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California State University system sees unprecedented decline in enrollment

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Re: California State University system sees unprecedented decline in enrollment

#61

Post by selimthegrim »

asoneth wrote: post #55
wnevets wrote: post #25

> According to the Education Data Initiative, college enrollment statistics indicate that more Americans are forgoing higher education; “some may be putting off college attendance to build savings.” Less demand should reduce the price to attend, right?

I'm not sure they will lower prices. For selective colleges I think the impact will be negligible. They already reject a sizeable fraction of applicants so it would be less painful for them to respond to a shrinking applicant pool by rejecting a slightly smaller fraction of that pool. And many of the rest may not be able to afford to lower the price due to administrative bloat: "For example three universities, the Ca…

Caltech has a lot of research staff as permanent or long term employees and a small student body

Re: California State University system sees unprecedented decline in enrollment

#62

Post by red-iron-pine »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #20
panzagl wrote: post #3

I know when my daughter started college 5 years ago, the dean was up front that there was a demographic cliff coming up, I wonder how much of the decline is that.

Structural demographics are likely a component, but also potential students evaluating the cost based on evidence of value. https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/careers/college-degree-jobs-un... | https://archive.today/oyc5e ("WSJ: Half of College Grads Are Working Jobs That Don’t Use Their Degrees") > That is the key finding of a new study tracking the career paths of more than 10 million people who entered the job market…

Even a decade ago I heard Jr Linux Admins -- 20 year olds -- who dropped out of college talking about how the juice wasn't worth the squeeze.

Like, they live around Northern VA, get a job working in a data center, snag a couple of certs, and then run with it. Maybe get an Associate's at the NVCC or via online orgs like U-MD.

Having done hiring in that demographic there was definitely a difference in the Jr Admin population who had real 4-year brick-and-mortar school degrees vs. those without, but I wouldn't be surprised to see that trend decreasing.

Re: California State University system sees unprecedented decline in enrollment

#63

Post by [deleted] »

mik1998 wrote: post #32
Escapado wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is still about twice of what I paid for my entire bachelors and masters education in germany and it included a ticket for the entire public transport system in my city for the entire 5 years and full access to _very_ comprehensive library (of both physical books and e-books so there was no need to buy even a single book during my studies). I may speak from a perspective of ignorance here but I believe 6000$ a y…

It's an infinity% more than what I paid for university in Poland

[deleted]

Re: California State University system sees unprecedented decline in enrollment

#64

Post by [deleted] »

red-iron-pine wrote: post #62
toomuchtodo wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Structural demographics are likely a component, but also potential students evaluating the cost based on evidence of value. https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/careers/college-degree-jobs-un... | https://archive.today/oyc5e ("WSJ: Half of College Grads Are Working Jobs That Don’t Use Their Degrees") > That is the key finding of a new study tracking the career paths of more than 10 million people who entered the job market…

Even a decade ago I heard Jr Linux Admins -- 20 year olds -- who dropped out of college talking about how the juice wasn't worth the squeeze. Like, they live around Northern VA, get a job working in a data center, snag a couple of certs, and then run with it. Maybe get an Associate's at the NVCC or via online orgs like U-MD. Having done hiring in that demographic there was definitely a difference in the Jr Admin popu…

[deleted]

Re: California State University system sees unprecedented decline in enrollment

#65

Post by alistairSH »

red-iron-pine wrote: post #62
toomuchtodo wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Structural demographics are likely a component, but also potential students evaluating the cost based on evidence of value. https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/careers/college-degree-jobs-un... | https://archive.today/oyc5e ("WSJ: Half of College Grads Are Working Jobs That Don’t Use Their Degrees") > That is the key finding of a new study tracking the career paths of more than 10 million people who entered the job market…

Even a decade ago I heard Jr Linux Admins -- 20 year olds -- who dropped out of college talking about how the juice wasn't worth the squeeze. Like, they live around Northern VA, get a job working in a data center, snag a couple of certs, and then run with it. Maybe get an Associate's at the NVCC or via online orgs like U-MD. Having done hiring in that demographic there was definitely a difference in the Jr Admin popu…

My son roughly falls in the "dropped out, career in IT" category, but I doubt he'd ever claim the juice (college) wasn't worth the squeeze. He just wasn't ready for higher ed at age 18. He did eventually complete a stack of certs and an AAS but he'd be the first to admit he shouldn't have stuck it out.

A few things, based on his experience... it took time to get into IT - instead of going to college, he was working low-wage PT jobs. The starting salary was low. It's not like he just dropped out and fell into a six-figure career (which might have been possible 20 years ago, when IT-savvy early career folks weren't as common).

