What Happens to College Towns After Peak 18-Year-Old?
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The article examines the challenges faced by college towns after the peak number of 18-year-old students, sparking a discussion on the impact of demographic changes on local economies and communities.
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Labor shortages are leading to college credentials not being needed. This is objectively good (as college debt and the time opportunity cost is avoided for an unnecessary credential), and hopefully will continue as demographic dynamics continue in the US. Is it good or bad the US has many colleges that will close because they are no longer needed due to a slowly declining fertility rate? It just is.
History says no...
And in a world where every competitor in a given market is owned by one of two or three megaconglomerates, “voting with your feet” stopped mattering long ago.
I don't think we want a system together where the way to make it work is to cheat and increase corruption. Maybe there are better examples of good ol' fashioned honest companies just plan ol' out competing entrenched incumbents without cheating or lying or hurting the public.
> History says no...
Aside from the obvious typos, I think that there is a crucial 'not' missing in the first sentence.
Also, why single out state funded systems? I don't believe that private enterprises have been a great model for provision of goods or services over self enrichment. (I now see that stouset said the same hours ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45546268.)
“The purpose of a system is what it does.” The current system sucks, and improvement is needed.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvg4eeerzrwo
U.S. colleges poised to close in next decade, expert says - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45171434 - September 2025
Looming 'demographic cliff': Fewer college students and fewer graduate - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42634596 - January 2025
Predicting College Closures and Financial Distress [pdf] - https://www.philadelphiafed.org/-/media/frbp/assets/working-... - December 2024
BestColleges: Tracking College Closures and Mergers - https://www.bestcolleges.com/research/closed-colleges-list-s...
(At least 84 public or nonprofit colleges have closed, merged, or announced closures or mergers since March 2020 as of this comment; I think the evidence is strong smaller for profit schools with enrollments <1k will continue to close well into the future)
https://thebusinessfrontier.com/trump-tells-universities-to-...
The foreign student population, incidentally, had been a big subsidizer of the domestic student population. They pay full tuition and get no domestic financial aid. But that flow is getting shut off, and between the domestic cliff and this self-inflicted international cliff, they will close. A lot of smaller liberal arts colleges have shut down in the last decades and we’re busily working to send the destruction up the food chain.
Yes, the labor market is changing. As the economy changes from industrial to services, so demands for some jobs go up, others go down. The emphasis on automation (AI being just another card in that deck) means that more is produced, while employing ever fewer people.
100 years ago agriculture consumed 27% of the work force. Today its 1%, while at the same time production is much higher.
The explosion of student debt, the access to knowledge online (outside of a college course), the declining birth rate, the current hostility to foreign students, the poor image of the US abroad, all contribute though. Each factor is small in isolation, but together they're moving the needle.
The saturation of the professional class also plays a role. Do we need to churn out several thousand new architects every year? Especially into a society that sees the concept of architecture as irrelevant?
Yes, colleges will close. The demand caused by the boomers will go away. But that's part of a much bigger shift in US society.
i don't think anyone cares anymore though. its just win and grin.
You think to yourself "why would they admit people with really low scores and then inflate grades? That doesn't seem like educating people" but the answer is that they're responding to a crop with shrinking yield by expanding what they're willing to farm.
Hence all those bogus subjects and stuff which people are getting degrees in.
So the university system has spent the last several decades basically consuming its most valuable asset (exclusivity) for short term growth. And it worked. For a while, at least. But now the long term effects are catching up with them and it has become apparent that the strategy is actually a doom loop:
lower standards to raise enrollment -> reduce value of credential -> less students enroll -> lower standards to raise enrollment
Every story of the trades pay well is just "be a trades business owner" well okay, but basically every alternative "be a X business owner" pays better.
While "dirty hands == clean money", the problem is that it often ends in sacrifice in health and/or body that leads to involuntary early retirement.
My dad had an A/C and electrical automotive specialty shop until 1985 when that took him out in his mid 30's. He also had Agent Orange exposure in the military and exposure to various carcinogens with a culture of PPE avoidance in the automotive industry of the 70's and 80's.
Plenty of people working in the trades are making modest salaries working for some builder or some company that serves industrial clients.
We're really badly setup for the future from multiple aspects.
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