OPINION: The demographic cliff in higher education should be seen as an opportunity, not a crisis

This spring, the number of high school graduates in the United States is expected to hit its peak. Starting in the fall, enrollment will likely enter a period of decline that could last a decade or more.

This looming “demographic cliff” has been on the minds of education leaders for nearly two decades, dating back to the start of the Great Recession. A raft of college closures over the past five years, exacerbated by the pandemic, has for many observers been the canary in the coal mine.

In the years to come, schools at all levels — reliant on per-pupil funding for K-12 and on tuition dollars for colleges and universities — will begin feeling the squeeze.

The question now is whether to treat the cliff as a crisis or an opportunity.

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As they prepare for enrollment shortfalls, superintendents and college presidents are primarily focused on crisis management. With good reason, they’re spending the bulk of their time on the hard short-term decisions of cutting programs and personnel to meet looming budget shortfalls.

In the precious few years before the situation becomes even more dire, the question is whether schools should just continue bracing for impact — or if they can think bigger in ways that could be transformative not just for the landscape of education, but for the economy more broadly. In my view, they should think about what it would look like to make a moment of crisis a real opportunity.

Here are some ideas about how that could happen. The first involves blurring the lines between high school and college.

Colleges today feel immense pressure because there aren’t enough high school graduates. High schools feel similar pressure because there are fewer young people around to enroll each year — not to mention the chronic absenteeism and disengagement that has persisted since the pandemic.

What if the two worked more closely together — in ways that helped high schools keep students engaged while enabling colleges to reach a broader range of students?

In many states, this is already happening. At last count, 2.5 million high schoolers took at least one dual-enrollment course from a college or university. But it’s not enough to just create tighter connections between one educational experience and another. Today’s students — and today’s economy — also demand clearer pathways from education to careers. It makes sense to blur the lines between high schools, colleges and work.

So imagine taking these changes even further — to a world in which instead of jumping from high school to college, students in their late teens entered entirely new institutions that paid them for work-based learning experiences that would lead them to a degree and eventually a career.

That’s a lofty goal. But it’s the kind of big thinking that both high schools and colleges may need to reinvent themselves for the country’s shifting demographics.

Colleges have an opportunity right now to double down on creating and expanding job-relevant programs — and to think even bigger about who they serve. That could include expanding opportunities for adult learners who have gained skills outside the classroom through credit for prior learning and competency-based learning. It could also mean speeding up the development of industry-relevant coursework to better align with the needs of the labor market and leaning into short-form training programs to upskill incumbent workers.

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Not every student is ready to invest four years of time and money to earn a bachelor’s degree. But they shouldn’t have to be — and colleges have a chance to expand their offerings in ways that give students more pathways into today’s fast-changing economy and further education if they so choose.

Part of the problem with the current trajectory from high school to college is that the wrong things get incentivized. Both K-12 schools and colleges get money and support based on the number of students they enroll and (sometimes) the number of people who graduate — not on how well they do at helping people gain the skills to effectively participate in the economy.

That’s not anyone’s fault. But it often boils down to a matter of policy. Which means that changing policy can create new incentives to tighten the connections between high school, college and work.

States like Colorado are already taking the lead on this shift. Colorado’s “Big Blur” task force put out a report with recommendations on how to integrate learning and work, including by creating a statewide data system to track the outcomes of educational programs and updating the state’s accountability systems to better reflect “the importance of learners graduating ready for jobs and additional training.”

If schools and policymakers stay the course in the decade to come, they already know what’s ahead: declining enrollment, decreased funding and the exacerbation of all the challenges that they’ve already begun to face in recent years.

It’s not the job of the education system to turn the tide of demographic change. But the system does have a unique, and urgent, opportunity to respond to this changing landscape in ways that benefit not only students but the economy as a whole. The question now is whether education leaders and policymakers can seize that opportunity before it’s too late.

Joel Vargas is vice-president of education practice at Jobs for the Future.

Contact the opinion editor at opinion@hechingerreport.org.

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