College Admissions Officers Begin Worrying About Enrollment Due to Coronavirus
“deeply worried about the potential impact of the coronavirus on enrollment, a new survey suggests”
Is it possible that there are schools that won’t survive this crisis? It’s not a stupid question.
Scott Jaschik writes at Inside Higher Ed:
Admissions Fears
Admissions officers are deeply worried about the potential impact of the coronavirus on enrollment, a new survey suggests.
Asked to rank their prospects for the yield — the percentage of admitted applicants who will enroll — 43 percent of enrollment leaders answered 5, on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the worst. And 32 percent answered 4.
Those are among the answers to a survey released by EAB on Tuesday on admissions in the era of the coronavirus.
EAB released answers from 257 four-year colleges, 64 percent of them private, and not all of them EAB clients. The colleges are roughly an even split among selective, most selective and least selective institutions.
A large majority of those answering — 87 percent — worry that future visits to the campus by potential students will decline.
This year, 36 percent saw a decline in visits, 50 percent saw no decline and 15 percent were unsure.
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Comments
Good. Society has for too long worshipped at the altar of credentials. Most jobs do not require higher education, most people aren’t interested in it, and most university programs don’t provide it.
An end to the higher education bubble means (1) increased focus on useful knowledge and useful skills, (2) increased respect for vocational education, (3) decreased political indoctrination, (4) decreased social conflict, and (5) the sublime Schadenfreude of seeing legions of academic fakers and diversity officers struggle to get honest jobs.
It’s almost (if not quite) worth having a pandemic.
Reducing credentialed graduates would have the opposite effect of what you are suggesting.
Fewer graduates means degrees increase in value, not decrease….supply and demand and reversing the trend of degree inflation.
Crack open those endowments, if survival means anything to the Board. If schools close, where does that money go?
Pay off debtors.
If schools close, they are likely dry on endowment.
A significant problem with Universities is that far too many have become pretend vocational schools and not enough are actual “cathedrals of the culture” and actual professional schools requiring serious face to face teaching and mentoring in needed professions. The Universities act as if they are afraid to reform themselves and become institutions that fulfill the needs of society as well as the individual. The costs of higher education are out of control and the debt incurred by far too many students has no relation to future earning prospects in many of the programs the students are enrolled in.
There’s really no way around the idea that people are entitled to throw their money away. If they believe they should spend $200,000 on a sociology degree with emphasis in advanced grievance studies, let them. But it should be their own money.
We need some private underwriting of guaranteed student loans, someone to say this student isn’t a good investment and taxpayers shouldn’t be on the hook for their loans. The B student in engineering should be funded, the A student in grievance studies should not, because the former can pay back the loans and the latter will probably look for a way to get out of them.