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Gawker: The College Contraction Has Begun


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Last year, US college enrollment registered a notable decline for the first time in decades. The college boom had peaked. Now, the contraction begins.

It starts around the margins—community colleges and ****ty "for profit" colleges losing students who recognize that they are not necessarily a good investment. A year ago, experts said that "signs point to 2013-14 being the year when traditional four-year, nonprofit colleges begin a contraction that will last for several years." That prediction appears to be coming true.

http://gawker.com/the-college-contraction-has-begun-1563152748?utm_campaign=socialflow_gawker_facebook&utm_source=gawker_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

More at the link.

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The biggest frustration many of my generation have is that we were sold a myth about college, that's why we all went.

I talked with a guy yesterday who has his bachelor's degree, he works at an Auto Zone as a regular employee not even a manager. It was supposed to be the ticket...now it just means you're like everyone else.

 

I noticed the contraction last year as I was applying for teaching positions at community colleges, they are only hiring adjuncts which is the academic version of a day laborer.

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The biggest frustration many of my generation have is that we were sold a myth about college, that's why we all went.

I talked with a guy yesterday who has his bachelor's degree, he works at an Auto Zone as a regular employee not even a manager. It was supposed to be the ticket...now it just means you're like everyone else.

 

I noticed the contraction last year as I was applying for teaching positions at community colleges, they are only hiring adjuncts which is the academic version of a day laborer.

 

This has been going on for a long time and has less to do with (any expected) contraction and more to do with not having to pay the benefits of full time employees.

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This has been going on for a long time and has less to do with (any expected) contraction and more to do with not having to pay the benefits of full time employees.

That's true, but the enrollment planteu has pushed it over the past few years, colleges needed to cut costs and full time faculty are just way too expensive. So they hire folks with Masters degrees and pay them pennies. I'm just very glad that I'm not tied up in the professional academic industry.

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I also believe from my understanding that this is partly tied to demographic changes in the population that goes to college:

 

I can't find numbers of people of the college age range as a function of age, but:

 

"The total fertility rate in the United States estimated for 2012 is 1.88 children per woman,[8] which is below the replacement fertility rate of approximately 2.1. Compared to other Western countries, in 2011, U.S. fertility rate was lower than that of France (2.02) and the United Kingdom(1.97).[9] However, U.S. population growth is among the highest in industrialized countries,[10] because the differences in fertility rates are less than the differences in immigration levels, which are higher in the U.S."

 

From what I've been told the number of people that normally go to college (white, middle class, professional parents) the number of them in the US is dropping, which at least low birth rates would suggest.

 

That's true, but the enrollment planteu has pushed it over the past few years, colleges needed to cut costs and full time faculty are just way too expensive. So they hire folks with Masters degrees and pay them pennies. I'm just very glad that I'm not tied up in the professional academic industry.

 

Community colleges and even most state schools aren't making budgets off of tuition fees.  They've been hit hard by a combination of low and sometimes reverse budgets from states and local governments going back to the collapse of the housing market and related financial melt down.

 

Even now in most places those budgets have moved very little, especially in the context of healthcare costs.

 

8 years ago, without pretty extensive teaching experience, and a PhD you were not getting hired as non-adjunct at a community college and even then it wasn't likely.

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The biggest frustration many of my generation have is that we were sold a myth about college, that's why we all went.

I talked with a guy yesterday who has his bachelor's degree, he works at an Auto Zone as a regular employee not even a manager. It was supposed to be the ticket...now it just means you're like everyone else.

 

I've a buddy who is quite bitter about this. 

 

Only a matter of time before this happened.  I hope that the alternative is a rise in trades/tech school attendance.

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I've a buddy who is quite bitter about this. 

 

Only a matter of time before this happened.  I hope that the alternative is a rise in trades/tech school attendance.

The college model is a good one for some, but I agree. There are some who would be better served in trade/tech schools.  Others who'd do great using an apprentice model even.  The real advantage of college is networking, but that you don't really even get these days 'til grad school.

 

The bigger problem is what will all the jobs that we permanently lose due to computers, improving AI, and robots be replaced with.  Heck, they're already experimenting with drone deliveries and the autonomous car is probably only 10-20 years away.

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You have to use college as a "trade" school nowadays.  Get a degree in Engineering, or Computer Science.  There are too many students getting nonsense degrees in some easy major.  If a kid bets against college, I sure hope they have a plan.  Simply not going to college isn't a ticket.  My daughters friends who graduated a year ago are working in the restaurant and fast food industries.

