Reply to Why more and more colleges are closing down across the U.S.

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I’m confused. 2006 was a birth boomlet year. Birth rates took a dive in 2008–Great Recession. So how is class of ‘25 (kids born in 2006 and 2007) going to be lowest in years? [/quote]

Can I draw you a picture of a cliff?

2025 is the top of the cliff, down from there. [/quote]

"Cliff" is a total misnomer. 2025 is when the numbers start going down gradually, just as they've been going up gradually since around 1990. Here's the National Center for Education Statistics' data:

https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d17/tables/dt17_219.10.asp

The bigger factor will be if people continue to believe it's worth the cost.[/quote]

I found another interesting article on this subject.

So if you graph demographic projections, the precipitous descent resembles a cliff beginning in 2025. Over the succeeding four years, the number of 18-year-olds will decrease by 15%.

How does that translate into enrollment figures? During that four-year span, colleges will lose approximately 576,000 students.  Unfortunately for higher education, this situation isn't an aberration. College enrollments have been declining steadily since 2012. During COVID-19's apex — from 2019 to 2022 — undergraduate enrollment dropped by 7%.

Colleges in the Northeast and Midwest, regions that for years have been experiencing population declines due to migration patterns, will be hit hardest. Grawe's projections suggest both regions will see their college-going populations drop by more than 15% through 2029.  That's sobering news for small, tuition-dependent private colleges in those states already teetering on shaky financial footing.

https://www.bestcolleges.com/news/analysis/looming-enrollment-cliff-poses-serious-threat-to-colleges/[/quote]

Interesting article, but you misquoted it. It does not say the total number of 18-year-olds will decrease by 15%, but that this will happen in two regions of the US. In other areas the population will actually go up. As the NCES chart says, the total population will only go down by around 3% in the 3 years after the drop starts (not sure why they don't project beyond that--it would be useful). That's still not good for colleges, and those in the Northeast and Midwest will struggle mightily if they can't convince students from other areas of the country to attend, but it's not a demographic cliff for the whole country--more of a demographic shift.[/quote]

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