Everyone knows that the key to a better job, a more interesting career and, saving the best for last, a higher income is education. On average a person with a college degree earns 83% more than the average person with only a high school degree. Also, at any given time the high school graduate is on average twice as likely to be unemployed as someone with their bachelor’s degree.
In fact the advantages of a college education are so undeniable that millions of young Americans are willing to spend four of their most productive years, and subject themselves to years of college loan payments in order to get their hands on that piece of sheepskin. Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic more than 18 million students were enrolled in undergraduate programs at colleges and universities across this nation. Only China and India, with their massive populations, have more college students than the US.
That was before the pandemic. Like so much else in nations around the world Covid-19 has gotten a chokehold on education here in the US and is slowly draining away the strength of the collegiate system. I’m not just talking about virtual classrooms or having to get vaccinated and wear a mask.
The real harm that is being caused by Covid-19 is the large number of high school graduates who are choosing not to go to college because of Covid itself along with the disruptions due to the disease. In 2020 student enrollment in America’s colleges declined by almost 630,000 students (3.5%) while in 2021 the decline was more than 460,000 (3.1%) for a total decline in two years of more than a million students (and 6.6%).
Worst still the biggest decline was seen in Community Colleges, the most financially reasonable path to a degree, and therefore the path most chosen by lower income and minority students. Here enrollment was down by a whopping 13.2% since 2019. On the other hand the most expensive private colleges and universities saw a slight increase in enrollment which shows that, pandemic or not, America’s rich families know very well the importance of their children getting that bachelor’s degree.
Now many of those young people who have decided not to enroll in college right out of high school may eventually to do so once the pandemic is finally ended. Statistics have shown however that the success rate for a student getting their degree drops dramatically as a function of the time between high school and college. Meanwhile, those who put off going to college face an ever increasing risk of their simply never getting back in the educational system.
Then there is the possibility that this pandemic induced decline could become a trend. According to Doug Shapiro, executive director of the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, “The longer this continues, the more it starts to build its own momentum as a cultural shift and not just a short-term effect of the pandemic disruptions.”
Even back when our nation was just a collection of colonies the people who would become Americans understood the importance of higher education. And so they founded schools like Harvard, William and Mary, The University of Pennsylvania and the College of New Jersey, now Princeton University. In the midst of our bloodiest war Abraham Lincoln took time out to push for and implement the Morrill Land Grant Act of 1862, which led to the founding of dozens of State Colleges and Universities, which propelled this country to become the richest and most powerful nation on Earth.
Will the Americans of today follow the wisdom of their forbears or will they come to look upon a college degree as something just for the rich. If that happens we will have truly lost the American dream.