Last fall, more students than ever put off going to college. The decline in newly enrolled undergraduate students across institutions was 3.6% from the fall of 2019, which translates to roughly 560,000 fewer.
For students graduating from high school in 2020, the decline was even steeper, falling by 21.7% compared to the prior year according to a December 2020 report from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. Overall enrollment in college had already been declining over the past decade but not nearly at as steep a rate. Between 2011 and 2019, 11% fewer students were enrolled in college, NPR notes.
The precipitous drop likely can partly be attributed to the onset of the pandemic and the move of many colleges to conducting their classes virtually. It’s too soon to tell whether students who put off going to college for the 2020-2021 academic year will choose to enroll come fall 2021.
Putting off college is not always a bad thing. While it may cause parents to leap into bouts of free-floating anxiety about their children’s futures, there are times when necessity or opportunity makes delaying college a sensible or necessary choice.
Granted, according to the Brookings Institution, college graduates still earn far more than those who don’t graduate. The median annual earnings over their career for a college graduate are $68,000, compared to $49,000 for an associate degree, $42,000 for some college, and $35,000 for a high school or GED diploma. There are certainly notable exceptions. Neither Bill Gates nor Mark Zuckerberg nor Lady Gaga reportedly finished college. (Oprah dropped out just shy of finishing her degree but apparently finished up more than a decade later after being invited back as a speaker at her alma mater.) But a college education still results in an income boost and, perhaps more importantly, a chance to engage in a life of critical thinking.
It’s wrong to think of anyone who chooses to put off or ignore college altogether as a failure. After my cousin received her college degree at 60 years old, my daughter commented that when someone doesn’t earn a degree in her 20s she’s often viewed as a failure, but when she earns one in her 60s she’s viewed as an inspiration. What the former fails to account for is that all of those decades between someone’s 20s and their 60s are often filled with highly productive years and experiences.
Over the past few weeks, prospective students will likely have received acceptance or rejection letters from colleges. Many take to YouTube to share their experiences of opening the email letting them know their decisions. Others bask in the news in silence. Still others have decided to work or to take a gap year to engage in public service or to go to school part-time while taking care of responsibilities tossed their way.
This is not a column to reassure students who didn’t get into their college of choice that life is just as likely to turn out OK as if they had been accepted. There are plenty of colleges or graduation speeches or parental reassurances that already do that.
Instead, this is a column to reassure those who have decided to put off college for however long that they are no less likely to do something inspirational if the circumstances allow and the support exists. It seems like it’s the right thing to acknowledge this whether someone is 20 or 60.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice, is a senior lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need to have answered? Send them to jeffreyseglin@gmail.com.
Follow him on Twitter @jseglin.
(c) 2021 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.
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