RealClearEducation runs a story about enrollment declines in higher education - that's basically everything from podunk community colleges to Harvard.
College enrollment had been falling by about 1% each year for a decade before the pandemic, but COVID-19 accelerated that trend. In the past two years, more than 1 million students have walked away from higher education.
Actually, this is probably a good thing. Lots of jobs don't really require the skills learned in college but are being filled by graduates who then don't earn enough to repay their student loans. This was a trend started by the GI Bill following the World War II demobilization.
There was concern that the flood of GIs leaving the service would create overwhelming unemployment and a consequent depression. Hence the government instituted the GI Bill to fund their further education (and keep them out of the workforce for 1-4 years.
Employers decided to begin requiring a college degree for jobs for which a high school diploma previously sufficed, because there was a big supply of degreed grads. This behavior sent a signal to those still in high school that a college degree was now needed to compete in the job market.
Things were probably better when college graduates were either (a) damn smart or (b) extremely hard working. Either characteristic recommended them to employers, who need both traits. And in those days most degrees led to some kind of employment.
The development of the so-called "studies" degrees - Women's Studies, Native American Studies, Hispanic Studies, LGBTQ Studies, Environment Studies, etc. - has been a scam perpetrated by college administrators as a way to add advocates for various "victim" groups to the faculty. This was necessitated by the need to meet the de facto quotas which no one admits exist.
