MORE COVID, LESS COLLEGE

A recent study found that fewer U.S. high school students see themselves attending a four-year university on graduation, a drop of 20 percent in the past eight months, according to a report from the ECMG Group.

CNBC, citing the ECMC Group’s report, stated 53 percent of high schoolers polled said they plan on attending the traditional four-year university, which is down from 71 percent earlier on in the coronavirus outbreak. There are many reasons for the drop, ranging from financial uncertainty and the cost-benefit analysis of obtaining a degree.

“There is going to be a reckoning here,” Jeremy Wheaton, the president of the ECMC Group, told the network.

The National Student Clearinghouse Research Center said undergraduate enrollment fell by more than 4 percent this year, and incoming freshman enrollment for fall plummeted 13 percent from a year earlier. 

“It really looks from these numbers that the December and January surge in COVID-19 is keeping students out of college through the spring term, even though most colleges are online,” said Shapiro.

TREND FORECAST: While online learning is becoming the new normal, it is limited in replacing hands-on lab and other classwork that cannot be achieved remotely. Also, considering the online learning world has just been launched, there are weaknesses in the current system, which has resulted in dissatisfaction among students who feel they are not getting what they want or paid for. 

Trends are born, they grow, mature, reach old age, and die. “Interactive U,” the term coined by Gerald Celente in his 1997 book, “Trends 2000,” is just been born, and the new age of learning remotely is the future.
Ontrendprenuers® who fill this market sector with products and services to meet demand will be bountifully rewarded.

TREND FORECAST: The lack of money for career training and lack of a vision of a positive future is creating another “lost generation.”

The lower disillusioned students fall, the higher it drives social unrest and demands for government’s school subsidies and loan forgiveness.

As the middle class continues to shrink in America, so, too, will college attendance. The Federal Reserve estimates that in quarter three of 2020, Americans owed more than $1.7 trillion in student loans – an increase of nearly 4 percent compared to quarter three of 2019. 

As we have noted since the onset of the lockdowns, with students beginning a whole new era of online learning from home, the “College Town Rustbelt 2.0” trend we had forecast will intensify.