A lot of U.S. colleges and universities were looking shaky before coronavirus. But coronavirus is going to absolutely clobber universities across the country.
bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…
bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…
In fact, this article doesn't even mention another big threat: the utter collapse of international enrollment due to coronavirus. Colleges rely on international students for a lot of their tuition dollars, and those aren't coming back soon. Maybe never.
What will happen in the face of declining college enrollment and shuttering colleges?
Possibility 1: College is mostly some mix of consumption, ability sorting, networking, and signaling, and employers will just hire people based on other stuff with little difficulty...
Possibility 1: College is mostly some mix of consumption, ability sorting, networking, and signaling, and employers will just hire people based on other stuff with little difficulty...
Possibility 2: College is super-valuable for people from poor and disadvantaged backgrounds, but not that much of a game-changer for rich people. So the job market will lose mobility and become more of an ossified oligarchy.
Possibility 3: College is pretty valuable for everybody, so we'll have a job skills shortage, and the college wage premium will rise. This will cause new colleges to open and old ones to expand until the old equilibrium reestablishes itself.
And Possibility 4: We go with an AOC/Bernie style Free College program and the federal government takes over funding of much of higher education, reestablishing college as a semi-universal norm.
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