels.

 

[Coyote]

Universities are laying off people because they’re going broke.

“Colleges and universities across the nation have faced financial hardships due to COVID-19. Decreased enrollment is a contributing factor because institutions rely on tuition payments for their budgets.”

Gee that’s funny. Make higher education even more hellish by treating zero risk students like plague rats and less of them want to pay for the privilege. If they had any economics professors left admin could ask them about “incentives”.

University lays off 100 professors due to COVID

William Paterson University will lay off 100 full-time faculty over a three-year period, including tenured professors.

www.campusreform.org

That isn’t why we are seeing the decrease. It is part of a longer term trend.

 

[Weatherman2020]

That isn’t why we are seeing the decrease. It is part of a longer term trend.

Do tell!
More students than ever before are enrolling in degree-granting institutions in the United States. Between 2001 and 2011, enrollment increased 32 percent.

What’s your next lie, liar?

Why You Should Go to College | Brookings

More students than ever before are enrolling in degree-granting institutions in the United States. Between 2001 and 2011, enrollment increased 32 percent while more women and more non-whites are entering postsecondary education than ever before (National Center for Educational Statistics)...

www.brookings.edu

 

[Coyote]

Do tell!
More students than ever before are enrolling in degree-granting institutions in the United States. Between 2001 and 2011, enrollment increased 32 percent.

What’s your next lie, liar?

Why You Should Go to College | Brookings

More students than ever before are enrolling in degree-granting institutions in the United States. Between 2001 and 2011, enrollment increased 32 percent while more women and more non-whites are entering postsecondary education than ever before (National Center for Educational Statistics)...

www.brookings.edu

That was 11 years ago. You realize that right?

 

[FA_Q2]

Do tell!
More students than ever before are enrolling in degree-granting institutions in the United States. Between 2001 and 2011, enrollment increased 32 percent.

What’s your next lie, liar?

Why You Should Go to College | Brookings

More students than ever before are enrolling in degree-granting institutions in the United States. Between 2001 and 2011, enrollment increased 32 percent while more women and more non-whites are entering postsecondary education than ever before (National Center for Educational Statistics)...

www.brookings.edu

Why stop at 2011...

U.S. college enrollment and forecast 1965-2031 | Statista

There were approximately 18.58 million college students in the U.S.

www.statista.com

Oh, that's why....

 

[Polishprince]

Universities are laying off people because they’re going broke.

“Colleges and universities across the nation have faced financial hardships due to COVID-19. Decreased enrollment is a contributing factor because institutions rely on tuition payments for their budgets.”

Gee that’s funny. Make higher education even more hellish by treating zero risk students like plague rats and less of them want to pay for the privilege. If they had any economics professors left admin could ask them about “incentives”.

University lays off 100 professors due to COVID

William Paterson University will lay off 100 full-time faculty over a three-year period, including tenured professors.

www.campusreform.org

The problem is that young people are wising up.

They have begun to realize that a doctorate degree in Lesbian Studies, German Polka or French Poetry may be prestigious, but there are few careers available for Lesbians, Poets or Polka dancers, particular in positions that require a doctorate degree in the discipline.

So why bother borrowing a fortune for the education?

 

[Weatherman2020]

Why stop at 2011...

U.S. college enrollment and forecast 1965-2031 | Statista

There were approximately 18.58 million college students in the U.S.

www.statista.com

Oh, that's why....

Gee, enrollments dropped in 2020. I wonder why.

Oh yeah.

A MAJOR PANDEMIC

 

[FA_Q2]

Gee, enrollments dropped in 2020. I wonder why.

Oh yeah.

A MAJOR PANDEMIC

And they dropped in 2012, 2013, 2014, 1015, 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019 so....

Why did you stop in 2011.

Now we know why.

 

[Admiral Rockwell Tory]

Do tell!
More students than ever before are enrolling in degree-granting institutions in the United States. Between 2001 and 2011, enrollment increased 32 percent.

What’s your next lie, liar?

Why You Should Go to College | Brookings

More students than ever before are enrolling in degree-granting institutions in the United States. Between 2001 and 2011, enrollment increased 32 percent while more women and more non-whites are entering postsecondary education than ever before (National Center for Educational Statistics)...

www.brookings.edu

Really, because 2011 was 11 years ago before my daughter ever attended college? She's been out almost 6 years now.

You need to work on those reading and math skills. With that kind of comment, you easily slip into liberalism!

 

[SweetSue92]

Universities are laying off people because they’re going broke.

“Colleges and universities across the nation have faced financial hardships due to COVID-19. Decreased enrollment is a contributing factor because institutions rely on tuition payments for their budgets.”

Gee that’s funny. Make higher education even more hellish by treating zero risk students like plague rats and less of them want to pay for the privilege. If they had any economics professors left admin could ask them about “incentives”.

University lays off 100 professors due to COVID

William Paterson University will lay off 100 full-time faculty over a three-year period, including tenured professors.

www.campusreform.org

I am not sorry for this, and I am an educator.

Modern American universities...leave much to be desired. Their stance on vaccines is an outrage

 

[DudleySmith]

Biden is going to massively expand the student green card program, so millions more foreign students can water down the value of degrees and technical training even more than they already are. Tech companies love their $12 an hour engineers with Master's degrees, and Biden feels their pain.

Biden administration expands popular work program for foreign students - Open Campus

It's one of a number of policy changes aimed at attracting and retaining global talent.

www.opencampusmedia.org

Biden needs more Red Chinese here stealing tech for his buddy Xi.

 

[DGS49]

In my long and storied career I worked for several companies that suffered through "downturns" of one kind or another. They were a challenge to Management; revenues were down, but theoretically there was no reason for profits to go down. The challenge is to make the organization run efficiently at, say, 75% of its former size. Some things cannot easily be downsized (buildings and whatnot), but the biggest single expense - payroll - can surely be adjusted, which illustrates the difference between SIMPLE and EASY. Cutting payroll is simple, but difficult and painful.

Still, any good manager can make those decisions, recognizing that some very good people will be jettisoned. Under the best circumstances management will not be forced to trim staff according to seniority, but can decide intelligently with whom it wants to go forward.

Whether a university can go through this process rationally, I cannot say. All I can say is that I experienced it many times in the private sector - sometimes to my own detriment - and I saw some organizations come out of it stronger than ever. There is no reason why an institution of higher learning could not do it successfully.