Why the decline in college attendance is good news
WASHINGTON - More and more Americans are finding ways of getting ahead without going to back to school. That surprising trend is several years old now, and it shows up again in a new report on how many Americans are going to college.
College is a good deal for most people who go. Even taking a few classes at a community school can help people make more money when they go back to work. That said, the trend, pronounced among older students, is actually encouraging. It's one sign that Americans are finding they have real choices as the economy slowly recovers.
What's more, the figures reveal something important about the market for jobs. If you had a hard time finding work after the financial crisis - and if you're having a hard time finding work now - it might not be because you don't have exactly what employers are looking for. The economy's overall weakness might be to blame instead, and as things get better, you might not need a degree to get a job.
According to the data the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center released last week, 18.6 million Americans were in colleges of all kinds this spring term, 1.9 percent fewer than a year ago. The decline began four years ago, and it's concentrated among older students. Fewer people over the age of 24 are going to school.
Taking the long view, the number of Americans going to college is still very high. Over the past several decades, colleges have drawn ever more students, as data from the Pew Research Center shows, worried that they won't be able to find work without getting an education.
The height of college-going came after the financial crisis, when the number of college students in the country rose sharply. Many workers who were forced out of a job and couldn't find another one went back to school. The number of Americans over 24 in colleges reached 7.9 million in the spring term of 2011.
That was probably a smart decision for many of them. Since the crisis, it's been easiest for graduates working in high-skill jobs to find work, as The Washington Post's Ylan Q. Mui reports.
Now that businesses are hiring again, more and more Americans are making the choice to stay out of the classroom. From their point of view, their time and money are better spent working. They're confident about their chances in the labor market without adding lines to their r� sum� s.
According to clearinghouse data released last week, just 7 million Americans over 24 are enrolled in colleges this spring - a decrease of 11 percent from the apex in 2011.
"There was a rapid rise in enrollments up until 2011," said Jason DeWitt, research manager at the clearinghouse. "Since then, institutions have shed more than a million enrollments." (The number of students under 24 also declined slightly.)
"Mostly, that appears to be a result of unemployment coming down about 4.5 percentage points," DeWitt added.
It's not that education is a bad option. Both traditional, four-year colleges as well as community colleges help their students make more money - even those students who don't have the best grades and even if they don't degree.
It's just that in the past few years, many Americans have found that education isn't necessary to get ahead. Employers are on the lookout for more workers, and they're not insisting that they be highly educated. The improving economy is providing real opportunities for those who a few years ago would have felt they had no choice but to go back to school or give up.
Education has become crucial in the modern economy, to be sure, and there's reason to think that the need for education might be one reason why a smaller fraction of Americans are working now, compared to two decades ago.
Just 80.9 percent of those between 25 and 54 were working or looking for work last year, down from 83.1 percent in 2008. During President Bill Clinton's second term, 84.1 percent of workers in that age group had a job or were trying to find one.
The work that many of those people used to do may be no longer available, whether they've been replaced by a worker in a foreign country or by a sophisticated robot. For whatever reason, the economy no longer seems to want those workers and their skills.
To find a new job, those workers would need more training. Many did go back to school after the crisis - not that they had much choice.
There are questions about whether the education system is up to the job of preparing American workers for the modern economy. It's true that there's room for improvement in education, and if Americans thought that they would get more out of going back to school, more of them would.
That would be a good thing. If the United States is underinvesting in colleges and universities, companies will have a hard time finding well educated workers in the long term, hampering the economy as a whole.
In the short term, the fact that fewer Americans are in school is a good thing, too. Better education in the United States - and not just for colleges, but starting before kindergarten - will take time and cost money.
The good news is that as the economy mends, some of those workers who suffered in the turmoil of the past 15 years will be able to find work again. The priority for policymakers interested in helping that group should be clear. What those workers need right away is a consistent recovery.