Puzzler: Admit & Enrollment Both Shrink

CBS News: "The number of enrolled college students slipped 1.3% this fall compared with a year earlier, representing a loss of 231,000 students, according to a survey from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, a nonprofit educational research group. For the first time in a decade, the number of college students slipped below 18 million, dipping to 17.9 million students, it said. It may appear like a contradiction to find lower acceptance rates at many colleges given a shrinking pool of potential customers."

"Yet Ivy League colleges and other top universities are aggressively marketing themselves to both national and international top students, creating an increasingly competitive admissions process. And the cachet of receiving a degree from an Ivy League school also comes with bigger lifetime earnings, sparking more competition for those few coveted spots. Less prestigious institutions, on the other hand, are sometimes struggling to attract qualified students, leading to college closures such as Green Mountain College in Vermont. In fact, about 25% of U.S. colleges will likely fail in the next two decades, Michael Horn, who studies education at Harvard University, told CBS News earlier this year."

"So what accounts for lower college enrollment? Demographic changes. The number of high school graduates is stagnating, with overall graduation rates expected to drop in the next decade, according to the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education. The rising cost of college. The price for a private, four-year college is about $41,000 per year, or about double the cost in the mid-1980s, according to the U.S. Department of Education. That's far outpaced typical household income growth. A growing economy. Some high school students may be deferring or opting against college due to the low unemployment rate and the availability of jobs."

College Costs: Still Less Than the Benefits

CNBC: "During the 1978 - 1979 school year, it cost the modern equivalent of $17,680 per year to attend a private college and $8,250 per year to attend a public college. By the 2008 - 2009 school year those costs had grown to $38,720 at private colleges and $16,460 at public colleges. Today, those costs are closer to $48,510 and $21,370, respectively. That means costs increased by roughly 25.3% at private colleges and about 29.8% at public colleges. Still, earning a college degree remains a strong investment."

"In 2018, college graduates earned weekly wages that were 80% higher than those of high school graduates. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that Americans with a bachelor’s degree have median weekly earnings of $1,173, compared to just $712 a week for those who have a high school diploma."

"Lackluster state funding is a major reason for rising college costs. From 2008 to 2018, the average tuition at four-year public colleges increased in all 50 states. On average, tuition at these schools has increased by 37%, and net costs (including factors like scholarships and grants) have increased by 24%, according to a 2019 report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities ... A typical trope is that colleges today spend exorbitantly on frivolous luxuries such as climbing walls, hot tubs and lazy rivers for students. This kind of spending is rare."

College List & The Sibling Effect

Inside Higher Ed: "When older siblings enroll at a target college, it 'nearly quadruple[s] the probability that younger siblings apply to the same target college (from 10 to 37 percent). Though younger siblings do not appear to increase their number of college applications, they roughly double their probability (from 25 to 53 percent) of applying only to colleges with historical graduation rates higher than 50 percent, suggesting their portfolio of applications improves given their older siblings' choice of a higher quality college ... Thirteen percent of younger siblings follow their older sibling to the target college only because their older sibling enrolled there, an impact that is highly statistically significant' ... But the impact extends further, to the younger siblings applying to other high-quality colleges."

According to a report by the National Bureau of Economic Research: "We argue that an older sibling’s enrollment in a higher quality college can provide for families information about postsecondary education that would otherwise be difficult or impossible to obtain. In that sense, an older sibling’s college choice is a particularly high touch intervention, providing prolonged exposure to another person’s experience of the complex good that college education represents."

"If students’ college choices are deeply affected by the college experiences of people in their social networks, such social factors may partly explain persistent differences in college enrollment by income, race and geography."