The Colorado Springs Gazette editorial: Colorado has model for higher education
Unlike their parents, millennials aren’t flocking to colleges in droves. Growing numbers are more interested in jobs that don’t require four-year degrees.
So says the premise of a story by CBS News Money Watch, which explained a national downward trend in college and university enrollments. The National Student Clearinghouse Research Center reported in 2015 that colleges had lost more than 1 million enrollments in the past four years.
It is a crisis for much of the higher education establishment. Even worse, The National Center for Education Statistics reports the declining applications and enrollments come after the United States added more than 1,000 four-year colleges and universities since 1980.
Meanwhile, high schools are re-emphasizing practical career tracks for students to fill voids in medium-and-high skill vocations that don’t require degrees.
Google “declining applications” or “declining enrollments” and stories pop up about colleges and universities scrambling to cope with the trend.
The University of Colorado isn’t among them.