https://www.npr.org/2022/01/13/1072529477/more-than-1-million-fewer-students-are-in-college-the-lowest-enrollment-numbers-

Accessibility links

  * Skip to main content
  * Keyboard shortcuts for audio player

  * Open Navigation Menu
  * NPR logo
  * 
  * 
  * NPR Shop
  * 

Close Navigation Menu

  * Home
  * News Expand/collapse submenu for News
      + National
      + World
      + Politics
      + Business
      + Health
      + Science
      + Climate
      + Race
  * Arts & Life Expand/collapse submenu for Arts & Life
      + Books
      + Movies
      + Television
      + Pop Culture
      + Food
      + Art & Design
      + Performing Arts
      + Life Kit
  * Music Expand/collapse submenu for Music
      + Best Music Of 2021
      + #NowPlaying
      + Tiny Desk
      + All Songs Considered
      + Music Features
      + Live Sessions
  * Podcasts & Shows Expand/collapse submenu for Podcasts & Shows
    Daily
      + [morning-ed] Morning Edition
      + [we_otheren] Weekend Edition Saturday
      + [we_otheren] Weekend Edition Sunday
      + [all-things] All Things Considered
      + [fresh-air] Fresh Air
      + [up-first] Up First
    Featured
      + [lifekit_ti] Life Kit
      + [pchh_podca] Pop Culture Happy Hour
      + [nprthrough] Throughline
      + [the-limits] The Limits with Jay Williams
      + More Podcasts & Shows
  * Search
  * 
  * NPR Shop

  * NPR Music NPR Music
  * Best Music Of 2021
  * #NowPlaying
  * Tiny Desk
  * All Songs Considered
  * Music Features
  * Live Sessions

  * About NPR
  * Diversity
  * Organization
  * Support
  * Careers
  * Connect
  * Press
  * Ethics

Americans choose jobs over college People are sitting out college in
droves. During the pandemic, undergraduate enrollment has dropped
nearly 7%. The long-term effects of this decline could have a
dramatic impact on the economy.

Education

More than 1 million fewer students are in college. Here's how that
impacts the economy

January 13, 20225:02 AM ET
Heard on Morning Edition
Elissa

Elissa Nadworny

Instagram Twitter

More than 1 million fewer students are in college. Here's how that
impacts the economy

Listen * 7:01 7:01
Toggle more options

  * Download
  * Embed
    Embed [<iframe src="https:/] <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/
    player/embed/1072529477/1072678692" width="100%" height="290"
    frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">
  * Transcript

A student chooses work over school.
Enlarge this image
Errata Carmona for NPR
Errata Carmona for NPR

More than 1 million fewer students are enrolled in college now than
before the pandemic began. According to new data released Thursday,
U.S. colleges and universities saw a drop of nearly 500,000
undergraduate students in the fall of 2021, continuing a historic
decline that began the previous fall.

"It's very frightening," says Doug Shapiro, who leads the research
center at the National Student Clearinghouse, where the new data
comes from. "Far from filling the hole of [2020's] enrollment
declines, we are still digging it deeper."

Compared with the fall of 2019, the last fall semester before the
coronavirus pandemic, undergraduate enrollment has fallen a total of
6.6%. That represents the largest two-year decrease in more than 50
years, Shapiro says.

The nation's community colleges are continuing to feel the bulk of
the decline, with a 13% enrollment drop over the course of the
pandemic. But the fall 2021 numbers show that bachelor's
degree-seeking students at four-year colleges are making up about
half of the shrinkage in undergraduate students, a big shift from the
fall of 2020, when the vast majority of the declines were among
associate degree seekers.

"The phenomenon of students sitting out of college seems to be more
widespread. It's not just the community colleges anymore," says
Shapiro. "That could be the beginning of a whole generation of
students rethinking the value of college itself. I think if that were
the case, this is much more serious than just a temporary
pandemic-related disruption."

Graduate program enrollment, which saw an increase in the fall of
2020, declined slightly, down by nearly 11,000 in the fall of 2021.

Overall, enrollment in undergraduate and graduate programs has been
trending downward since around 2012, but the pandemic turbocharged
the declines at the undergrad level.

