Giving Compass' Take:
- Employers are seeing many vacant positions emerge and require college-educated candidates due to a decline in enrollment due to COVID-19.
- College affordability is a key issue and still serves as a barrier for prospective students. How can colleges and employers work to address this?
- Read about the impact of COVID-19 on college enrollment.
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Central Michigan University has long been known for giving low-income, middle-class and first-generation college students the opportunity to earn a four-year degree and lead a fruitful life.
But the Mt. Pleasant university, like many other higher-education institutions across the country, is facing hard times. CMU’s enrollment has fallen a stunning 43% over the past decade, from 27,114 in 2012 to 15,465 last year.
Another enrollment drop is expected this fall, prompting the university to temporarily close four dorms on campus. Enrollment at CMU fell 11% during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, the largest among Michigan’s 15 public universities.
Thirteen of the state’s public universities also posted enrollment declines last year from 2020. Enrollment rose to a record 50,278 students at the University of Michigan. Enrollment at Michigan State University was essentially flat.
Recent enrollment drops can be attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced most universities to switch to remote instruction for much of the past two years. That resulted in many graduating high school students delaying decisions to attend community colleges and universities.
The state is bucking the national trend in declining community college enrollment. But Michigan Community College Association President Brandy Johnson attributed that almost entirely to two of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s programs targeting adults already in the workforce: Futures for Frontliners and Michigan Reconnect.
Those two programs, which offer two years of free community college tuition, have enrolled more than 165,000 workers.
The decline in high school graduates attending college started long before COVID hit. The implications for Michigan, an aging state facing a shortage of talent, are dire unless the trend is reversed.
A new report from the Detroit Regional Chamber found there are about 220,000 jobs in metro Detroit that employers can’t fill. Automakers are struggling to find enough software engineers and other college-educated workers needed to power their transition to electric vehicles.
Jim Farley, chief executive at Ford Motor Co., recently said building an advanced electric vehicle architecture “requires totally different talent. We don’t have that talent at Ford.”
Read the full article about the value of college by Rick Haglund at The 74.