How College Enrollment Declines Can Affect Students' Finances
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Here's your money briefing for Friday, January 14th. I'm J.R. Whalen for The Wall Street Journal. Enrollment at U.S. colleges and universities has been trending lower for several years. And last fall, schools lost more than 3% of their undergraduate student base. That could make things difficult for a lot of schools that are already strapped for cash.
A lot of schools are tuition dependent. They don't have significant endowments. And so they have to rely on getting enough students in seats to pay their bills.
Doug Belkin covers higher education for the WSJ. Coming up, we'll talk with him about what's behind the enrollment decline and what it could mean for students' finances. That's after the break.
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Colleges and universities find themselves competing for a dwindling number of students.
What enrollment decline did U.S. colleges experience last fall and why does it matter?
Since the start of the pandemic, undergraduate enrollment has declined by nearly 7%, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. That's changing the math for the way schools operate and the tuition they charge students. WSJ higher education reporter Doug Belkin has been studying the numbers, and he joins us with more. Doug, thanks so much for being here.
Happy to be here.
So, Doug, what's driving these numbers down so much?
COVID. Kids don't want to go to school in a place where they can't really go to school. There's been so much disruption on the college campuses that a lot of students are making the decision that it's not worth the time or the money to head to college right now. So folks are putting it off or dropping out.
Well, what about remote learning? Is that playing a role?
Kids don't go to school just to go to class. They pay money to get access to accredited universities and credits and to earn a degree that way. But what brings a lot of students to school are the students, the quad, the clubs, the access to the social life, the swimming pools and the gyms and the professors in person. And so if that's denied to them because everything's remote, or they're stuck in their dorm room and the classes aren't live, or they're constantly being told not to socialize, then the value of going to college is much diminished. So not everybody wants to do it.
So Doug, where specifically is enrollment declining? What kinds of schools are getting hit the most?
The decline in enrollment is very uneven. There's plenty of schools that are doing very well. The selective schools are getting more applications than they've ever gotten before. Metro schools, schools in big cities generally tend to do well. Private, small, rural schools, especially those in the Midwest and the Northeast where there's a sharper demographic dip, are the most affected by this enrollment decline. Big Ten schools, Ivy League schools, they're not feeling the pinch at all. The folks who have seen the greatest decline of anybody is the community colleges. And I think part of that has to do with the very tight labor market. A lot of folks use community college to pivot, to turn their career into a different direction.
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