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The college model is a good one for some, but I agree. There are some who would be better served in trade/tech schools.  Others who'd do great using an apprentice model even.  The real advantage of college is networking, but that you don't really even get these days 'til grad school.

 

The bigger problem is what will all the jobs that we permanently lose due to computers, improving AI, and robots be replaced with.  Heck, they're already experimenting with drone deliveries and the autonomous car is probably only 10-20 years away.

 

Yeah, a more diversified approach is better.  I should've clarified myself better.  I've thought about the automation issue as well and that's one that probably worries me the most. 

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You have to use college as a "trade" school nowadays.  Get a degree in Engineering, or Computer Science.  There are too many students getting nonsense degrees in some easy major.  If a kid bets against college, I sure hope they have a plan.  Simply not going to college isn't a ticket.  My daughters friends who graduated a year ago are working in the restaurant and fast food industries.

I'd add chemistry, and more so biochemistry in those degrees as well.

I think another issue is that some of these people with degrees won't move to where the jobs in their profession are, or are unable to. I know my area is terrible for a chemist, but NJ, or out southwest, there are many more chemistry type positions.

But I can also say, depending on the field that interests you most, you need a college degree. I would never have been able to get my current job without one.

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You have to use college as a "trade" school nowadays.  Get a degree in Engineering, or Computer Science.  There are too many students getting nonsense degrees in some easy major.  If a kid bets against college, I sure hope they have a plan.  Simply not going to college isn't a ticket.  My daughters friends who graduated a year ago are working in the restaurant and fast food industries.

 

I think the key is you have to plan, but going to college in of to itself is not really a plan today.

 

It has to be I'm going to go to college for X because that's going to allow me to come out and do Y.

 

Well I'm going to get a degree in history, and then somebody will hire me to do something useful doesn't work so well today.

 

Now, people of that age are young for the most part so they have a lot of flexibility.  If they get into college and decide they really don't like X, that's fine and they can change.

 

But the change shouldn't be to a non-plan and just sort of wander through.

 

I always tell people they should have an objective.  They should have a long term goal.

 

It is okay to change your long term goal, but you it has to be a change in the long term goal and not well I don't know what to do know.

 

Try something that makes sense long term!

 

It is even okay to change your long term goal several times, but each time there has to be a switch to another long term goal.

 

Even in college too many people come in thinking they are going to do something (science, engineering, etc), find out that they aren't really cut out for or interested in those programs, and then end up middling around for 4 or 5 years and get a degree in something that they aren't very interested in, without a very good final GPA, and no real plan on getting a job.

 

If you don't go to college the same things apply.  You can't just come out of high school and say I'm not going to college and act like that's a long term plan.

The real advantage of college is networking, but that you don't really even get these days 'til grad school.

 

I think at most schools, especially good one, this isn't the case if you work hard and are proactive.

 

I have a student that is just an awful student, but she's going to graduate and get a good job because she did an internship at the place over the summer, and they like her enough to give her a job.

 

She doesn't understand some even fundamental concepts in chemistry very well, but she was proactive about finding the internship, and then apparently, while there, did well enough that they are interested in bringing her in on a longer term basis.

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One of my best friend's little sister recently told him she's going to drop out of college (she'll be a senior next semester and majoring in BioChemstry) to play video games as a profession.  :blink: Needless to say, both of their parents are dead and he felt obligated to tear her a new one. I tried talking sense into her by telling her my scenic route to my career, and she just doesn't care. These kids these days just want to do what feels right in the moment, with no concern for how it'll work out in the long term. 

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The biggest frustration many of my generation have is that we were sold a myth about college, that's why we all went.

I talked with a guy yesterday who has his bachelor's degree, he works at an Auto Zone as a regular employee not even a manager. It was supposed to be the ticket...now it just means you're like everyone else.

 

I noticed the contraction last year as I was applying for teaching positions at community colleges, they are only hiring adjuncts which is the academic version of a day laborer.

Yep.  I fell for it too.

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You have to use college as a "trade" school nowadays.  Get a degree in Engineering, or Computer Science.  There are too many students getting nonsense degrees in some easy major.  If a kid bets against college, I sure hope they have a plan.  Simply not going to college isn't a ticket.  My daughters friends who graduated a year ago are working in the restaurant and fast food industries.

