Between the demographic cliff (fewer young people in the population) and the perception that getting a degree costs more than it’s worth, college leaders face a dim future. The fat years are over and lean ones loom ahead. What to do?
In today’s Martin Center article, Harlan Teller examines the situation administrators face.
He writes:
The enrollment cliff is the most predictable event of the past 20 years in higher education, yet administrators treat it as an unalterable matter of faith. The ideological orthodoxy dominating college campuses frames cataclysmic climate change as a reason not to have children, and reproductive freedom as an absolute, unalloyed good with no downsides. Consequently, many in the professoriate and on senior university staff view family propagation as an assault on Planet Earth rather than a positive propagation of humanity — or a practical way to keep tenured faculty in their jobs for the foreseeable future.
Teller’s experience is that college officials tend to blame everyone but themselves. They avoid the reality that lots of families are repelled by the leftist ideology that permeates so many schools.