Other Views: Declining college enrollments a troubling omen

In 2019, the Washington Legislature passed the Workforce Education Investment Act, designed to inject nearly $1 billion into higher education over four years. But even that might not be enough to stem the perfect storm that is swamping American colleges.

Declining birthrates, rising costs, fear of debt, a pandemic and a steady stream of vitriol toward higher education have combined to alter the nature of college in the United States. The long-term results can have negative impacts on our nation’s ability to compete in a global economy, social and economic mobility, and the view of college being a linchpin in the American Dream.

Perhaps most important, the trend can exacerbate the divide between rural areas and urban areas, and coastal states and inland states. We have seen how such a divide impacts everything from our politics to our economy, increasingly creating two separate Americas.

As Kevin Carey writes for Vox.com: “The empty factories and abandoned shopping malls littering the American landscape may soon be joined by ghost colleges, victims of an existential struggle for reinvention, waged against a ticking clock of shrinking student bodies, coming soon to a town near you.”

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