[tjsnyder]

I think we're going to see the next generation of kids taking a much closer look at what they will be studying and the cost/benefits of those studies.

College tuition has gone up so much and people are in so much debt now that 2nd generation college students will likely have better advice from their parents.

All I ever got my whole life was, "go to school." Luckily I majored in engineering, but I know too many people with half a mortgage in student loans making $12/hour now.

[jerf]

Next generation nothing, barring a major and sudden economic turnaround I expect this to happen next year, by which I mean, this next fall school year. Somewhere in March I expect a few little nervous merpings to trickle out about how college applications seem to be a bit down this year but we're talking ourselves into believing they'll pick back up by the start of the school year, and somewhere in June or July for this to break as a major national news story/obsession after it doesn't pick back up. The obsession will center on how this is yet more proof of the inevitable decline and dumbening of the US and how important it is for high school graduates to apply anyhow. And it will all be wrong, because a return to some cold, hard cost/benefit and affordability analysis is not merely what we need, but in fact will be utterly unavoidable, and this will simply be another consequence of that broad (but quiet) trend.

I think I'm going out on a limb a bit here, but it's plausible. I feel much less like I'm going out on a limb to say that if the economy is still sputtering along in 2012 that this is almost certain to happen. (To avoid this we must not merely tread water but see noticeable improvements in our economic outlook.) I'm also curious as to how the bubble pop in higher ed will manifest, because none of the historical precedents for bubbles like this have the college admission cycle to contend with, and most of them involved resellable goods, even if the value did tank. The housing market can collapse overnight because anybody can sell a house any time, college can't be sold and can only be entered at certain times. Still, fireworks will occur somewhere and sometime, for better and for worse.

[nowarninglabel]

The data, at least for California universities, couldn't show you further from the truth. Enrollments are at all time highs (especially in California): http://www.csuohio.edu/news/releases/2010/09/14840.html http://www.today.colostate.edu/story.aspx?id=4432 http://www20.csueastbay.edu/news/2010/08/fall2010-enrollment...

Furthermore, you mention an economic turnaround, so you seem to be under the impression that a bad economy means less enrollments/applications. It is actually the inverse: http://www.usnews.com/articles/education/best-graduate-schoo... Wish I had the graph from my graduate economics course for this, it showed just how much an inverse the relationship is.

[jerf]

I know about that trend. It obviously happens because people think college degrees are valuable, so if they're jobless but can get a degree, why not? I did that myself in 2000 when I graduated with my Comp Sci bachelors degree, looked around, decided the bubble was going to pop anytime now, and said, well, might as well go for the masters. (It did in my first semester.)

If word continues to get around that college degrees aren't generically valuable, and adding my personal assumption that many people either can not just become engineers, and/or will realize in advance they can't just become engineers, that trend will stop and reverse. I probably overestimate the abruptness, but it will happen. Increasing enrollment in college during downtimes isn't an immutable fact of the universe, it emerged from social conditions and beliefs, conditions and beliefs that are changing.

That's not so much proof that I'm wrong as the reason why I'm predicting this in the next year or two.

[nowarninglabel]

Ok fair enough, but it just as accurate as predicting the stock market then. Granted, now that we know we are in a prediction scenario, I'd be happy to take you up on a gentleman's bet that this won't happen in the next year or two.

[ylem]

Actually, given the differential in the unemployment rate between high school only and college graduates, I expect to see the fraction of people attending college to increase. Furthermore, given the job market for new graduates, I expect to see an increase in the numbers of students seeking masters degrees, hoping to wait out the downturn. It would be interesting to calculate the ROI on that. Imagine that you have student 1 hired in good economic times, vs student 2 hired in a tough labor market--the base salary could be significantly different--and if both have similar abilities and receive similar raises, I'd be curious what the lifetime impact on earnings would be--compared to say, the cost of a masters degree (even, discounting whether the masters degree has any value in terms of increasing the earnings potential of the candidate).

[p_nathan]

I rummaged up the numbers from the BLS this fall for unemployment vs. education over the past 10 years. They came out to something like this:

No HS degree: > 10% unemployment

HS/some college: 7-9% unemployment

Associates: 5-7%

Bachelors+: 4%

Seasonal fluctuations drop dramatically as education levels go up.

I have heard anecdotally that Masters+ is 2%, but the BLS did not provide data there.

The BLS did not quantify the jobs (e.g., the MA in English working as a barista qualifies as employed).

My conclusion is this: the data recommends a degree for employment, statistically speaking.

[genieyclo]

I doubt this will happen so soon; there is a lot of inertia in education, and students are pushed constantly to apply, get ready for applications, etc. The last 2 years of high school were spent taking the SATs or ACTs and prepare for them. Racking up volunteer hours and extra-curriculars is the norm. Lots of time and money invested so far.

I'm curious though, if you can show some proof for your predictions, as I'm in a sort-of-unique situation; I'm applying this week to colleges for the first time (HS senior) and seeing the prohibitive costs is a bit disheartening, yet I'm not sure what others in my peer-group are thinking/doing either.

[steve-howard]

UChicago gives a speech every year entitled "The Aims of Education" to its freshman class. One quote from a while ago: "There are no aims of education. The aim is education. If -- and only if -- you seek it... education will find you." From what I know of my UChicago friends, they really downplay majors and emphasize their liberal-arts core.

In other words, it seems that education is generally a pursuit for personal enrichment, unless you happen to love whatever field will make you money (I thank my lucky stars that I'm in computer science and my internships are quite well paid; my friends in other disciplines like journalism are not so lucky).

I have generally judged people who major in economics here but hate it (it's a big thing at Northwestern, since we don't have undergrad business). It always seemed like those people are saying "I want to get into a good business school and then stuff myself into a suit for the next 40 years"; it's a depressing analysis of one's own strengths. But then again, maybe those people are just smart and I'm just lucky.

I also wish we'd work with kids on finances before they pick a college. Here at Northwestern, student loans are capped at $20k. It's one of the most expensive schools in the US, but the financial aid office does try to keep its students from drowning in debt. Other schools, though, don't really care how much debt students rack up, and they're the ones with hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt to work on.

[tsotha]

>In other words, it seems that education is generally a pursuit for personal enrichment, unless you happen to love whatever field will make you money (I thank my lucky stars that I'm in computer science and my internships are quite well paid; my friends in other disciplines like journalism are not so lucky).

Personal enrichment is fine as long as you don't go into debt. Going to college to learn a valuable skill and taking on debt to do it is also okay, since you'll be able to retire your debt with your valuable skill.

But people have been screwing themselves by taking on heavy debt loads and then going the personal enrichment route. It's hard to believe they realize what they're giving up - many of these folks will still be paying off debts into their 40s.