Will competition for admission decrease for kids born in 2008 +?

[Anonymous]

I've read that Gen Z is much smaller than the millennial generation and that there is a "college apocalypse" supposed to be happening for kids during the 2008 Recession and the years immediately after (i.e. a time when the birth rate sharply declined).

What do you think?

***

Some forecasters, including famed Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen, predict as many as half of all universities will close or go bankrupt in the next decade. The crisis is largely driven by declining enrollment facilitated by the Great Recession, which resulted in a significant drop in the U.S. birthrate. Scholars estimate that nearly 2.3 million fewer babies were born between 2008 and 2013, which, when combined with an expansion of higher education offerings in the decades preceding that, mean too many slots compared to the number of applicants.

Economist Nathan Grawe, who coined the term "birth dearth" in his 2017 book, "Demographics and the Demand for Higher Education," estimates that the number of students graduating from high school in New England who are then likely to enroll in four-year colleges and universities will be 24 percent lower in 2029 than it was in 2012.

In fact, just seven years from now, he estimates, there will be 32,000 to 54,000 fewer college-aged students in New England, which has both the lowest fertility rate and highest concentration of colleges in the country.

https://www.usnews.com/news/education-news/articles/2019-03-22/college-closings-signal-start-of-a-crisis-in-higher-education

[Anonymous]

Maybe these schools should stop wasting money on fancy buildings and dorms and stuff that are not needed.

[Anonymous]

OP I work in higher ed. I've read that there will be an estimated 15-20% decline in eligible students starting in 2026. That's a pretty big drop. You'd think it would have some impact.

[Anonymous]

Combined with this, you have the problem of increasing tuition. How many people will be willing to pay 100k + per year in the late 2020s?

I can't imagine that will be a large # of people.

[Anonymous]

People will still probably be obsessed with the top 50 or so schools. The pain will be felt at the schools that struggle to fill their classes each year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:People will still probably be obsessed with the top 50 or so schools. The pain will be felt at the schools that struggle to fill their classes each year.

Of course. But right now it is such a crap shoot for top fifty. Even with great grades and scores, etc. it’s still a reach.

With a 15% decline in the population, I would assume less intense competition.

[Anonymous]

Smart schools will start reining in their costs now. They’ve been spending like drunken sailors the last couple of decades.

[Anonymous]

The 25 schools that DCUM likes to talk about will not see competition diminish.

In order to see competition diminish, GPA or test scores would have to decrease.

Those 25 schools have plenty of 4.0s and 1590s to pick from, but the essay and EC quality of those accepted will diminish.

My guess is that they will also take more international students, although not enough to make up for the entire birth drop.

[Anonymous]

OP, I’d never heard of this before. We had our 3 kids in 09, 10, and 12. A 15% drop in population is pretty big. I hope it helps them. We’re also fortunate in that they won’t need aid or loans.

Finally we did something right, lol.

[Anonymous]

The contraction will come from the bottom up.

As it does in every market.

[Anonymous]

NP. So I’m assuming it’ll still be hard to get into the tippy top schools (Ivy plus Stanford and such).

What about the next rung though? Wash U, Williams, Middlebury, Hopkins, Emory, Tufts, Rice, UR, Vandy, etc.

Think competition will drop there?

[Anonymous]

I am on the board of a very small college in the midwest. We have seen our freshman class rise from 880 in the early 2000s to 1400 this year. We are planning it to stager and then drop off. We hope not back to 900...we would love for it to stay around 1050/1100 by 2030. My point is if my little itty bitty home town college knows its coming I am sure the big schools have a huge plan in action for it too. We have also finished all our new buildings for the foreseeable future...we got caught up in a cycle where every 5 years we open the newest and greatest XZY center and we aren't going to swim in that pool anymore. One thing we are worried about is potentially having empty dorms so we are looking at incising upperclassman to stay on campus when the population drops off.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I've read that Gen Z is much smaller than the millennial generation and that there is a "college apocalypse" supposed to be happening for kids during the 2008 Recession and the years immediately after (i.e. a time when the birth rate sharply declined).

What do you think?

***

Some forecasters, including famed Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen, predict as many as half of all universities will close or go bankrupt in the next decade. The crisis is largely driven by declining enrollment facilitated by the Great Recession, which resulted in a significant drop in the U.S. birthrate. Scholars estimate that nearly 2.3 million fewer babies were born between 2008 and 2013, which, when combined with an expansion of higher education offerings in the decades preceding that, mean too many slots compared to the number of applicants.

Economist Nathan Grawe, who coined the term "birth dearth" in his 2017 book, "Demographics and the Demand for Higher Education," estimates that the number of students graduating from high school in New England who are then likely to enroll in four-year colleges and universities will be 24 percent lower in 2029 than it was in 2012.

In fact, just seven years from now, he estimates, there will be 32,000 to 54,000 fewer college-aged students in New England, which has both the lowest fertility rate and highest concentration of colleges in the country.

https://www.usnews.com/news/education-news/articles/2019-03-22/college-closings-signal-start-of-a-crisis-in-higher-education

Declining birthrates is probably being offset by immigration?

[Anonymous]

Aren't there increasing numbers of wealthy international students, particularly from China, that want to come to undergrad in the USA now?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, I’d never heard of this before. We had our 3 kids in 09, 10, and 12. A 15% drop in population is pretty big. I hope it helps them. We’re also fortunate in that they won’t need aid or loans.

Finally we did something right, lol.

+1 (we had our kids in 2011, 2013, and 2016)