 Well, I have the top of the hour. So let's begin. Let me welcome you welcome everybody to this week's featured trends forum I'm delighted to see you all here in the United States. A happy Thanksgiving to everybody My name is Brian Alexander. I'm the forums creator. I'm the host I'm your chief cat herder for the next hour and I'll be your guide to our conversation The topic of enrollment in higher education is one that we've been following closely since the beginning readers are mine. No, this is something I'm pretty obsessed with and The focus of my obsession in many ways is the fantastic work done by the National Student Clearing House every few months they produce an update giving us our best picture of Students enrolling in colleges and universities across the US. They've been doing this for years. Their work is vital and Just this semester. They've released a series of reports giving us our first real glimpse at how Enrollment has changed this fall semester Now in order to dive into that in order to learn more about it I've invited the executive director and the president of research Doug Shapiro, and let me just bring Doug up on stage so you can get to see him. Hello, Doug Hello, Brian. How are you? Very good back on your show. Well, thank you. It's great to host you always good to see you Well, where are you coming from today? So it looks like home. This is home. Absolutely Brooklyn, New York. Oh nice. Nice I was born not too far from there So, you know, we we asked people to introduce themselves with a kind of tradition and that's to ask a future introduction What are you going to be working on for the next year? What are the big projects and the big ideas that are top of mind for you? Well, we're gonna be we're gonna be doing a lot more work on student success rates and equity gaps among those things like persistence and retention and transfer and completions and All that on top of what we've been doing most intensively as you said is the enrollment data. So we'll keep coming with the More frequent enrollment reporting As well as all those new topics. Wow transfer data. That's some that's some serious dark matter to get into Yeah Yeah, we we started with our first big report on transfer just a couple of gets three months ago at the end of end of August and Specifically focused on what happened to transfer students during the pandemic We really found some interesting things that resonate with what we're now seeing and still seeing in the enrollments as well Excellent. Excellent. Well, good luck with that expansion of your work I'm a big fan and I'm really looking forward to it Friends, you should be able to see in the bottom left of your screen a kind of tan colored box our button And that will lead you directly to the most recent report released from the clearing house If you're new to the forum, what I'd like to do is ask our guests a couple of questions to get things rolling But then I want to get out of the way and let you all ask him your questions. This one is for you so just to begin with I was struck dug by quite a few things in your report and one is the continued decline in Enrollment predominantly an undergraduate graduate enrollment went up a bit But that was much smaller than the undergraduate population and this seemed to be just across the board every race every gender Just about every state in the union just about every swath of institutional type The only exception seemed to be that the the handful of elite institutions actually grew Is that right or do you can you nuance us a bit more? Well, that's largely right. I mean, there's there are lots of nuances and I hope we can get into some of those but Different from what we saw last year, you know in the first year of the pandemic when almost all of the declines We're taking place in the community colleges This year, it's a much broader swath and we're seeing a lot more declines at the four-year institutions and particularly the Left elective and broad access for your institutions, which in many cases are looking a lot more like the community colleges this year in terms of the loss of students and So, you know, that's I think that's really troubling For obvious reasons for higher education, but at the same time it it's Interesting for the kinds of insights that we can draw from that about what some of the forces might be that have been driving the declines Which seem to be again very different things going on this year compared to what was happening last year when we were, you know In the middle of campus shutdowns So what what do you think I mean at a first approximation? What are some of those differences because we're we're coming up on the third year of the pandemic? Which is a terrifying thing to say, but but it's true and some of the same forces are still present the fear of infection the Struggles or successes of being online. What's making fall 2021 so different? Well You know, I so I think you're right that last year was almost entirely about the pandemic Students were afraid to travel they were afraid virus transmission and classrooms and dormitories and They just didn't want to be in college and and especially for students at community colleges and Some of the broad access four-year schools many many Families were suffering financially from the recession in particular And many of the students felt a need to do whatever they could to help their families Including putting off college going to work instead Even if that meant a low wage job But the fact that this year we're seeing those declines beyond just freshmen beyond just the community colleges we're seeing Fewer Returning or continuing students at four-year institutions and fewer undergraduates overall That tells me that there's There's more of a deeper set of questions being asked by students and families about the value of college and That's that's what really