WASHINGTON, D.C. July 29 (DPI) – The mainstream media recently caught up with a long-brewing development: Second-tier private colleges are facing dramatic declines in enrollment, the result of coming-home-to-roost demographic trends, growing fears of student debt, and hardening views that a college degree no longer translates into a better job or career.
But readers on comment boards across the net are largely unsympathetic to the plight of universities, especially those whose degrees do little in the job marketplace. Reports in The Washington Post and The New York Times in recent days underscore the bitterness among many readers, including university teachers who see American education increasingly as just another racket that dupes its customers.
One often cited example was Loyola University of New Orleans, which is facing a 20% drop in enrollment for the fall semester. But there are many other examples.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/26/education/in-a-recovering-economy-a-decline-in-college-enrollment.html
One comment by NYTimes.com reader:
What this report really reveals is that marketing has become more important than anything else for colleges. 30 years ago, a radio ad came on the air for SUNY New Paltz. My mother, who had earned a BA there, remarked at how the school must be on the decline to have to advertise. Imagine that.
The highest recommended comments by readers
(Highest Reader Recommended on NYTimes.com; 188 Recommendations) Good. Maybe they will stop raising tuition. Hint to colleges: you DO NOT need to “improve the amenities” by adding fancier dorms and dining halls to attract more students (and then charging more for the privilege of using them). Try instead beefing up your career services departments so students of all majors can get some help finding jobs after completing their degrees.
(Second highest recommended; 113) For the past decade I have watched as the quality of my students’ preparation and/or fitness for college work has declined significantly at two fairly prestigious private universities in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Few are interested in learning what it takes to be an educated person. There’s little of the wonder I personally experienced as the world opened to me through my own higher education thirty years ago.
Most of the young people who come to these universities do not seem able to think or to write clearly. They lack any power of analysis.
Most are there for only one reason: they believe a degree is a ticket to a good, high-paying job.
Take that incentive away, and they will leave in droves.
By turning our colleges and universities into businesses that need to compete for tuition money, we have stripped them of their educational potential to create an informed citizenry capable of the critical thinking needed to maintain a democracy.
(Third highest; 97) Colleges and their metastatically exploding tuition rates were due for a much needed correction.
Let’s hope the law of college over-supply and low student demand will rationalize the unsustainable cost structure of colleges.
American college graduates don’t deserve mortgages with their college degrees.
Perhaps the flunky college administrators could audit some classes on American college economics versus European and Canadian college economics where education is still regarded as a profession more than a business.