What does the declining birthrate mean for colleges and universities and the students who hope to get a college degree a decade from now? The answer depends on where you live in the United States and how selective the college is. For most colleges and universities, the outlook is grim. But that could be a good thing for their future students.
Nathan Grawe, an economist at Carleton College in Minnesota, predicts that the college-going population will drop by 15 percent between 2025 and 2029 and continue to decline by another percentage point or two thereafter.
“When the financial crisis hit in 2008, young people viewed that economic uncertainty as a cause for reducing fertility,” said Grawe. “The number of kids born from 2008 to 2011 fell precipitously. Fast forward 18 years to 2026 and we see that there are fewer kids reaching college-going age.”
Birthrates failed to rebound with the economic recovery. The latest 2017 birthrate data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention posts new lows, marking almost a decade of reduced fertility.
Read more at The Hechinger Report: https://hechingerreport.org/college-students-predicted-to-fall-by-more-than-15-after-the-year-2025/