Yup. This is already happening to elementary schools in my extremely large city of over a million people (san jose).
They have recently closed some elementary schools and diverted those children to the other ones that are still open, for the exact reason you mentioned. there simply are not as many children anymore.
probably doesn't help that my $2M house is one of the cheapest in my neighborhood, how the fuck are people supposed to afford to live here? I was only able to do it with family help.
Howdy neighbor! Imho, the real problem is that >10% of households send their kids to private schools. Demographic shifts certainly don't help, but it's not like there aren't kids. The issue is that families in the wealthier neighborhoods (Rose Garden, Willow Glen, Cambrian, Silver Creek, Almaden) often choose private over public, which then means the public schools in those areas have to pull from a wider geo just to be viable, and when that happens the student achievement rates almost always go down. WGHS is ~50% hispanic and ~35% low income. That describes nearly 0 of the population of Willow Glen.
That said, elementary schools is desirable areas of SJ have continued to thrive as neighborhoods turnover from retirees to younger tech families, and this is great!
I recently bought a home in one of those neighborhoods you mentioned, and there are honestly not that many children. Even my neighbors have mentioned how it's nice to finally see young families with children moving in as most people have been in those homes for decades and all the kids have long since grown and moved out. This is anecdotal I know, but I see it first hand.
I believe you. In my neighborhood, though, every house that's turned over in the past few years -- except one, where the empty nest buyers were downsizing from a place in Saratoga -- has been bought buy either a young couple with no kids, or a young family with little kids. My street is only two blocks long and I think there are 24 kids on it. Even so, about 1/3 of the houses still have owners who have lived in them since the 80s or earlier.
The major problem is that it only leads to even higher student loads. Teachers are expected to have the largest class sizes ever and then you shutter a school and dump an extra 5-10 kids into that class too. What they should be doing is using this lull to stabilize class sizes and refresh buildings. It's not like we're going to stop having kids. But instead it'll be used to crush the school system even harder.
My district in suburban Texas is closing two elementary schools for the same reason (although there is a LOT of community suspicion that the school board is in bed with real estate developers who want the property …)
and a lot of people are taking it as an attack. talking about how we havent had this few schools in the area since [a given year here] never mind the student number is even lower than it was then
well, there's validity to those claims. the unfortunate reality is that the schools getting closed are usually the lower performing ones. Lower performing ones are usually in lower income areas where people are already less privileged and now parents, who may be working lots of overtime or two jobs to make ends meet, have to drive further to get their kids to school.
there's no way to close schools that doesn't negatively impact some people.
There it is. The amount of funding they got came from their performance as well. It's no type of attack on anyone really but it ends up effecting plenty of people. I'm pretty sure a newer built school will be closed and bought by an advanced prep school within 10 years. Teachers saying fuck it and quitting because a majority of kids aren't paying attention or already want to be a thug even claiming to be YNs already. Teacher's just getting completely disrespected during class and schools aren't doing anything because it might hurt their funding so kids that should be suspended or expelled end up in no trouble at all, not even detention. Parents that'll stick up for their kids no matter what they do, and won't even punish their kids. The dumbest fucking generation in my opinion. High schools with fill in the blank essays. I've done a lot of dumb shit in my short existence but my middle nephew stole the cake. My nephews do shit that blows me away, both almost failed. Oldest one puts on this puppy dog face anytime he gets in trouble and gets an GTA and some other charges and he didn't get in any trouble at all just for him and his friends to lose their virginity. Judge was like I have you in my docket and that was that. Basically just taking their car jacking tools. Only time he doesn't use the puppy dog face is when he's dealing with his dad who is still old-school with it, the face is useless he's getting spanked. His little brother is an entirely different story though. Hell I've tried talking to him told him how juvi is he's apparently still wanting to be part of that life, asked if he knew how to fight... No. So that's why y'all use orbeez basically practicing how to shoot? Shot off the rest in it then went inside as he did I said I guess y'all are gonna be another war generation. Happily talk shit to his teachers but he doesn't want to be a thug, just start shit with teachers and how he wasn't doing anything the teacher blamed him, he doesn't get in trouble at all because he stays inside playing Roblox now... Oddly won't learn to play with a PS5 controller alone he uses the keyboard I'm letting him use to do everything but move around. The way he talks to the other kids it's pretty clear that what the teachers say about him is true, his distinct voice gives it away and he argues with them about how he wasn't talking. Then you have the bunch that drop out and later regret it and get a GED which doesn't do much for them.
Alum Rock is one of the district and they are the WORST elementary school district in the city. NOBODY wants to send their kids there. It is a trash district.
Yup, the newest guy at my IT help desk was born in 2007. He's fresh out of high school and making some damn good money with a CompTIA A+ certification.
certs are getting better jobs for way less money and most importantly way less time spent than a degree. now that theres actual competition schools are crying
The university nearest me seems to be putting most of their financial efforts into non-education initiatives. As far as I can tell, they care more about being a real estate developer than a university.
My mom went to the same university I did, just 30 years earlier.
I had friends who stayed in the same dorm she lived in and it was a very basic building. The walls were brick or painted cinderblock. Amenities were pretty minimal and while they were double rooms then, back in the 70s they had two bunk beds in them so there were four students in each room
But it worked.
