The Associated Press reports that between 2019 and 2022, college enrollment in the US fell by 8%. I’d assume that was because of COVID, and that students didn’t appreciate paying an arm and a leg for classes they couldn’t even attend in person, and being forced to have their arm repeatedly jabbed. But according to the A.P., one big reason for the drop in college enrollment was young people deciding it’s just not worth it. To which I’d reply with three words: “It’s about time!”

https://www.conservativereview.com/college-enrollment-tanks-as-many-teens-opt-for-trade-school-or-an-early-career-why-do-i-want-to-put-in-all-the-money-to-get-a-piece-of-paper-2659585386.html

Many students have looked at all the underemployed liberal arts majors with crushing student loan debt and decided they’d rather go to work and make money or train for a secure, good-paying job as a skilled tradesperson. This article quotes several who think that working toward taking over the family farm or apprenticing to become a plumber is a better idea than spending four years in college just to get a sheepskin that may or may not land them a job that pays well enough to pay off their staggering student loan debts before they’re retirement age. Add in the fact that colleges have developed a reputation for prioritizing wokeism, socialism and anti-Americanism, silencing free speech and punishing conservatives and Christians over teaching anything of value. You can’t even learn real math because math is racist now.  

While college enrollment predictably ticked back up in 2022, the story reports that “the numbers have begun to alarm some lawmakers, college administrators, and researchers,” with one Georgetown University researcher declaring, "It’s quite a dangerous proposition for the strength of our national economy."

Really? I hear a lot about shortages of plumbers, mechanics, farmers, truckers, etc., which really is dangerous, but I never hear anyone complain that there aren’t enough lawyers, poli-sci grads or gender studies majors. For the past few years, our national economy has been in the hands of graduates of the finest elite universities, from corporate boardrooms to the highest levels of government. How is that working out?

And by the way, why does “education” cost more and more when it’s actually making people stupider?

https://www.campusreform.org/article?id=2148

If young people are seeing college as an overpriced indoctrination factory that gives them nothing but debt and no usable skills, that’s on the people running the colleges. Want to bring the customers back? Get rid of the DEI garbage and start teaching something worth learning. Cut tuition by firing the bloated, overpaid administrative staff, particularly those whose main job is to foment racial divisions. They could also stop paying people like the author of “The 1619 Project” $50,000 speaking fees to spew hateful, anti-American rubbish for 45 minutes. Would anyone not gladly trade that for a tuition cut?

In the meantime, I think America will actually be a lot stronger with more unindoctrinated plumbers, farmers and mechanics and fewer socialists, activists and lawyers.

And speaking of the reasons why so many young people are looking at our universities and deciding they’d rather go to trade school…

https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2023/03/13/pronoun-police-lose-student-wins-legal-battle-with-montana-state-u-over-free-speech/

And this is a state school in Montana! That’s how deep the infection of “higher education” runs.