Higher education is entering a turning point: fewer students are going to college and a growing number of colleges are closing shop. New pathways toward career success are emerging to accommodate a generation beginning to question the return on investment of traditional, four-year undergraduate programs. 

Public and private, non-profit four-year colleges saw a more than 6 percent decline in enrollment of 18-year-old freshmen between the fall of 2023 and the fall of 2024, according to data recently published by the National College Attainment Network. The analysis, conducted by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, looked at enrollments reported as of the end of October 2024 for 1.4 million 18-year-old freshmen, representing about 80 percent of enrollments nationwide.

Overall, the enrollment of white 18-year-old freshmen has declined the steepest among any racial group studied — a 10 percent drop compared to the previous year. At highly selective colleges and universities, the starkest enrollment drops were among Black, Multiracial, and Hispanic freshman, according to the analysis. Black freshman enrollment plummeted as much as 19.6 percent at highly selective public institutions.

Fueling this phenomenon is the Department of Education’s bungled rollout of a new federal financial aid application in 2023, which placed downward pressure on enrollment decisions. Complicating the admissions data is the Supreme Court’s decision to outlaw affirmation action the same year, which has meant disruptions in the ways universities collect data from their applicants.

Yet it’s clear that declining rates of college matriculation reflect a growing mistrust of traditional higher education in America, as students are increasingly finding that a four-year degree is not worth the price tag.

“Students and families repeatedly tell us that their number one barrier to matriculate to college is cost,” a senior director of the National College Attainment Network, Bill DeBaun, tells The New York Sun.

Though the inflation-adjusted cost of higher education institutions has declined in the past few years, and financial aid has improved at some, a 2024 College Ave survey found that only 44 percent of parents with a child in college felt ready to pay their child’s first tuition bill. 

The average annual costs of college tuition and fees has risen to $9,750 in 2023 from $3,501 in 2001 for public four-year colleges, and to $35,248 in 2023 from $15,470 in 2000 for private four-year colleges, according to the Education Data Initiative. That’s an increase of 181.3 percent for private institutions over the last 20 years, outpacing the rate of inflation by as much as 2,217 percent in the 21st Century.

Demography also plays a role in enrollment trends. Higher education experts have expressed concerns that declining birth rates in the United States could send enrollment into a more dramatic decline beginning in 2025 — a phenomenon referred to as an “enrollment cliff.” In August 2024, the CDC released data indicating that the United States had hit a historic low in its annual birth rate — 54.5 births per 1,000 females ages 15 to 44 — representing a decrease of 17 percent since 2007. 

Colleges are bracing for the consequences. Those failing to meet their enrollment expectations for could face a “catastrophic” drop in the collection of tuition, Mr. DeBaum says. “It puts a lot of pressure on you if you’re not getting that revenue.”

A college or university now closes on average every week, according to the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association. That’s up from about two per month the year before. The association says more than 500 private, nonprofit four-year institutions have closed in the last 10 years, three times more than the decade prior. 

Schools seeking to stay afloat could fill enrollment vacancies by expanding their pool of prospective students. 

“The idea that higher education’s pipeline should only be 18-year-old high school graduates is misplaced,” Mr. DeBaum says. “There’s a sizable population of potential students out there waiting to have their needs met and their educational attainment increased.” Universities could, he says, tap into the 36.8 million Americans who have some college experience but never earned a credential.

Author Karin Klein, however, raises an important point: “Did we need so many colleges?” The growing number of college closures are mostly concentrated in small liberal arts schools, which might not be fulfilling the needs of many students, she says.

“For 45 percent of students who get a bachelor’s degree, 10 years after they graduate, they are working in jobs that do not require a college degree. They’re underpaid and the skills that they’ve learned are underused,” Ms. Klein says. 

The next generation is already taking note. While public and private schools are seeing the biggest enrollment dips, the National College Attainment Network found in its analysis that community colleges, such as two-year colleges, with a high share of students receiving federal financial aid in the form of Pell Grants, are seeing the smallest enrollment declines, rebounding from pandemic-era lows. 

The trend reflects a general uptick in the popularity of community colleges that are offering technical education as well as trade schools for professions such as welding, in which the number of job opportunities is expanding and demand for practitioners is surging. 

Meanwhile, many jobs no longer require applicants to have earned a bachelors degree, and politicians on both the left and the right are increasingly arguing that there are other pathways to the middle class. “There’s a sort of tendency to look down on people who don’t have a bachelor’s, but to a large extent, we are seeing that begin to fade,” says Ms. Klein. She explores this topic in her book, reviewed by the Sun, “Rethinking College: A Guide to Thriving Without a Degree.”

In the past three years, 22 states have taken steps to limit degree requirements for government jobs, including in 2023,the governors of Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, Florida and Georgia. The movement from degree-based hiring to skills-based hiring is pushing against decades of “degree inflation” fueled by a “college for all” model.

In December, Governor Newsom unveiled a framework for career education in California, which includes directing high school students to explore well-paying careers and establishing “career passports” for people without a four-year degree to prove their qualifications and access good jobs. 

As the momentum turns away from traditional higher education, universities must fundamentally rethink their usefulness to students if they want to survive. Otherwise, students will look elsewhere for an education — be it from serving in the military, working in wilderness conservancies, or engaging in volunteer work that offers them skills college classrooms are failing to teach.