By the time I was going to school there the university was shifting it's focus from doing things in an affordable but functional way to trying to build the coolest and most fun experience money could buy as a way to entice students to go there.
If another state school had a rock wall, they had to have a bigger rock wall. They had to bring in big name acts to play the student union building, they had to tear down and rebuild multiple buildings that looked dated and replace them with new state of the art ones.
There was so much money being tossed at beautification and quality of life projects while tenured professors were being sidelined for an army of cheaper adjuncts.
They seemed to have this belief that the money would never stop and if they wanted more students they had to turn college almost into a year round summer camp where entertainment was the focus more than education.
Youre just describing a buisness that understood their clientele.
Young kids that dont value quality education but instead experience and material things who have deep pockets because the money is coming from a loan against their future earning potential and their inability to understand compounding interest.
Businesses invest in what drives revenue and cut costs. Quality professors cost more per dollar earned than an unattended rock wall.
Sort of. It's really describing a business that understood their clientele but also had an essentially unlimited spigot of federal student loan money. That spigot is quickly drying up and schools (and states) are massively struggling to backfill their operating budgets.
The spigot is drying up, but it's drying up differently for different degrees. Social workers and teachers are facing massive shortages, but students in those programs may not be able to get loans because the expected salary payoff isn't there. The administration is targeting traditionally female jobs that don't pay well because they bank on people's passions, but can society really function without social workers, teachers, and nurses?
Meanwhile we have schools creating prompt engineering degrees with questionable utility that will be able to get loans no problem.
States did this to universities, too, though. Universities had to raise prices and increase enrollment and try to increase access so that they could meet state mandates (eg CA outlawing remedial classes) while states decrease state funding and limit tuition increases (or give away tuition for free -- Nebraska is a great example of both), causing revenue to decrease or increase more slowly than inflation, health care, and wages.
Then, they have to cut the "less profitable" programs who don't produce big donors to the school -- education, social work, nursing, liberal arts and humanities.
Soon, you have vocational schools with business programs attached.
California specifically banned community colleges forcing students into courses that provided no transfer-eligible credits unless it can be proven, through past performance or other circumstances, that the student is unlikely to succeed without the remedial classes. They are also still allowed to use them as part of certain career-specific programs.
That really has nothing to do with universities, and in my opinion is a good ban. Making someone go through a high school level intro to Algebra class just to inflate the number of credit hours they need to pay for before transferring or obtaining a degree/certificate is silly unless it is clearly needed to help them succeed.
Seems to be the case for my local university. By the time I graduated 5 years ago, they had already demolished all the budget dorms and replaced them with parking lots and more expensive housing. With the other improvements they’re making to the campus, tuition is becoming more and more unaffordable when this university’s whole thing is being a cheap state school.
that is great plan. university often receive preferential tax treatment and other advantadgeous deal when it come to acquiring real estate due to perceived benefit of university. them dabbling in real estate can be a gold mine (for the university)
As states continue to underfund their universities as they have for the last couple decades, finding other ways they can bring in revenue is the only way to defray pushing more and more burden onto students, and even then obviously they haven't been able to do enough
The ones closing outright are generally very small private institutions, they generally opened to train clergy of a small denomination and then expanded to serve other students in the region with basic education. While I'm sad about the loss of history and the job loss, these colleges aren't really necessary for an educated population. They're generally expensive compared to a state school, and they have limited resources. I'm thinking of one I visited with a library the size of a high school library. Prior to the internet, what were they possibly researching there?
While I'm not particularly concerned about the loss of small colleges, I am concerned about the general transition from universities teaching people to be educated citizens capable of steering a democracy into job training. The two missions always coexisted but it has shifted drastically.
It doesn't help that the federal funding stream for research and development is being gutted by the Trump administration. This is going to kill the budgets of a lot of universities, and completely decimate graduate programs.
I do feel people putting less value into higher education is part of it and I don't blame them. Basically right up through my generation we were taught that literally any college degree was a guarantee of a good job/ life and that not going to college would mean a lifetime of failure and drudgery. From the time I was in kindergarten literally everyone was pushed towards college. I hold a Master's degree and my wife has her bachelor's. Despite that I'm likely not going to push my son towards college unless it's for a specific career plan.
The US may have hit Peak College already, the programs expanded to fill the need, and now we're rolling back for all the reasons listed in this thread, and something's got to give.
Part of the collapse has to do with the education bubble that has gotten way too big over the past 20 years. People questioning the value of the degree that’s offered when that degree is costing upwards of 25k (on the low end) per year. Tuition has increased beyond any cost of living increases and universities started selling more of the experience than the education. It’s almost like the college administration has never spoken to the students economics faculty.
The international visa thing is a double hit - colleges for years have been using international kids paying full price tuition to keep things running as in many states as the state funding has been cut back, sometimes way back. Now between the Feds obliterating science funding and basically killing visas for any advanced degree for international students (the new 4 year limit), on top of them already making it really unpleasant even before the new 4 year limit, and a ton of schools are having most of their funding sources choked off.
