As we had forecast in February when politicians launched the COVID War and a panicked public ran out to buy toilet paper and schools sent students home, college towns would become the new Rust Belt 2.0.
Undergraduate enrollment in U.S. colleges and universities is 4 percent lower this autumn than last, and first-year students have declined in number by 16.2 percent, the National Student Research Clearinghouse Center (NSRC) reported.
Most notably, community colleges have experienced a decline of 22.7 percent compared to 2019, The New York Times reported on Friday.
Doug Shapiro, Executive Director of the NSRC, said, “The fall data continue to show how much higher the stakes are for community college students during disruptions like the pandemic and the subsequent recession.”
Shapiro called the decline at community colleges “staggering,” according to the Times.
The NSRC released a report showing a 4 percent decrease in enrollment across the board, the NYT said. NECN, a local news channel in Massachusetts, reported the decline in enrollment will add strain on cash-strapped schools. The station said studies have shown the number of full-time graduate and undergraduate students at more than two dozen colleges across the northeast dropped by more than 20 percent.
The Washington Post reported that during normal recessions, community colleges see spikes in enrollments because workers want to gain skills and improve their resumes. But Terry W. Hartle, a SVP of the American Council on Education, told the paper this recession is different and it is disproportionately affecting lower-income families.
“The progress we’ve made at boosting low-income and minority student participation in higher education over the last decade could be washed away very quickly,” he told the paper.
TREND FORECAST: Many colleges, as with businesses, will go bust as a result of the dire economic future that will be the new ABnormal as the “Greatest Depression” worsens.
Even before the COVID War began this year, massive debt loads coupled with declining wages was beginning to hit colleges, as fewer people could afford, or would risk, taking on the substantial debt getting a college education often requires.
Thus, as educational levels decline along with the economy, the future of the middle class, once the bedrock of America, will continue to shrink as the rich get richer and the majority of society sinks lower.
