Alarm bells are ringing for liberal universities nationwide. New data released by the National Student Council Research Coalition shows a shocking decline in college degrees.
With leftist agendas saturating campuses, students have become disillusioned with higher learning, as decades of insane policies have left them with fewer job opportunities, collapsing wages and degrees that lack utility.
Daily Caller reports, university completion rates dropped during the 2021-2022 academic year, which could be a negative sign for schools, according to a new report published Thursday by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.
The report revealed approximately 58,000 fewer completions than in the 2020-2021 academic year. Based on data dating back to the 2012-2013 academic year, this finding represents the first decline in the number of undergraduate degrees earned in a decade, and correlates with previous data showing a decline in the number of students enrolling in higher education institutions.
According to the report, the declining number of undergraduate degrees awarded correlates with a decline in first-year enrollment in colleges and universities. The number of first-year students has declined by 50,700 students, or 1.9%.
Mikyung Ryu, NSCRC research publications director stated “The combination of the enrollment declines during the pandemic, weak motivations to pursue a college degree in the strong job market, and the underlying demographic declines likely drove this decline, These declines were as expected by many, suggesting that graduate numbers already started to catch up with college enrollment declines, which were accelerated during the pandemic.”
While college completion is declining, there are many sectors who traditionally required a college degree that no longer require one.
Vox reports, for the majority of jobs in Pennsylvania state government, Josh Shapiro eliminated the requirement for a four-year college degree, two months after Utah’s Republican governor Spencer Cox did the same, and nearly one year after Maryland’s Republican governor Larry Hogan started the trend. In response to the president’s State of the Union address, Alaska’s Republican governor Mike Dunleavy has also adopted the same position.
As employers began to hire globally for workers and automation changed the nature of many domestic jobs in America, college degree requirements started creeping up. As routinized factory work began to be replaced by machines or outsourced to other countries, one consequence was that workers were expected to handle more social tasks, with “soft skills” such as conscientiousness and the ability to converse with others that facilitate collaboration.
Some companies were already ahead of the curve years before governors and the president started talking about degree inflation. One of the most recognized leaders is IBM, which realized it needed to loosen its hiring requirements during the Great Recession.
IBM’s chief human resources officer, Nickle LaMoreaux stated “They say necessity is the mother of invention, and that’s essentially where we found ourselves about 10 years ago,” Nickle explained, pointing to the shortage of skilled tech workers, the “half-life” of tech skills, and the fact that two-thirds of US adults lacked bachelor’s degrees. By 2021, half of IBM’s US jobs no longer required a college degree.
In a startling new report from the National Student Council of Research and Curriculum, university enrollment figures have plummeted drastically. This alarming trend could mark the beginning of the end for higher education institutions around the country. As leftist agendas take precedence, wages for college graduates have been stagnating, making degrees less and less useful in terms of producing a successful career. Studies conducted by private research companies suggest that degrees are becoming increasingly worthless in some sectors, leading to an overall collapse of interest in pursuing higher education as a whole. Unless universities adjust to this rapidly changing and challenging environment, they may face certain extinction due to lack of interest from both students and employers.
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