Back in Baby Boomer Time - College + Much Much More Higher Education

 "There were 662,000 fewer undergrads seeking four-year degrees during the spring 2022 semester compared with the same period last year. Even graduate programs — where enrollment had continued to trend upward in spite of COVID — shrunk by 1%, begging the question of whether these are long-term declines." - LinkedIn News, Updated May 27, 2022.

Comments coming into that LinkedIn Newsflash essentially are in consensus: At one time - call it Baby Boomer time - a college degree was necessary to gain access to good job. And that was that. We bought the product. That mandate then extended to graduate school. The conventional wisdom was that a Master's degree or more gave the edge.

That was then, of course.

More and more brandname businesses such as Apple don't require a college degree to apply for a job. It's cool to drop out of college like Mark Zuckerberg and become a billionaire. When we over-educated (Me & My Unmarketable Doctorate Degree) were starving during The Great Recession, so many blue-collars were fully employed. Entrepreneurs are revered. 

Of course there are specialist kinds of education which can't be bypassed. Law school is among them. Sure there are beefs how legal education is structured but currently there is no alternative. The apprentice mode would be too difficult to implement, including certification.

So, here we are. The big business of higher education could be forced to downsize. Along with that collapse will be the shrinking of all those services like coaching for acceptance by elite colleges which boomed during the blind faith in higher education. 

Meanwhile, what the world of work expects keeps evolving. New forms of training, especially reskilling, will have to be developed on a massive scale. That's where the business opportunity could be.

Connect with Editor-in-Chief Jane Genova at janegenova374@gmail.com.

 

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