Re: California State University system sees unprecedented decline in enrollment

#66

Post by alistairSH »

alephnerd wrote: post #30
r00fus wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CSU contains the very highly regarded Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. As with other networks of schools there are more desirable and less desirable ones, but yeah, it's IMHO pretty close to a U of [STATE] in quality.

SJSU and SDSU engineering as well. Cal Poly SLO, SJSU Engineering, and SDSU Engineering have similar admission statistics to upper mid tier UCs like UCI and UCSB. I'm still a bit salty that I got into an Ivy Tier but got rejected from UCD and SLO. SLO and SJSU are honestly amazing programs and along with UTD, UW Bothell, and UIC should be a model for high quality affordable education.

Good friend's kid got into Stanford, but not UCLA. Mom and dad are both UCLA PhDs. Dad got a real kick out of that and got a good few months of ribbing the kid - "haha, you're not smart enough for UCLA!"

[Stanford is not UC or CSU, just located in CA]

Re: California State University system sees unprecedented decline in enrollment

#67

Post by ramesh31 »

bruceb wrote: post #59
ramesh31 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You think the avg CSU student is going to perform the same as avg UC student? Thanks for proving the point.

what point?

That there's a massive bias against CSU grads in this industry, even compared to other state schools.

Re: California State University system sees unprecedented decline in enrollment

#68

Post by ramesh31 »

breadwinner wrote: post #44
ramesh31 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There's no shame in going to CSU traditionally; lots of great schools in the system and certainly fine alumni. Nonsense. Everyone knows that CSU grads are viewed as strictly second tier to UC grads in this industry, even though CSU standards are higher than just about any other state university. It's the most pathetic and meaningless form of credentialism I've ever seen, but don't pretend like it isn't the case. Eve…

> Even Merced is seen as above Cal Poly. Seen by who, exactly? See how many of the lists below UC Merced appears in, how many Cal Poly SLO appears in: https://www.wsj.com/articles/top-colleges-high-paying-jobs-t... https://gizmodo.com/artificial-intelligence-college-program-... https://finance.yahoo.com/news/still-want-job-tech-top-12000... https://www.payscale.com/college-salary-report/best-schools-... https://qz.co…

>See how many of the lists below UC Merced appears in, how many Cal Poly SLO appears in:

This is about feelings and bias, not facts. Of course Cal Poly is a top notch school. But do you think the hiring manager isn't going to pick the identical applicant who went to Riverside instead?

Re: California State University system sees unprecedented decline in enrollment

#69

Post by alephnerd »

ramesh31 wrote: post #68
breadwinner wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even Merced is seen as above Cal Poly. Seen by who, exactly? See how many of the lists below UC Merced appears in, how many Cal Poly SLO appears in: https://www.wsj.com/articles/top-colleges-high-paying-jobs-t... https://gizmodo.com/artificial-intelligence-college-program-... https://finance.yahoo.com/news/still-want-job-tech-top-12000... https://www.payscale.com/college-salary-report/best-schools-... https://qz.co…

>See how many of the lists below UC Merced appears in, how many Cal Poly SLO appears in: This is about feelings and bias, not facts. Of course Cal Poly is a top notch school. But do you think the hiring manager isn't going to pick the identical applicant who went to Riverside instead?

> But do you think the hiring manager isn't going to pick the identical applicant who went to Riverside instead

Yes. The SLO grad will always get the leg up Dallas westwards.

Cal Poly SLO is one of the oldest universities in California (older than UCLA and CalTech) and the Western US and has a massive alumni network (C-Suite at Apple, Raytheon, Yahoo, etc back in the day as well as most of the Central California Republican Congressional contingent).

UCR and UCM are both amazing schools, but are brand new and don't have as strong an alumni network yet.

Re: California State University system sees unprecedented decline in enrollment

#70

Post by alephnerd »

agiacalone wrote: post #54

Current CSU Lecturer here, working for one of our largest campuses. Since I started 10 years ago, my department (CS) has seen more than double the amount of enrollment. Projections for us are to double again in the next 4 years or so. The decline in student population might be a thing system-wide, but not for certain areas like STEM. Edit: Also, we have lost quite a few faculty due to our poor pay, which makes our ov…

> The decline in student population might be a thing system-wide, but not for certain areas like STEM

I remember applying to UCs and CSUs for CS/CE barely 10-15 years ago and it looks like the amount of seats available and faculty in Engineering has remained consistent despite the massive growth in popularity of Engineering majors system wide.

Hopefully it doesn't tip over and collapse due to underfunding, but having seen the state of facilities at Cal recently, it doesn't seem to be going the right way.

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