Fewer Students Are Going To College. Here's Why That Matters

Education

Fewer Students Are Going To College. Here's Why That Matters

Many were hopeful that would-be undergraduates who chose to take a
year off in 2020 would return in 2021, especially given the expanded
opportunities for in-person learning. But the pandemic gap year
appears to be a myth: The National Student Clearinghouse found that
of the 2020 high school graduates who chose not to enroll in college
after graduation, only 2% ended up enrolling a year later, in the
fall of 2021.

"The easiest assumption is that they're out there working," says
Shapiro. "Unemployment is down. The labor market is good. Wages are
rising for workers in low-skilled jobs. So if you have a high school
diploma, this seems like a pretty good time to be out there making
some money."

Wages at the bottom of the economy have increased dramatically,
making minimum-wage jobs especially appealing to young people as an
alternative to college. In December, for example, jobs for
non-managers working in leisure and hospitality paid 15% more than a
year ago, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

That could be the beginning of a whole generation of students
rethinking the value of college itself.

Doug Shapiro, National Student Clearinghouse

"It's very tempting for high school graduates, but the fear is that
they are trading a short-term gain for a long-term loss," Shapiro
says. "And the longer they stay away from college, you know, life
starts to happen and it becomes harder and harder to start thinking
about yourself going back into a classroom."

It's hard to give up a paycheck

For Brian Williams, who graduated from high school early in the
pandemic, the long-term plan is to go to college.

He postponed enrolling in 2020 because he was tired of remote
learning; instead, he got a job at a Jimmy John's sandwich store near
his home in the suburbs of Houston so he could start saving up. When
it was time to enroll in fall 2021 classes, he postponed again -- he
says he was more interested in finding a job that paid more than in
giving up much of his paycheck to go to school. In August, Williams
left Jimmy John's and got a job at an Amazon warehouse; his hourly
earnings jumped up by $4.50.

"I feel more secure within the money I'm getting," he says. To get to
and from his new job, he bought a car, which he's working to pay off.

'Losing A Generation': Fall College Enrollment Plummets For 1st-Year
Students

The Coronavirus Crisis

'Losing A Generation': Fall College Enrollment Plummets For 1st-Year
Students

For Williams, enrolling in college means he'll have to cut back on
hours and earn less money, while also spending more money to pay for
classes.

"It's so hard," he says. "I'm just like, 'Wow, if I go to school, I'm
going to take time off and I'm not going to have any money for things
I need.' "

He had toyed with the idea of starting community college in the new
year but is now thinking he'll start next fall, to give himself
another eight months to save up.

He knows he doesn't want to work at Amazon forever.

"Even though this job does give me the money I need, it's not enough
for what I want, for what I see [for] myself or what I want for
myself. So I have to put myself through college."

The short-term benefits of a high hourly wage vs. the long-term
benefits of a degree

A dramatic drop in college enrollment could spell trouble for those
Americans who are opting out, as well as for their families. Research
has long shown that getting even some post-secondary education leads
to higher wages, lower unemployment and greater lifetime earnings. In
one study from Georgetown University, bachelor's degree holders were
found to "earn a median of $2.8 million during their career, 75% more
than if they had only a high school diploma."

"It may be great that people are finding jobs in the short term,"
says researcher Tolani Britton, "but an 18-year-old who is living at
home and helping his family with the minimum wage that he's earning --
if he's still earning that wage 15 years from now and has a family of
his own to support, what are the implications in terms of
socioeconomic mobility for that individual, for their children?"

Britton, who studies the economics of higher education at the
University of California, Berkeley, says a host of other benefits
have been linked with higher education, including an increased
likelihood of civic participation, lower infant mortality rates,
better maternal health and a decreased likelihood of being unhoused
or experiencing food insecurity, among other things.

Young barista in business
Enlarge this image
LA Johnson/NPR
LA Johnson/NPR

Many of those social benefits stem from a lifetime of higher wages
and increased financial stability -- long-term payoffs that can be
hard to prioritize over short-term wins, like having a little more
money right now.

"At the end of the day, the wages that you're getting today are one
thing, but in 10 years from now they might be really similar,"
Britton explains. "There may not be the growth that you would expect
when people get post-secondary education."

But Britton also understands that it can be hard to make decisions
about your future needs when you're also trying to meet the needs of
today.

