America's College Towns Go from Boom to Bust
1–10 of 72 posts
Re: America's College Towns Go from Boom to Bust
#2Re: America's College Towns Go from Boom to Bust
#3Skimmed TFA. This might be an accurate summary:
Less kids are enrolling in college due to several factors. A decline in birthrates (right around the 2008 recession), a decline in those who calculate that college provides a real return on investment and the cost of lost opportunity, and also a third strike in the form of federal funding cuts.
There's a bunch of example case sob story, a lot of emotional focus. Yet I didn't see much (obvious) about any positive paths forward.
It's far too late at this stage to prop up schools that are surplus relative to population. Re-purposing them for other educational tasks or possibly businesses (rather than just a shooting range complex) might be happening elsewhere.
College could be made less of a rat-race hassle. The core aspects of an education and experience in college probably should be more fool-proof (all the classes delivered as a scheduled package that works, threaded for multiple years with a couple slack openings for retakes). With some slack time built in for making up a dropped class or three (not entirely skipped semesters!). Also social mixer and electives courses. Though crack down on the crazy party stuff, moderation is key, and as a tea toter, I'd like to suggest a very strong look at banning all mind altering drugs (including alcohol, other than limited quantities for cooking) during the educational years.
As far as the question of if college is worth it? That might differ from person to person. Trades / Vocational work can also be fulfilling and maybe some people might enjoy that. We all need mechanics, electricians, and construction workers. Though those jobs might seriously benefit from some augmentation / automation / tech to prevent worker burn out and body damage.
Re: America's College Towns Go from Boom to Bust
#4Students entering smaller colleges now have to ask themselves more than ever whether their university will be open in four years when they plan to graduate. With increasing closures of private and public colleges alike, I’m sure this will continue to fuel the flight from regional schools to state flagships.
Re: America's College Towns Go from Boom to Bust
#5Skimmed TFA. This might be an accurate summary: Less kids are enrolling in college due to several factors. A decline in birthrates (right around the 2008 recession), a decline in those who calculate that college provides a real return on investment and the cost of lost opportunity, and also a third strike in the form of federal funding cuts. There's a bunch of example case sob story, a lot of emotional focus. Yet I d…
There's also been the 20+ years of STEM dogma driving students away from liberal arts colleges teaching a classical curriculum.
Re: America's College Towns Go from Boom to Bust
#6Skimmed TFA. This might be an accurate summary: Less kids are enrolling in college due to several factors. A decline in birthrates (right around the 2008 recession), a decline in those who calculate that college provides a real return on investment and the cost of lost opportunity, and also a third strike in the form of federal funding cuts. There's a bunch of example case sob story, a lot of emotional focus. Yet I d…
There's also been the 20+ years of STEM dogma driving students away from liberal arts colleges teaching a classical curriculum.
True - but my alma mater (midwest liberal arts school) has had a CS program since the 1970s and added programs like data science over the past decade, plus always had a 3+2 engineering partnership with another school. In the small PNW town where I now live, the liberal arts college added a CS program a few years ago plus also had a 3+2 engineering partnership for decades. So my point is - even for those students who wanted to do something STEM related, these liberal arts schools started augmenting their programs a long time ago.
Re: America's College Towns Go from Boom to Bust
#7Anyone who looked at demographic trends 10+ years ago knew that this was coming. As far back as the late 90s, it was clear that universities were overinvesting into the one of the last echos of the baby boom.
Re: America's College Towns Go from Boom to Bust
#8The title is misleading. As the article itself notes, "Large flagship universities—blessed with strong academic reputations and high-profile sports programs—continue to boost local economies".
It's the second and third-tier institutions located in economically depressed areas, like the one profiled here (Western Illinois University’s Macomb campus), that are suffering. After all, why would you fork out a lot of money for a diploma that's worth little and won't even connect you with local job opportunities?
Re: America's College Towns Go from Boom to Bust
#9Now really seems like an opportune moment for one of these third-tier colleges to rebrand itself as a trade school but aimed at students that would have otherwise gone to college (and not the traditional trade school audience.) I bet there is a ton of demand for a trades-based education but in a college experience wrapper.
Re: America's College Towns Go from Boom to Bust
#10Skimmed TFA. This might be an accurate summary: Less kids are enrolling in college due to several factors. A decline in birthrates (right around the 2008 recession), a decline in those who calculate that college provides a real return on investment and the cost of lost opportunity, and also a third strike in the form of federal funding cuts. There's a bunch of example case sob story, a lot of emotional focus. Yet I d…
Burn out and body damage from trades is not really factually based, especially not compared to something like software. You can actually quantify this. For instance the median age of a construction worker is 42. [1] In some states it's pushing near 50.
By contrast in software there is extreme defacto age discrimination. I don't think it's usually real age discrimination but simply companies don't really value experience in software much, and so somebody with many years years of experience is often seen as less desirable than somebody with little to no experience, but who you can pay a far lesser wage to. Whatever the reason, the point is that software is, for most, going to be a relatively short-lived career.
I can't find a good source for the data on the age of developers, though there are a million blog style or Q/A posts bemoaning the increasing difficultly finding a job as developers age. The Stack Overflow survey [2] is probably not representative, but matches observation at least, with a median age in the younger side of the 25-34 bracket. And that brief window of time you have in software is after you [typically] spend 4 years in college, and then spend however many years paying off your college debt before you finally get to enjoy your full salary.
And obviously I am speaking big picture here. There are people who have a catastrophic injury in the trades and live the rest of their life on disability from age 22. And there are software developers still coding at 50. But these are rare exceptions, and not the rule in either case.
[1] - https://www.nahb.org/blog/2023/06/age-of-construction-workfo...
[2] - https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2024/developer-profile#demog...