I know when my daughter started college 5 years ago, the dean was up front that there was a demographic cliff coming up, I wonder how much of the decline is that.
https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/careers/college-degree-jobs-un... | https://archive.today/oyc5e ("WSJ: Half of College Grads Are Working Jobs That Don’t Use Their Degrees")
> That is the key finding of a new study tracking the career paths of more than 10 million people who entered the job market over the past decade. It suggests that the number of graduates in jobs that don’t make use of their skills or credentials—52%—is greater than previously thought, and underscores the lasting importance of that first job after graduation.
Imagine how much effort and fiat was incinerated in aggregate for folks to obtain schooling and a credential that is effectively worthless.
"Jobs that don't require a degree" is a very squishy definition, if that's what was used. Technically, software development doesn't require a degree - I work with several excellent developers who lack credentials.
Like, they live around Northern VA, get a job working in a data center, snag a couple of certs, and then run with it. Maybe get an Associate's at the NVCC or via online orgs like U-MD.
Having done hiring in that demographic there was definitely a difference in the Jr Admin population who had real 4-year brick-and-mortar school degrees vs. those without, but I wouldn't be surprised to see that trend decreasing.
A few things, based on his experience... it took time to get into IT - instead of going to college, he was working low-wage PT jobs. The starting salary was low. It's not like he just dropped out and fell into a six-figure career (which might have been possible 20 years ago, when IT-savvy early career folks weren't as common).
Then ALL universities would see a drop in enrollment, except the ones at the very top of desirability list? Otherwise it could be attributed to other things like high cost of living or more useless degrees available in the university system.
Take a look at the 20-24 and 15-19 age groups. Note that 15-19 is smaller, and consider that members of that age group will move up to the next group over the next 5 years. They're also entering typical college age. Now, in this chart, it's far from a "cliff", but it is smaller, so that would mean that you could reasonably expect a lower enrollment since that age bracket is smaller than those that came before it.
Edit: Enginerrrd posted data[2] with more fidelity than the 5-year bins both of our charts were using, and it indeed shows a cliff for this year.
[1]https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/stories/20...
Suspect this and a tight labor market are the two driving factors.
Some schools are more effected by these demographic issues than others. Institutions that are focused on educating lots of people economically, like CSU, can be expected to feel the demographic swings far more than places like Stanford or Berkeley which are over-subscribed and are likely to remain so.
Presumably, the school was built / staffed for a certain regular enrollment that reflected some percentage of the people in state.
For California specifically:
https://data.census.gov/profile/California?g=040XX00US06
You can see the peak of 25-30 somethings, and then it drops off.
When you start looking out at the 15-19s there are 400,000 fewer than the 25-29s (roughly 3M -> 2.6M). That then means that enrollment is going to drop and things will need to be cut.
The school that I went to for grade school was built for baby boomers. It was large, and the next town over likewise had a large school. When I went it was a bit empty, not too bad though. It picked up again with the echo.
The towns have recently closed half of each school and combined classes because there isn't enough students to keep two sets of classes running at reasonable funding levels (having a class of five 3rd graders and six 4th graders is great for student to teacher ratios ... not so much the budget of a small rural school).