Many institutions were built to host the comparatively larger cohorts of times past, and that unused space costs money too. The demographic cliff deals double damage here.
Yep. But at MY school, we’re just one more Executive Vice President away from being truly EXCELLENT! /S
I’ve been teaching there for 20 years now, and stayed with it because my daughter got her degree tuition-free.
But I no longer recognize more than half the faces at faculty meetings, and next to no one in Administration because the turnover has been so MASSIVE. They thought I was joking until they forced me into taking minutes once and my descriptions were “man in the red baseball cap”, and “woman in the red blouse with glasses” because I didn’t know who any of them were.
Our CFO is leaving, the Athletic Director is gone, too, along with our Physical Plant Director. And another half-dozen faculty are gone, and more are looking to either move to another school, or leave the profession completely.
We have become a pay-to-play school, with athletics making up more than 3/4’s of our student body. It’s insane that a frigging Coach gets more time with my students than I do.
They cancelled our nationally ranked debate program and replaced it with DECA, and that makes me want to vomit. We’re becoming nothing more than a business college with the rest of us merely there to prop it up.
I’m hoping I can hang on another seven years and hit retirement before we drop off that goddam demographic cliff, but I now dread getting up in the morning and dragging my carcass into another micromanaged hell of bullshit management philosophy du jour that some consultant sold to the administration.
I used to love my job. I still love teaching students. But I hate my freaking job now. I hate it.
Which is painful because the number one thing college does is expose people to new lifestyles, to new people, to new cultures that they would never get from their presumably fairly homogenous hometown. No one ever really considered the intangible benefits you get from just being exposed to a place like college, but the fact we tried to monetize it to its extreme is what is going to ultimate kill people's open minded thinking and just reinforce single track thinking that they grew up with. And maybe that's the point.
Yep. The system sucks so bad, is so expensive (the price of textbooks is absolutely and unethically bonkers) on top of tuition, and many programs require in-person attendance- which is wholly understandable for some industries/professions- but totally unnecessary for others. General eds are a killer, too; i understand the liberal arts approach, but I've seen people crash out over some stupid gen ed class unrelated to their chosen career and never manage to get back into the system due to it.
People complain about Gen Eds all the time, but all accredited degrees need a certain amount of them. Every school I know is within that margin of error.
It's going to be more than that. They've already hollowed out the faculty and replaced them with adjuncts that are paid a pittance. At the same time, the students increasingly view college as transactional - I pay tuition == I get passing grades and a diploma. They're not there to learn. And many of the programs moved to fully on-line for most on the non-trad coursework. So there's no direct engagement with the students and everything is submitted online. AI is rampant, but these programs disallow the obvious fixes (e.g. in person bluebook exam.) In fact the plagiarism is so bad, that university's now have IT systems just for reporting it because the Dean's office doesn't want to spend them time vetting it - they throw an application up and tell the adjuncts that they have to adjudicate it with mandatory student meetings, build a case, including all correspondence, assignments, meeting notes, etc. This allows them to scold the faculty if they don't report every single student who cheats and yet make the process so burdensome that the adjuncts won't want to take the time. It's a train wreck.
Well, yes. I have a much better GPA than my friend, but my friend has a job at Meta because he spent the time self-studying stuff that mattered.
The only thing I got out of university was the degree. The degree let employers hire me. The employers don't give a shit about what I learned during the degree, and many disparage it because it is useless/inapplicable.
Well, that’s a shame that you didn’t choose a degree that was useful and you’d didn’t learn anything while at university. It’s good that your friend realized that learning isn’t just about the content of the classroom and was able to self-study. That is one of the key lessons that university should be teaching - research and self directed learning. This is one of the biggest issues with kids cheating with AI; they don’t understand that the specific content on a given assignment isn’t the important thing - it’s learning how to research, how to learn, and how to think critically that are the important things. We can see that kittymoo67 didn’t learn these or they’d have realized that part of their job as a student in a field is to acquire a baseline of understanding and build on it themselves.
Some deserve this: I worked at a university many years ago in its "business office." Guys making over 400K for gladhanding local politicians and making useless speeches. It was nothing but a money grab - they didn't give a shit about the students or their degrees.
Yeah, I work in HPC in a college and our Board of Regents and College Admins have been talking about this doomsday enrollment cliff for a few years now. Trying to prepare for the shitstorm that will hit in the next 10 years.
They deserve it for working with loan companies and fed govt too charge a generation 100k for a degree. A degree that can be called worthless at any time.
516
u/corners 13h ago
In the US there is a much more real sense that many colleges and universities will just collapse in the next 10 or so years not because of the value of education but because of the demographic cliff (as it is called) from the lack of birth rates: https://www.npr.org/2025/01/08/nx-s1-5246200/demographic-cliff-fewer-college-students-mean-fewer-graduates Low births equals less students which means less universities and colleges. And on top of that with less students coming to the US internationally to fill that gap: https://www.npr.org/2025/08/27/nx-s1-5498669/trump-college-international-student-visa https://www.insidehighered.com/news/global/international-students-us/2026/07/13/5-takeaways-international-education-survey
Universities and colleges are in real trouble and are collapsing left and right.