From 1636, when Harvard was founded, to about 2010, college enrollments in America tended to rise constantly, with minor disruptions, reflecting increased demand for higher education largely arising from population and economic growth. At the beginning of the American Revolution, fewer than one of every 2,500 colonial Americans attended college. By 2010, the proportion of Americans enrolled had grown more than 150-fold; a typical community of 2,500 Americans had over 150 of them attending a college or university.
While reliable annual enrollment data are unavailable for the first two centuries of American higher education, it is unlikely that there were any periods of decline lasting more than a decade in the number of students attending college until recently. While final data are not in, it is clear that enrollment this academic year is lower than 14 years earlier (2010-11), even though the country is prospering and the population is growing (albeit slowly).
[RELATED: America’s Demographic Cliff Will Reshape Higher Education—for the Better]
During the first 374 years of American higher education (1636–2010), enrollment growth experienced several minor disruptions due to wars, including the Civil War, two world wars, and those in Korea and Vietnam. However, war sometimes appeared to have a positive effect. For example, enrollments in 1970—around the peak of the Vietnam War—were over 40 percent higher than in 1964, early in the U.S. troop buildup. Similarly, enrollments rose considerably during the 1930s, the decade of the Great Depression, as falling incomes were associated with an increase in college attendance.
Enrollment growth came for many reasons: an increasingly knowledge-based economy needed more highly educated workers, rising incomes made college more affordable, the return on college investment was perceived high, new low-cost public colleges were formed, and, in some cases, an increasingly affluent student population found college to be more than an investment: it was both fun and a good place to find a life partner. Graduate and professional schools boomed as well: after 1900, if you wanted to be a doctor or lawyer, you went to postgraduate professional schools, unlike earlier.
Why, then, is the more recent enrollment decline?
Several factors are at work. The cost of college started rising much faster than prices generally or even incomes, especially after federal student lending became massive after 1980. As college degrees no longer necessarily denoted exceptional intelligence or ability—as the proportion of Americans with degrees grew—the earnings premium associated with degree attainment leveled off and even occasionally declined as the era of the college-educated bartender and barista began.
But the enrollment decline of the last decade also increasingly reflects the fact that many Americans now find colleges an inhospitable environment—not a place to entrust your kids. The faculty seems excessively woke and less concerned about academic merit than other perceived wrongs like racial or gender injustice. Certain historically well-represented groups, like Jews, increasingly have felt a hostile, even sometimes threatening, environment. “Diversity, equity, and inclusion” programs not only added to college costs but implied things like race or sexual preferences were more important factors than academic achievement, rubbing many Americans the wrong way. Universities seemed increasingly out of sync with American life: “a public be damned attitude” seemed to be prevalent on some campuses just as it allegedly was for Robber Baron business leaders of the late 19th and early 20th century.
All of this is reflected in polling data showing a sharp drop in public confidence and support for our colleges. While there have been previous episodes of public unhappiness with universities—as during the era of Vietnam War protests—they were less pervasive and lengthy than the current wave of antipathy. Universities were once relatively nonpartisan in terms of political support, but today, those on the left tend to remain supportive, while those on the right and center are increasingly ambivalent or hostile. This shift is particularly problematic for higher education when the right holds political power, as is the case now.
[RELATED: Reflections on the Loss of Rigor in College Classes]
The enrollment decline was first largely triggered by high college costs but morphed into a bigger problem when collegiate political support sagged as protests by mostly leftist demonstrators turned off the public. Universities are heavily dependent on outsiders, private philanthropists, and especially governments to thrive. Falling political support accompanied declining enrollments.
Whether we are beginning a traditionalist counter-revolution, prompting the overthrow of collegiate woke excesses and pruning of wasteful spending, is unknown. There are some hopeful signs, but the jury is still out.
