412
submitted 2 weeks ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world

Summary

College enrollment among 18-year-old freshmen fell 5% this fall, with declines most severe at public and private non-profit four-year colleges.

Experts attribute the drop to factors including declining birth rates, high tuition costs, FAFSA delays, and uncertainty over student loan relief after Supreme Court rulings against forgiveness plans.

Economic pressures, such as the need to work, also deter students.

Despite declining enrollment, applications have risen, particularly among low- and middle-income students, underscoring interest in higher education. Experts urge addressing affordability and accessibility to reverse this trend.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] andros_rex@lemmy.world 16 points 2 weeks ago

Colleges are also trying to address this by seriously lowering standards.

One thing I make money doing is essentially getting intellectually disabled people through college. I’m not ragging on my clients, but it’s become very clear to me that universities are less interested in educating these people than they are taking their parent’s money.

I was looking through one of the discussion forums for one of my clients’ English classes and it was genuinely horrifying. I’m talking R1 university, and the majority of the posts were either “AI” generated or were written at a middle school level.

[-] Maggoty@lemmy.world 5 points 2 weeks ago

I noticed that too. I was thinking about how housing was getting more and more restricted on campus to cater to ever greater numbers of first year students. And then it dawned on me that the second, third, and fourth year groups weren't growing by much. In fact the second you got out of first year classes it was suddenly possible to have 15-20 person classes in main requirements.

I wonder how many other universities are treating first year students as cash revenue? Bringing in as many as they can, knowing they won't make it past spring semester?

[-] FindME@lemmy.myserv.one 4 points 2 weeks ago

It's prolific, for certain. I have been reading research papers for a laboratory class (3000 level) that are written over the entire semester with a group. They contain errors so horrific that I don't understand how the student passed any writing class. There were entire paragraphs without a single complete sentence, and others where another paper was cited without any connection to what was being said.

I'm not joking when I say that our response at the academic/instructional level during the COVID pandemic has ruined the intellect of a segment of the population. Combine that with the push I saw ten years ago while working in lower grades to pass students to the next grade regardless of their capabilities and the greed of colleges to get those first year students, as Maggoty mentions, and it's a perfect storm.

this post was submitted on 08 Dec 2024
412 points (98.1% liked)

News

23655 readers
4455 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS