I think that 74 piece is mixing up two things: attitudinal surveys and actual enrollment trends. (The survey they're referencing was of *middle school students*, so...they're not affecting college enrollments yet.) Measuring enrollment from 2019 to 2022 is already a kind of WTF if you're going to make claims about trending developments precisely because the pandemic had such a distinctive impact, but also because we're now into the so-called "demographic cliff" where some sort of net enrollment decline is inevitable anyway.
Yeah, my critique with the middle school survey would be... wtf do middle school students know about anything? They haven't begun to really think about college yet and, at best, are just echoing things their parents said or, at worst, just making up shit.
That said, there has been a huge drop off in college attendance particularly among populations that saw the highest levels of debt and lowest level of degree achievement. I do think that there's a hunger for alternatives. And those middle school students haven't bounced back academically from the pandemic, and the early studies are showing that they will never catch up. So, we absolutely need to start thinking through alternatives or huge new ways to bring up academic skills.
The challenging thing is that community colleges seem to be well positioned to be that alternative, and that's where the surprisingly strong drop-off effects have been focused, which I'm not sure anybody has a good handle on at this point.
Thanks to Ian, I’ve gotten a first hand look at two community colleges here in New Jersey. While Ian does well academically in math and computer science, he needed help at first with all the administrative stuff — signing up for classes, getting registered for special accommodations, paying bills, and all that. So, I had to do all that for him. It’s was crazy complicated and the staff was useless. They didn’t answer their phones and didn’t appear to care about their jobs at all. It took me six months to get him registered and set up for classes at his his first community college.
So, administration and the online course portal is one problem. Then there are too many online college classes with clunky software and minimum wage professors.
The schools are massively underfunded. The students have huge issues ranging from financial to substandard K-12 preparation to neurodiverse disabilities. And there’s not enough support.
And there’s competition elsewhere. The nearby tech school - Lincoln Tech — has a full parking lot when I drive by.
So students drop out or pay more for private tech schools. Which is tragic. Community colleges could be serving so many more people.
I think this is a lot of it--community colleges are underfunded and undermotivated to do what they could do incredibly well. I can't blame a lot of the faculty they employ, because they aren't being paid well or rewarded in any other fashion. And the friction in how students relate to CCs is why for-profits, despite worse quality of instruction, eat their lunch, because online for-profits prioritize making it easy to sign up, easy to get loans, easy to get a conducive schedule, etc.; it's only after that point that they check out entirely.
I think that 74 piece is mixing up two things: attitudinal surveys and actual enrollment trends. (The survey they're referencing was of *middle school students*, so...they're not affecting college enrollments yet.) Measuring enrollment from 2019 to 2022 is already a kind of WTF if you're going to make claims about trending developments precisely because the pandemic had such a distinctive impact, but also because we're now into the so-called "demographic cliff" where some sort of net enrollment decline is inevitable anyway.
Yeah, my critique with the middle school survey would be... wtf do middle school students know about anything? They haven't begun to really think about college yet and, at best, are just echoing things their parents said or, at worst, just making up shit.
That said, there has been a huge drop off in college attendance particularly among populations that saw the highest levels of debt and lowest level of degree achievement. I do think that there's a hunger for alternatives. And those middle school students haven't bounced back academically from the pandemic, and the early studies are showing that they will never catch up. So, we absolutely need to start thinking through alternatives or huge new ways to bring up academic skills.
The challenging thing is that community colleges seem to be well positioned to be that alternative, and that's where the surprisingly strong drop-off effects have been focused, which I'm not sure anybody has a good handle on at this point.
Thanks to Ian, I’ve gotten a first hand look at two community colleges here in New Jersey. While Ian does well academically in math and computer science, he needed help at first with all the administrative stuff — signing up for classes, getting registered for special accommodations, paying bills, and all that. So, I had to do all that for him. It’s was crazy complicated and the staff was useless. They didn’t answer their phones and didn’t appear to care about their jobs at all. It took me six months to get him registered and set up for classes at his his first community college.
So, administration and the online course portal is one problem. Then there are too many online college classes with clunky software and minimum wage professors.
The schools are massively underfunded. The students have huge issues ranging from financial to substandard K-12 preparation to neurodiverse disabilities. And there’s not enough support.
And there’s competition elsewhere. The nearby tech school - Lincoln Tech — has a full parking lot when I drive by.
So students drop out or pay more for private tech schools. Which is tragic. Community colleges could be serving so many more people.
I think this is a lot of it--community colleges are underfunded and undermotivated to do what they could do incredibly well. I can't blame a lot of the faculty they employ, because they aren't being paid well or rewarded in any other fashion. And the friction in how students relate to CCs is why for-profits, despite worse quality of instruction, eat their lunch, because online for-profits prioritize making it easy to sign up, easy to get loans, easy to get a conducive schedule, etc.; it's only after that point that they check out entirely.