Image from page 135 of “History of the University of Michigan” (1906) by Internet Archive Book Images on Flickr
Jesʻ thinninʻ here:
Post WWII, the GI Bill funded college educations for a huge number of veterans. Most of those vets were older and far more mature (nothing engenders maturity quite as much as getting shot at for long periods) than the average high school graduate. So they tended to major in things like engineering, law, medicine, even the classic liberal arts — all of which provided them with a solid foundation for upward socio-economic mobility.
In pursuing votes, politicians encapsulated that upward mobility into “a college degree is essential for success.” The top level data seemed to support that assertion, so the general public and government in particular jumped onboard that train. Businesses, being lazy (excuse me, efficient) used a four-year degree as prime facie evidence of ability and knowledge, Well, we lied to ourselves. Very few jobs actually require college level, broad knowledge, the kind you (should) get with a four-year degree program. But colleges, being businesses, whether or not they are for profit, saw this demand for four-year degrees and began offering courses and degree programs that were consistent with the abilities of more and more applicants. So, now there are degree programs very much akin to the snarky Underwater Basket Weaving once joked about for the football team. These made-up disciplines are not providing a return on investment and so we have the media darling graduates with a masters degree in Lower Elbonian Comparative Cultural Studies doing barista duty at your local coffee shop and feeling very much abused.
Maybe, just maybe, people are beginning to realize that college, in general, ainʻt what itʻs cracked up to be, and that, while the four (or five or six or seven) years there enjoying the spa-like gym and gourmet dining may be fun, it ainʻt gonna pay the bills.
Maybe Americans are coming to realize that people without a college degree (like my Dad who retired from the Navy as a Commander or my Master Electrician nephew who owns a loan-free Porsche and five apartment buildings) can, and do, move up that socio-economic ladder.
Maybe, just maybe, colleges ought to go back to providing quality post- high school educations that enable people to be productive members of society and financially solid citizens.
Herre’s a thought, the fertility rate in the US has been persistently below 2.1 (the rate necessary for a stable population) since the early 1970’s which, absent immigration, implies an increasingly diminishing young domestic population. if admission standards and the innate abilities of the new-born did not change, a fixed proportion of this diminishing population would attend university after the late 1980’s thus admissions of domestic students would automatically diminish.
During the first 374 years of American higher education (1636–2010), enrollment growth experienced several minor disruptions due to wars, including the Civil War, two world wars, and those in Korea and Vietnam. However, war sometimes appeared to have a positive effect. For example, enrollments in 1970—around the peak of the Vietnam War—were over 40 percent higher than in 1964, early in the U.S. troop buildup. Similarly, enrollments rose considerably during the 1930s, the decade of the Great Depression, as falling incomes were associated with an increase in college attendance.
I must disagree — college enrollment actually increased during the Civil War as the land grant colleges were being created at this time — UMass was founded in 1863. Excepting WWII, the draft (which existed from 1948-73) exempted college students and (during Korea) teachers. I’ve never seen indication that enrollment increased during the depression.
What really increased enrollment was the Higher Ed Act of 1965.
You missed some significant points in your essay.
First of all, almost all of the early American universities were strongly associated with various Protestant religions. Princeton, I believe, only eliminated its chapel requirement in the 1970s. Given this, they were WASP institutions that were not really open to much of the American public, and certainly not to the Catholic demographic as a rule.
Because of that, public institutions began to be founded in the late 19th Century in the form of land grant institutions controlled by the states or territories they were in, and by Catholic universities to educate the small number of Catholics that went to university.
The really massive change in things came about due to World War Two. The needed for educated men in the military lead to widespread government involvement in education, followed by the GI Bill after the war. The GI Bill lead to widespread Catholic participation in higher education for the very first time.
That directly contributed to the huge economic boom of the 1950s, although much of the rest of the world having been bombed into rubble contributed to that as well. As late as the 1970s simply having a bachelor’s degree was a ticket into the upper middle class demographic.
Predictably, however, as with anything that’s over supplied, the value of that started to decline by the 1980s, followed in turn, predictably, by the cheapening of the product. I was just commenting the other day myself how when I went to university for a BS in geology in the 1980s I was still required to take a foreign language at my state university. That requirement ended while I was still there.
