Published by The Chronicle of Higher Education
Nationwide, fewer high-school seniors are choosing to enroll in college immediately after graduation. In some states, not even half of high-school graduates are pursuing higher education, according to the latest data available.
For many states, this shrinking number comes as another grim sign for college-enrollment prospects and for future work forces — especially since students who do not enroll right away are less likely to earn college degrees at all.
Recent state reports in Indiana, West Virginia, Arizona, Kansas, and Tennessee highlighted significant declines in college-going rates, which reflect the percentage of public high-school graduates who enroll in college within a year. The drop is even larger across the board for low-income students, for Black and Hispanic/Latino students, and for men.
Last week, the Indiana Commission for Higher Education revealed that the college-going rate for 2020 high-school graduates declined six percentage points from 2019 — the sharpest one-year decline in at least a generation. Just over half of the class enrolled in college immediately after graduation, and less than half of men did, a first for the state.
These steep drops were also seen in Tennessee, where a report released in May found the college-going rate had decreased by nine percentage points, to 53 percent, between 2019 and 2021.
While college-going rates have been steadily declining over the past decade, the trend during the pandemic has been “unprecedented,” according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. The national college-going rate for 2020 graduates dropped by four to 10 percentage points, with high-poverty secondary schools experiencing more severe declines, from 55 percent to 45 percent between 2019 and 2020.
The Chronicle talked to enrollment experts, state higher-education officials, and college counselors to figure out why this drop is happening and what can be done. They pointed to barriers like cost, lack of support in high school, mental-health concerns, competing options, and a shifting perspective on the benefits of college — all of which disproportionately affect disadvantaged students.
“Too many individuals are being left out of the opportunities that accrue with some training and education beyond high school,” said Chris Lowery, Indiana’s higher-education commissioner.
Winners and Losers
David Strauss, enrollment expert and college consultant at the Art & Science Group, said colleges are facing a “triple whammy” when it comes to demand for higher education.
“The first whammy is that the number of students graduating from high school is down and has been going down for quite some time in most areas of the country,” Strauss said. “The double whammy is college-going rates: If the percentages go down, then the pool shrinks even more. And the triple whammy is the things that have been knocked off track by the pandemic, or have caused people to think of alternatives because of the pandemic.”
Enrollment is becoming a game of winners and losers, Strauss said. Demand for elite institutions continues to grow, while many in-state public universities and community colleges are losing students.
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‘Competing Priorities’
In the backdrop of high-school students’ choices is a larger debate about whether formal education after secondary school is economically necessary. Research suggests that a college degree leaves people better off, but young people aren’t so sure.
In Indiana, Lowery sees this doubt playing out. “One of the perceptions that individuals get is that all students walk away from college with a $150,000 debt and the inability to find a job,” he said.
While students’ having more options is not inherently a bad thing, experts say, equity gaps could expand if fewer disadvantaged students go to college.
The high-school-graduate population is diversifying, including more Hispanic and Latino students, Strauss said. But these students also face the largest barriers to enrolling in college. “The college-going rates are dropping just because of who’s now in the pool,” Strauss said.
In Indiana, for example, the decline in college-going for Black students in the Class of 2020 was the largest across all racial and ethnic groups, with a seven-percentage-point decrease. For Hispanic/Latino students, there was a six-percentage-point decrease. Low-income students’ college-going rate declined by six percentage points, compared with a four-percentage-point decline for higher-income students.
Disadvantaged students are left even further behind when they do not have a support system to help them through the college-admissions process, Pietkiewicz said. In Tennessee, Pietkiewicz examined federal data and found that nearly all of the state’s public high schools have a student-to-counselor ratio above 250 to one.
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Colleges hoping to stay competitive in a market with shrinking demand need to develop a distinct experience they can offer to students, Strauss said. And they need to figure out how to support an increasingly diverse pool of high-school graduates.
This will probably not raise the overall rate of college-going, or allow every college to succeed, Strauss said. “But it gives the institutions that do it successfully a greater chance at carving out a larger piece of a shrinking pie.”