worries me now I think Students are much more leery of taking on lungs. They're much less Confident that a college degree is worth it to begin with And I think those are more long-term more permanent factors Then say the pandemic, uh, which you know as seems to be Well, it's with us. So it's been with us a lot longer than many of us would have expected But I don't think it's a permanent thing. It's going, you know, eventually we will either defeat it or learn to live with it And I think we're well on our way to both of those resolution But the but the larger forces about Family finances and affordability are are really deep and they've been going on since For a lot longer. They were they were starting before the pandemic and the pandemic has just Intensified, I think some of those concerns You know affordability has been declining for years as as tuition increases Continue to outpace median household incomes And as much as financial aid can can make up for some of that Especially at the wealthier institutions Yeah The growing economic inequality In our country has meant that students and families are just much less confident about future earnings about socioeconomic mobility and they've heard Too many stories from too long about College graduates who are still working at Starbucks First college dropouts who are defaulting on loans And and a new twist this year I think is that they're starting to hear more stories about people making Pretty good money or at least what looks like pretty good money to a high school student Without ever having gone to college You know kind of In burden in the low wage workforce where wages are rising for low and even some middle Wage jobs and that's that's luring young people Out of college and into the workforce probably sooner than they would have would have done otherwise Well, I think all those those forces are going to be with us for a long time and and very hard to change without large kind of cultural and political chefs Well, that that's a fantastic answer Doug And and you've hit on so many things. I tweeted out a couple of these because you're so important And and friends, I'm gonna have one more question. But but this is this is going to be your time Your time to float your questions For our executive director here Do you think I mean the total involvement in American higher ed has been going down since 2012 Do you and I know you you look at present data, but do you anticipate? Any rise next year any reversal of this trend? In case we get the virus below pandemic levels Or perhaps if the economy has continued issues that might lead to more unemployment Well, I guess it depends on what you mean by reversal. I I think the declines will certainly shrink Uh, we may start to recover a little bit of lost ground, but I don't see any any any quick recovery even The schools that have made some gains this year That's relative to what happened last year not relative to where they were two or three years ago and It's I think it's going to be really as I said really hard to turn this around How how far down are we now compared to when the pandemic started? we're about My best guess is by the end of this, uh Semester once we have all the data in we're we're looking at about 22 million this term We had two years ago Undergraduates only 1.2 million fewer. That's really huge and it's You know, I tried looking back at old Department of Education data It's hard to find a two-year period where we've had anything like that decline. I certainly didn't see any in the last 50 years um So that's pretty historic and um You know the the large the most the the nearest we've come to that so seven almost an eight percent decline in undergraduates in two years was very recently in in between 2011 and 2013 when undergraduate enrollments declined by Like three and a half percent So we're more than double that rate and and and that That three and a half percent was basically from an all-time high, right? Yeah, that was that was where we we had just come down off the peak Enrollment of the great recession. I mean the community colleges in 2011 2010 was literally bursting in the seams Yeah, so You know to lose three and a half percent was almost a relief to a lot of people at that point right now losing we're losing We're losing almost eight percent and we We've just been going down. That's not off a high. That's awful a long steady decline of one or two percent a year over the last eight or nine years A little bit Thank you for that. I don't mean thank you as in yay. What a rosy picture But thank you for that very clear uh concise and sobering answer Friends now is over to you now is the time for you to put your questions forward to Doug Shapiro And again, if you'd like just use the raised hand button to join us on stage. I'll show you how easy that is I'll I'll even make a pretend Star Trek transporter noise if you want Or just hit up the q&a box And we we've got a question via twitter. I guess it's not so much a question as a kind of sardonic comment This is from our good friend Donald Clark in scotland He asks maybe parents and students are right to be skeptical of higher education now I think there's something to that. I really do. Um, and I and It's painful to say that to be honest with you. I think that You know higher education in in many ways is not really selling an education anymore They're selling a ticket to a better job a ticket to a Well-earned job and we've been selling this message to students for a long time Um And and for if students don't see that Economic return They're really that's the core. That's what I'm talking about in terms of this question of the value of college and a big part of that is Is not just the economics, but the but what's happening in colleges and universities themselves in terms of student success and completion and you know The the the rates of graduation