Is the ‘College for All’ Movement Ending?

The size of the latest first-year class at Eastern Michigan University plunged by 12.5 percent compared to last year, part of a national trend that saw freshman classes nationally declining by an average of 5 percent.

That drop, a preliminary figure documented by a new college enrollment report from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, startled higher education officials around the country. They thought the pandemic enrollment losses were in the rearview mirror.

Not every college saw lower freshman numbers, but universities that serve high numbers of low-income students, such as Eastern Michigan, saw a decline of more than 10 percent, driving down the national averages. The main reasons for the drop, experts agreed, were threefold: massive problems with the revamped Free Application for Federal Student Aid, which made it difficult for students to apply; a demographic decline; and a strong economy luring young people into the workforce.

Those powerful factors are hard to deny.

There may be something more ominous at work, however—the beginning of the end of the “college for all” movement that greatly expanded college access for low-income students. That so-called movement never really meant college for all—it meant delivering high-level curricula and college counseling that would give those students, not just students from wealthy neighborhoods, a shot at college.

But that movement always irritated populists on the right, joined lately by their counterparts on the left, who pointed to the high numbers of ill-prepared students who dropped out of college and were saddled with student debt. Or the number of students who chose college majors with limited marketplace value. “Wouldn’t those students be better off learning a trade or another targeted skill?” skeptics asked.

It’s hard not to attribute some of the enrollment drop to intense public skepticism about whether college is worthwhile. A recent Gallup poll found that public confidence in higher education has dropped to 36 percent, down from 57 percent nearly a decade ago. The widespread college-skeptical message seems to be having a real-world impact in young people’s enrollment decisions. If that’s the case, these enrollment drops won’t be fully reversed by fixing FAFSA, and they are likely to persist in an economic downturn.

Is that a good thing?

Unfortunately, everything from rising student debt to campus culture wars to high noncompletion rates has fueled a narrative suggesting that college may be overrated. And as happens so often in American life, this misperception has had the most damaging impact on low-income young people who stand to gain the most from postsecondary education.

After all, an enormous body of economic evidence shows the strong earnings advantage college graduates hold over their peers with only a high school diploma—both immediately after graduation and for decades afterward. As economists like Nobel Prize winner Claudia Goldin have noted, the economic value of human capital, fostered by high school and then college education, has been a striking global phenomenon for more than a century. That’s only likely to continue—a recent study by Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce found more and more future jobs will require some postsecondary education.

But instead of a renewed effort to send more students to college, and to do much more to improve their completion rates and other markers of educational effectiveness, public discussion of how to help individuals get ahead has been dominated by downplaying the importance of higher education. The growing movement to hire based on skills, not degrees, has led many state governments and corporate employers to make pronouncements about dropping degree requirements for job openings. There’s been a renewed push to revamp hiring practices and to expand degree alternatives like apprenticeships or short-term credentials.

It’s quite true that U.S. colleges, which come in many shapes and sizes, have numerous problems that need urgent attention. That includes not only the need for higher graduation rates but also for providing various forms of improved student support and more attention to key areas like career-focused internship opportunities and streamlined transfer from community colleges.

It’s also true that young people deserve better alternatives to college, including learn-and-earn apprenticeships and high-quality nondegree pathways that lead to strong jobs and a route to upward mobility.

But why should these goals be pitted against each other? So often, a range of valuable reforms are pigeonholed into an either-or choice instead of what we need, which is a range of both-and alternatives.

When it comes to college, let’s not let the problems that exist lead us to overcorrect and steer students away from higher ed altogether. We can learn a lot from what high-performing charter schools have done to prepare students for postsecondary education—and to show them why college will help them get ahead.

Take the example of Uncommon Schools, a network of 52 charter schools serving low-income students in the Northeast. Sixty-one percent of Uncommon Schools graduates have either graduated from a two- or four-year college or are currently attending a two- or four-year college. Compare that to the national data showing that only 14 percent of students from low-income backgrounds earn bachelor’s degrees, compared to 60 percent of students from high-income families.

How does Uncommon Schools do it? You could write a book on it, but in short the formula consists of serving up a rigorous curriculum and ensuring that no student falls behind. Then, counselors use data-driven methods to help students select a college that’s an ideal fit. Finally, a network of advisers, including fellow students, track them through college to ensure they graduate.

As it is, few traditional schools reach out to learn their lessons learned. A national pulling back from emphasizing college for nontraditional students may kill off any desire to copy those lessons.

As for alternatives to college, there’s a lot of valuable work going on to offer affordable, short-term credentials that help individuals develop targeted skills—and that can also be stacked for those who want to work toward degrees. We’re also seeing innovations like degree apprenticeships, now being pioneered by Reach University, which trains teachers, and by the online giant Western Governors University, which recently acquired the technology platform Craft Education to accelerate work-based learning.

But while these useful efforts are moving ahead, let’s not mislead young people about what we know about college. Despite the headlines generated by the hiring-for-skills craze, for instance, the real-world behavior of employers still shows they have a strong preference for degrees when hiring for many jobs. Earlier this year, to take a notable example, the Burning Glass Institute found that skills-based hiring led to new opportunities for fewer than one in 700 new hires in 2023.

So yes, let’s keep maximizing different opportunities for a range of students with a range of interests and backgrounds. But the FAFSA debacle, and the worrisome first-year enrollment drop, are problematic precisely because we know college is valuable for so many students. We need to make higher education better, certainly. But we also need to avoid a discussion, often led by college graduates whose own kids will certainly be pursuing higher education, that turns into a “college for me, but not for thee” argument that makes a lot of young people worse off.