I agree with this, but not everyone in the country can be an engineer.  On top of that, young students are easily persuaded by college advisers that there is a future in their worthless major.  If a student has a passion for art and has an interest in Art History, they will most likely be told by the adviser in the art department that there are plenty of opportunities in the field.  The adviser will focus on the few success stories and play on the student's passion for art.  Before you know it, you have another college grad with an Art History degree working at Costco with several thousand dollars of student loan debt. 

 

Heck, we're probably not too far away from outsourcing most of our engineering jobs.

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The real advantage of college is networking, 

 

While networking in general is extremely valuable, I completely disagree that it's a key part of the college experience. You can network in many organizations, including your social networks or free ad hoc groups like Meetups that may be far more relevant to your field, and where you don't pay $100k+ to participate.

 

As others have commented ... unless you have a plan for how you are going to use your degree, your immediate post college years may be very frustrating.  I remember one of my peers who graduated with an engineering degree interviewing with a prestigious accounting firm. They asked him why he was considering accounting. His reply that he'd lost interest in engineering didn't impress them.

 

But "skipping college" is not a life plan either.

 

There are many high-paying jobs in STEM, but not all STEM degrees are the same. However, a good STEM degree from a good institution, combined with relevant internships can be extremely lucrative. While there's much news coverage of unemployed new graduates, the experience of my daughter and her peers with STEM degrees has been very different with them receiving multiple excellent job offers during the recession.

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When I went to college, the skyrocketing costs were considered a huge problem and everyone said "It just can't continue like this."  That was 96-00, but it has continued.  Tuition has doubled since then.  And many are realizing, quite smartly, that there is little value in dropping $40-$50k / year tuition on anything that isn't an elite tier school.  Those loan repayments are going to be absolutely crippling.  Like having a 2nd mortgage payment. 

 

Good private universities will have to find a way to cutback on tuition increases substantially, or else their application rates will dry up, standards will drop, and they'll find themselves in a death spiral while the local public universities get their picks of the cream of the crop.  Hopefully it happens sooner rather than later.

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Yep. I fell for it too.

This is not exclusive to the younger generation. I graduated from college in 1990. Thought I'd graduate and land my dream job. After 6 months of trying to get in the field that I studied for, life smacked me in the face. It's never a guarantee no matter how plentiful jobs are.

I tried off and on throughout the years to get into my field while working "jobs" to make a living. I gave up after about 5 years. Here I am almost 25 years later and I work to pay bills. I earn a good living, but it wasn't my dream to write contracts for a county government.

We all get fooled. It's called life and at 22 you usually don't realize that you aren't entitled to anything. I think one thing I've noticed over the years with differences in the generations are, this generation thinks they should come out if college and earn 50k a year to start. Start at the bottom like the rest of us and work your way up. The instant gratification generation wants it all now.

Most of my friends, including myself didn't get married or have kids until our 30s, nor did most of us buy a house until our mid to late 30s.

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Some NSFW language in this article, but anyone familiar with Cracked or John Cheese will expect that.

 

http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-ways-we-ruined-occupy-wall-street-generation/
 

#4. Implying That College Would Guarantee You a Good Job

Last month, I overheard a conversation between a steakhouse waiter and an older couple he was serving. He knew the couple, but not intimately. They politely asked how his classes were coming along, and he said that he had in fact graduated with a degree in architecture. For the next several minutes, the old couple awkwardly tried to reassure him that something would come along while he attempted to justify to them why he was serving steaks for a living.

 

It was painfully clear that he felt like a failure, and that he dreaded having this conversation with every older member of his family he encountered. Having to put a positive spin on his own life, trying to reassure them that he wasn't a failure, or lazy, or hadn't dropped out of society due to a drug problem. Yes, I did get my degree. No, they're not hiring.

 

So, here's the thing. You have to go to college. Your parents told you that, I'm telling my kids that. Every high school teacher you have or had told you that. ("You don't want to wind up flipping burgers, do you?")

 

And they're not wrong; if I'm an employer looking at 200 applications to fill one job, and 50 of them have bachelor's degrees, those are going to be the ones I move to the top of the pile, even if the job is that poor **** who shakes a sign outside of Little Caesars.

 

The problem is that we've sort of set you up to think that after high school, the next step is college, and after that you just jump in and start working at the job you went to college for. We kind of implied that this "college to job" transition is as natural and orderly as "high school to college." That is, if you get the right grades, you "graduate" to it. That's not true, and it's our fault that so many of you think that.