"People are in hard economic situations," she says. "The [pandemic]
recovery has been extremely uneven."

On top of that, the challenges that existed before the pandemic for
low-income students, students of color and students who are the first
in their families to go to college -- those challenges haven't gone
anywhere.

At the end of the day, the wages that you're getting today are one
thing, but in 10 years from now they might be really similar. ...
There may not be the growth that you would expect when people get
post-secondary education.

Tolani Britton, University of California, Berkeley

"Community colleges are the schools that traditionally enroll
lower-income students," Shapiro says, "so we can assume that that's
primarily who is affected and still staying away the most."

When the National Student Clearinghouse looked at 2020 high school
graduates, it found students from lower-income schools had lower
college-going numbers, as did students at high-minority high schools.

"The gap in college access between higher-income and lower-income
students grew wider," Shapiro says.

The U.S. economy feels the long-term effects of fewer college
graduates

When fewer people go to college, fewer people graduate with the
skills, credentials and degrees necessary for a higher-paying job.
And that reverberates throughout the entire U.S. economy.

"The direct loss to the economy is the workers themselves," explains
Tony Carnevale, the director of Georgetown University's Center on
Education and the Workforce. "If they were trained and ready, they
would get higher-wage jobs and they would add more to GDP, making us
all richer and increasing taxes, reducing welfare costs, crime costs,
on and on."

When workers make higher wages, their local economies also benefit.
Carnevale explains it this way: "When you hire the crane operator,
the crane operator goes and buys groceries. So the grocery clerk has
a job."

More and more jobs in the U.S. require some post-secondary training,
Carnevale says, which makes college graduates far more valuable to
the economy.

Finding your way to a (high-paying) trade job

Life Kit

Finding your way to a (high-paying) trade job

Before the pandemic, the country already had a skills gap, with jobs
sitting empty because businesses couldn't find workers with the
proper credentials. In the past decade, community colleges have
worked to close that gap, partnering with local businesses to pair
training with employer needs.

But according to Carnevale, declining enrollment rates at community
colleges mean that gap is going to grow -- which, in turn, hurts
business.

"You can't run your business if you literally cannot find people to
work in that business," says Britton, of the University of
California, Berkeley.

And when businesses struggle, she says, "that has implications for
things like decreases in tax revenues, higher prices for goods and
services, delays in the production of services and goods like we've
seen during the pandemic. And many of those things will only get
worse if there are fewer people to fill the jobs."

Declines in college enrollment have a compounded impact on the
economy because there are economic consequences on so many levels:
the individual, the community, businesses and society as a whole.

The longer they stay away from college, you know, life starts to
happen and it becomes harder and harder to start thinking about
yourself going back into a classroom.

Doug Shapiro, National Student Clearinghouse

It's unclear exactly how to address these economic ripple effects.
Colleges, for their part, are standing up reentry programs and
creating new incentives to enroll. Valencia College, a community
college that serves about 50,000 students in Orlando, Fla., waived
application fees, extended deadlines and allowed returning students
to retake classes for free. For any student who failed a course they
were forced to take online, it gave them a $500 scholarship to come
back and take another class in person, when things opened up.

Shapiro, of the National Student Clearinghouse, says local
communities have the most at stake when someone puts college off,
because their local economies suffer when workers aren't qualified
for the best jobs.

He says it's on those communities to "make the case that college
offerings are worthwhile and it is important for students to invest
in their future employability, in their skills and training."

Is he tired of all this bad news?

Yes.

Does he think these low college-going rates are the new normal?

"It's a frightening thought. I sure hope not. But I guess we'll see."

  * Facebook
  * Twitter
  * Flipboard
  * Email

Read & Listen

  * Home
  * News
  * Arts & Life
  * Music
  * Podcasts & Shows

Connect

  * Newsletters
  * Facebook
  * Twitter
  * Instagram
  * Press
  * Contact & Help

About NPR

  * Overview
  * Diversity
  * Ethics
  * Finances
  * Public Editor
  * Corrections

Get Involved

  * Support Public Radio
  * Sponsor NPR
  * NPR Careers
  * NPR Shop
  * NPR Events
  * NPR Extra

  * Terms of Use
  * Privacy
  * Your Privacy Choices
  * Text Only
  *