So, oversupply lead to reduced demand, which lead to a cheaper product. The ultimate example may be law (I went on to get a JD as there were no jobs available), which any idiot can get and which supplies a flooded market in which state bar associations desperately cheapen the product every year through the UBE and other such efforts.
The solution?
I really have no idea. But there needs to be one, as the contemporary United States provides ample evidence that we’re living in an era of blistering ignorance.
You should write an essay on this.
“Predictably, however, as with anything that’s over supplied, the value of that started to decline by the 1980s, followed in turn, predictably, by the cheapening of the product.”
I’m not sure that this holds up to evidence. This holds for lots and lots of things that are said about education but “It ain’t necessarily so.”
Try google on “college earnings premium” and click on “images” and have a look from, say, 1970 to present.
“Try google on “college earnings premium” and click on “images” and have a look from, say, 1970 to present.”
Try taking a course in research methods and you will see the fallacies involved in this.
Given this, they were WASP institutions that were not really open to much of the American public, and certainly not to the Catholic demographic as a rule.
They actually were institutions dedicated to the training of clergy, including the Catholic ones. St. Mary’s Seminary & University (MD) 1791 and Georgetown University (DC) 1789 come to immediate mind as Catholic ones, and yes they both were in Maryland, which had a significant Catholic population — Maryland had been founded with religious freedom for Catholics — and the Jesuits had arrived there in 1633.
Yes, most were Protestant — Yale was founded because the Connecticut Puritans didn’t like the ministers being trained by the Massachusetts Puritans at Harvard. And Amherst College was founded by a group of Harvard professors in 1821 who thought that Harvard had lost God, but I digress…
And we won’t get into Mary Dyer…
In early America, religion and education (i.e. elementary education) were closely related. The Puritans believed that the ability to read the Bible for ones self was essential for salvation and while the Catholics didn’t, they still supported education and hence the preparation of teachers.
During the 17th & 18th Centuries, these then-colleges largely trained clergy and teachers. For example, a young John Adams “taught school” in Worcester (MA) while he read law.
Because of that, public institutions began to be founded in the late 19th Century in the form of land grant institutions controlled by the states or territories they were in
Not really — public institutions came from two places with two distinct purposes.
First, starting in the 1830s, were the Normal Schools (teacher’s colleges) which were created to produce the large number of teachers that the growing country needed — particularly since most of them got married after a few years and left the profession. This started with Horace Mann in Massachusetts and quickly spread.
John Morrill was a US Senator from Vermont, and his goal was to give young men a background in “Scientific Agriculture and Mechanical Arts (engineering) so that they would continue to work the rocky soils of Vermont instead of moving to the Ohio River Valley.
The first Land Grant Act of 1862 allowed states to form these in the North, and the 1890 one did in the South — although it mandated “separate but equal” if segregated, and that’s where a lot of the HBCUs came from.
The really massive change in things came about due to World War Two. The needed for educated men in the military lead to widespread government involvement in education
What’s now Army ROTC was mandated by the Morrill Act as 1862 was also the height of the Civil War and the US Army badly needed 2LTs to replace those lost in combat. And the military did take over a lot of college campi during WWII and use them to run officer candidate schools, the “90 day wonders.”
“followed by the GI Bill after the war.”
The GI Readjustment Act of 1944 was a larger bill, and the educational benefits were intended to keep returning veterans out of the workforce until the civilian economy could restart because Roosevelt was worried about dropping back into another Depression.
“The GI Bill lead to widespread Catholic participation in higher education for the very first time.”
I’ve never seen that in my research — Catholics were more urban and hence less likely to go for an “Aggie” degree, but the Newman Centers (social/religious centers for Catholic students) started in 1883 at the University of Wisconsin and by 1908 there were enough for a national association to form. That would seem to indicate that there were Catholic students (and professors) attending these institutions, although I don’t know how many.