The Changing Demographics of Enrollment
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The number of non-Hispanic white students has been shrinking since 2008, according to a 2020 report by the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, a regional accreditor, and it is expected to continue to decline through 2036.
In 2015, more than 71 percent of white high-school graduates ages 16 to 24 attended college, according to U.S. Census data. It’s now 60 percent.
Students now graduating from high school have also lived through years of disruption, including the Covid-19 pandemic and the recent FAFSA debacle. But students of all races have passed through the same gauntlet — why would those hurdles snag wealthy white students?
Some reasoning:
But there are other ways to make a living than by going to college, and students are aware of them. Public skepticism about college is “completely relentless,” said Tanya I. Garcia, vice president at the Institute for College Access and Success, a nonprofit advocacy group, and the strong economy provides an attractive alternative: “If you’re getting a job out of high school that is a pathway into the middle class, why would you go to college?”
Perhaps the decline of more affluent white students owes to perceptions of universities as hotbeds of radical ideologies and humanist fripperies. Perhaps it’s just that some students have other options — gap years or starting their own businesses. While students from lower-income backgrounds often see college as their only path out of poverty, “these middle- to upper-class students probably don’t see themselves falling into poverty based on these decisions” not to attend, Bitar said. “The motivations are different if you perhaps come from a background where you have seen successful entrepreneurship, and you may have other resources that aren’t liquid assets but are networks or access to places, like to host meetings or events.”
My personal professional interests notwithstanding, I don’t really resent the idea that folks of all income levels should have all kinds of different career options, or that affluent white kids may find ways to maintain their social and economic status without going to college. I certainly worry about the ideological aspects; how much of this is parents discouraging kids from attending college because of all the DEI and Critical Race Theory and Cultural Marxism? I also wonder about the gender breakdown; I’d bet that there’s a significant gender gap among white affluent students with young men either attending college later or not at all. That’s a complicated phenomenon in and of itself, but not necessarily a horrible trend, as there are plenty of 18 and 19 year old men who absolutely should not be in a college classroom.