 

...

 

Now everybody has a degree. It's the baseline minimum. So when you finally take those first steps out of university life and enter the work field, it's an absolute system shock to find out your $30,000 to $100,000+ bachelor's degree doesn't guarantee you a position in your field of study ... possibly ever. At least 40 percent of you who get degrees will wind up in jobs that don't require a degree at all. And the rest will wind up in jobs outside the field they studied.

 

 

 

 

It'll be interesting to see how long this takes, but it's time that we start telling kids that no, not everyone needs college. And for some, it would be a waste of money (if not time).

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We all get fooled. It's called life and at 22 you usually don't realize that you aren't entitled to anything. I think one thing I've noticed over the years with differences in the generations are, this generation thinks they should come out if college and earn 50k a year to start. Start at the bottom like the rest of us and work your way up. The instant gratification generation wants it all now.

thats not true at all.

I think its more youthful expectations than anything else. I mean your post said you sort of expected that out of college and you werent with "this" generation.

As for the point of this thread, its been coming and needs to come. Unfortunately a lot of HBCUs will go under, but not everyone needs college. We were sold a lie.

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We all get fooled. It's called life and at 22 you usually don't realize that you aren't entitled to anything. I think one thing I've noticed over the years with differences in the generations are, this generation thinks they should come out if college and earn 50k a year to start.

 

I think any college student knows from their older peers how tough it can be. If anything I've seen the opposite reaction where they have heard so much bad news that they believe they won't make $50k on graduation when they can in fact make far more.

 

Start at the bottom like the rest of us and work your way up. The instant gratification generation wants it all now.

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I think the key is setting expectations. A lot of these people who aren't finding jobs after college are still better off having attended. So, it's not like all of them would have been closer to living their dreams without college.

 

The key is that people need to understand that you don't walk right off a campus into an office park/high-rise. That was never the case. Granted, in recent history we've had booms that had more supply than demand, but you've always had to have a plan, work hard, and be better than a large number of peers.

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I think Corcaigh said it best in that you need a plan.  Problem is, there isn't anything in the system that prepares people for making a plan.  We have "career counslers", but it is difficult for them to speak in any more than the most general terms.  Really, one needs to do research into the field they are going into, the availability of jobs, where those jobs are located, what is needed beyond a college education.

 

I kinda got a wake-up call halfway through college.  I was a CS major and always wanted to be a Software Engineer, but it was a visit by an alumnus that told me I needed to do more than my coursework to get a job.  While the theory was good, I needed some practical skills to put on a resume.  So, I picked up some more languages and did stuff on my own.  It helped a lot to get me where I wanted to go.

 

BTW, I don't consider everyone who doesn't make a career in what they majored in a failure.  Neither of my parents had a career in their major in college.  (Both went into the Navy.)   While I agree that college isn't for everyone, it is good for a lot of people and I wouldn't trade the experience for anything.

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thats not true at all.

I think its more youthful expectations than anything else. I mean your post said you sort of expected that out of college and you werent with "this" generation.

As for the point of this thread, its been coming and needs to come. Unfortunately a lot of HBCUs will go under, but not everyone needs college. We were sold a lie.

I expected to find employment in my field. I never said I expected a top salary. I understood I had to start at the bottom. I understood I wouldn't be making big money. I just expected to get in the door.

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I don't disagree with a lot of the sentiment being expressed, but college paid off for me fairly well.  Now admittedly, I got my first job as much because of knowing someone as anything, but having the degree opened the door.  Shoot, when I hated that first job (and the company lost the contract) knowing someone got me the second one as well.  From there, I've moved up primarily from working my ass off, but it never hurts to know someone.  But again, total non-starter without the degree.

 

Grad school...sometimes I'd like to have that back, especially now that I'm paying off the loans.  I had certain goals in mind when I started grad school, that I wanted to use the degree as leverage to move up and around, but I wound up accomplishing my primary goal before I was done with the degree, and had to choose whether to finish out the program even though nothing extra would come of it.  I chose to finish, whether that was a sound financial decision or not.  I think grad school can be a seriously overrated investment if there's not a clear reason for going.

 

I'll be curious to see where this goes in the next decade.  My kids are almost four, and 2.5; who knows what "going to college" will be viewed like when it's their time to choose.  Where I grew up (pretty nice area) going to college was an expectation for 90%+ of the high school.  That was the norm.

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