rates have haven't pledged in in years Um when When students, you know, the students who aren't graduating students who attempt college and don't finish Those are Those are students who will who will Who feel like they've been really sold a false bill of goods in terms You know, even you might say, oh well, we got a year or two of education You've learned a lot about yourself and etc. Etc. But that's not what they came for They came for that degree that's going to give them a ticket to a better job Well, that's That's a really good answer and Doug. Thank you for that question We have some questions that just come in and I'm going to lead off one of the video questions Let me put Jordan Davis on stage just so you know, Jordan is suffering from an incredible burden He's a student of one of my seminars at Georgetown. So Please please be kind to him. We need all the help you can get Welcome Jordan Hey, Brian. Hey Doug. Um, first, I want to say Brian is an is an amazing professor in our program So no birds at all. I actually have class with him tonight. So I'm sure we'll talk about some of this in our class tonight But thank you again for your time Doug. I have a question about College affordability in the u.s Considering that several nations around the world have a Free four-year degree model and in some countries are a free, um, you know, master's degree and even phd model One do you see Is it possible for the u.s to adopt this model? sometime soon, you know, allowing students to Allowing students to obtain a four-year degree for for free free of tuition And then if it is possible, what kind of effects would this have? On enrollment and then also just like our economy as a whole I know those are two really big questions But um, if you could just like speak to your thoughts on, you know What a college what a free college system would look like in the u.s and what effects that would have on enrollment any question Yeah, well, um, I I can't really speculate on What's politically or economically possible for this country? I mean, uh Certainly other countries can do it. I don't know why we can't But it doesn't seem to be in the cards anytime soon I think if it were to happen it would It would have a huge effect. There's no question on on college enrollments and the willingness of students to To you might say take take the take a risk of spending time in college in other words It's very hard nowadays to To look at current graduation rates and think that You're hard to say it but I mean nobody goes to college without Thinking but there's nobody goes to college thinking that that they're not going to graduate that they're going to roll those dropouts I don't believe that but If anyone takes an honest look at the data and and sees that You know 40 percent of the students who start college in any given year Will have earned no degree and will no longer be enrolled And they dropped out with nothing six years later or at least stopped out with nothing to show for it six six years later and that includes two year and four year Students wherever they started wherever they transferred to You name it nothing in our data shows any completion anywhere and those those You know that's a huge that that that 40 percent is really in a bad place They've got debt and they've got nothing to help them earn enough to pay that debt back And that's really frightening to students and if you take that That risk of that worst case outcome You know we keep telling we keep telling people that You're earned you know college graduates earn a million dollars more over their lifetime. Well, yeah, but that's an overall average and What what there's a real risk if you end up being ones at the bottom and bottom tail of that distribution on average If you take away that risk and you say, yeah, you know Of course, you should give college a try If it's free, you don't have that much to lose except a couple of years out of the workforce A few years out of the workforce, right? You can get back on your feet But if you're if you're ending up with all the debt, you're not going to get back on your feet Do you Do you I want to build on Jordan's great question here Have you noticed anything? Any enrollment differences in the states that have done some form of not complete public tuition But support like the tennessee promise or the new york excelsior grant We haven't focused on community colleges in those states But when we look at the overall i mean new york is a perfect example They've had some of the biggest declines Of any state this year. Yeah, particularly in the public universities in SUNY and cune to your and for your institutions so you know it's uh It's hard to say state policies are very different from state to state But there doesn't seem to be an obvious relationship I think the tennessee has probably attracted more Traditional age students into community colleges That might have been expected. I think it's had less of an effect and I think the poll they haven't actually Opened it up to older students until very recently. So we probably won't see that yet. Anyway It's quite an experiment. Thank you and jordan. Thank you for the great question Of course. Yeah, thank you dope for your answer. I appreciate it. See you in a bit See you see you later tonight Now friends if you're if you're new to the forum, that's a great example of a video question So just press the raise hand button if you like to follow jordan's excellent footsteps And uh while people are thinking about that there are other questions that have come up and let me just Toss these over the trance and match you dake Here's one from uh chris aldrich who said you mentioned uncertainty in college graduate employment Is this starting to put pressure institutions to accelerate movements for providing more concrete value As in kathy davidson's the new education I think it is putting