Friends:
Check out this recent Hechinger Report on graduate degrees and programs in the U.S. Despite a brief enrollment rebound in 2023, we are witnessing that domestic student numbers are declining, with international students now driving most growth. This is some extent an artificat, I believe, of the growing economic divide that is playing out currently within all communities regardless of race or ethnicity. College is simply very expensive and student debt is crushing for the working and lower middle classes. High tuition, rising debt, and uncertain returns on investment have made prospective students circumspect about getting a master's or doctoral degree.
So unfortunate since it's such a gift and privilege to be able to pursue one's intellectual passions in and with one's life.
Experts warn that continued enrollment declines could create workforce shortages in fields requiring advanced degrees. Yet, the issue has received less attention compared to falling undergraduate numbers. Universities are now racing to adapt, balancing financial sustainability with evolving student demands.
They're also having to manage the recklessness of a Trump-Musk administration that is disfiguring American higher education, as we speak (see earlier post, "NIH Budget Cuts Are the ‘Apocalypse of American Science,’ Experts Say, Time Magazine.") Aside from the courts, the only thing that will save us are the midterm elections taking place in approximately 17 months.
-Angela Valenzuela
Grad programs have been a cash cow; now universities are starting to fret over graduate enrollment
by Jon Marcus, June 10, 2024 | Hechinger Report
Emily Sharkey, executive director of MBA admissions and recruiting, and Peter Severa, assistant dean for MBA student engagement, at Georgia Tech’s Scheller College of Business. Adding a designation in science, technology, engineering and math “seemed like a natural fit, and we were seeing some of our competitors doing it,” Severa says. Credit: Terrell Clark for The Hechinger Report
ATLANTA — Two construction cranes hover over a giant worksite just outside the Scheller College of Business at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
What they’re building is both a show of optimism in and a way to attract more students to something universities badly need but are beginning to worry about: graduate education.
The $200 million project will house Scheller’s graduate and executive business programs in one tower, connected to Georgia Tech’s School of Industrial and Systems Engineering in another. Linking graduate business programs with other disciplines has proven to increase demand; Scheller has already added a science, technology, engineering and math designation to its master’s program in business administration, with a resulting bump in applications, the school says.
At a university focused on technology, doing this “seemed like a natural fit, and we were seeing some of our competitors doing it,” said Peter Severa, Scheller’s assistant dean for MBA student engagement, in a conference room overlooking the construction site.
It’s also a kind of enticement that’s become essential in response to signs that, after years of increase, the graduate enrollment on which universities heavily rely for revenue may be softening as prospective students question the cost of grad school and as shorter, cheaper and more flexible alternatives pop up.
“What we’re seeing now is a combination of a leveling off and a big question mark as to where this long-term trend will go,” said Brian McKenzie, director of research at the Council of Graduate Schools.
Unlike undergraduate enrollment, which has been on a steady decline, graduate enrollment has gone up over the last decade. Undergraduate numbers fell by 15 percent between 2010 and 2021, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, while graduate enrollment grew by 9 percent. That was fueled in part by a change in 2007 that let graduate students borrow up to the full cost of their educations, unlike undergraduates, who can borrow only a limited amount.
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This growth made graduate programs a lucrative source of revenue for universities. To cash in, private, nonprofit, bachelor’s degree-granting universities and colleges in particular vastly expanded their graduate offerings, listing more than three times as many by 2021 as they had in 2005, according to research conducted at the University of Tennessee.
It seemed a good bet. Not even the pandemic slowed the increase in graduate enrollment. It reached its highest level ever in 2021, as workers who had been laid off or furloughed opted to get graduate degrees. Then, in 2022, it fell.
There was a slight rebound in the fall of 2023. But that was largely driven by an increase in master’s degree enrollment at public as opposed to private, nonprofit universities and in the number of international students, who have quietly come to constitute much of the growth at graduate schools. Among domestic students, graduate enrollment was starting to decline.
Sheer population trends helped drive graduate enrollment during the last decade, with an increase in the number of Americans who are candidates for it — ages 25 to 44, with bachelor’s degrees.
But even as there are more of those 25- to 44-year-old candidates for graduate education, the proportion of them who actually go has started to erode. It’s down from 8.4 percent to 6.5 percent over the last 10 years, the higher education research and advisory firm Eduventures found.
“If that continues, and you see a slowing in the underlying population growth, then we’re starting to talk about some challenges,” said Clint Raine, senior analyst at Eduventures.
That’s because of a looming decline in the number of 18-year-olds beginning next year, which is projected to take another big toll on undergraduate enrollment. Basic math suggests that it will eventually hit graduate programs, too.
This story about graduate enrollment was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our higher education newsletter. Listen to our higher education podcast.