pressure on institutions to figure something out. Um, you know, what what kinds of solutions they settle on That's if that's the way to if that if that particular answer is is going to catch on It's an interesting question though It is and just as a as a shameless plug. We've hosted kathy davidson twice now So if you go to our archives, you can see our discussions with her and she's fantastic to talk with We have another question from the west coast philix zuniga from california state university And philix asks does the report break down an enrollment by race and ethnicity? I'm thinking particularly about those students the university has historically been less successful at retaining priority covid Good question. Yeah. Yeah, really good question We've spent a lot of time looking at race and ethnicity in our data and we do break that break out the results by that both for freshmen and for our undergraduates generally and What you know, it's some very interesting Transitions here because in the first pandemic year There were really clear gaps Between as we say in the in the conference especially because so much of the declines were focused on the community colleges where disadvantaged Students were doing much much worse in terms of enrollment Then Then then well a little complicated whites Yeah, white students fell the least black and indigenous students fell the most And You know by roughly a factor of two In terms of the percentage declines And again, those were the the I think among the the socioeconomic Groups in community colleges that community colleges traditionally serve the most affected by the pandemic and the recession But this year in 2021 You look at the changes from last year to this year white students actually declined the most steeply at four-year institutions And even in the community colleges, they declined second only to blacks in the rate of decline at community colleges um So over the over the two years combined most of the When you put those together The kind of equity gaps among race at racial and ethnic groups look relatively small In terms of the overall rate of decline at say four-year schools Black students and Native American students are still doing far worse than other groups at community colleges But you you you also have to kind of factor in some of the underlying demographics when you look at the race and ethnicity numbers because I mean a perfect example is that Let next students are are showing Relatively smaller quite a bit smaller declines In in both sectors over the two-year period in community colleges and in four-year institutions um But those that population has actually been growing quite rapidly and has been for years. So You know when you account for the underlying population demographics and and i'm talking about traditional college age students um, you know Uh, uh, Hispanic students should be growing. So the fact that they're declining less You have to kind of factor in that that context That the relative decline is is still quite large Felix had a a clarifying question. He asked gaps in total numbers or as a percentage Yeah, so these are all everything i'm talking about is gaps as a percentage Um much harder to talk about total numbers because the underlying populations are so Different in terms of total size yeah Great question. Felix and Doug. Thank you for the very thoughtful answer And Felix since Felix's institution the california state university system does fantastic work working with underserved minorities in that state We have another question that came up and it was a great one from the chat And it's so great. I wanted to hoist it up into a live video question So i'm going to bring the speaker will emerson from lansing michigan to actually ask it in person Hello, will Hey, how are you? So I have just a comment real quick before I ask my question. So regarding free community college You know here in michigan community colleges get a great deal of support from local millages So i was in a conversation recently. It was a statewide conversation had various people just from around michigan on it and one of the things that was put forward was the idea that Community college is free. That's going to potentially cut into local support for millages after all Why pay into a millage for something you get for free and so it's not necessarily something that Everybody in the community college sector is interested in free college here in michigan's for some institutions That's 20 percent of their total funding is that that millage And one of the questions put forward was what evidence is there that free community colleges will see an appreciable bump in enrollment So they may lose that millage support, but at the same time not necessarily see big gains In enrollment. So that's just on the previous point my question for you and the reason brian brought me up here I asked about uh apprenticeships. I'm curious does nsc track apprenticeship numbers If so, have you seen growth in apprenticeships and i'm specifically interested in Apprenticeships in nontraditional areas such as healthcare and it Yeah, that's a really good question and unfortunately, we don't track apprenticeships. We really are right now only able to count actual credit enrollments For the most part for for credit enrollments A portion of the colleges also submit data unknown credit enrollments, but it's not as complete So it's harder to talk authoritatively about unknown credit enrollment. So we mostly talk about the for credit side But it's definitely something that we're working on we'd love to be able to Uh Measure those phenomena as well Yeah, it's interesting a lot of apprenticeships as you know the related trade instruction is done through well like my institution lancing community college We do rti for paramedics Rad tax you name it lots of different areas So there would be a credit for credit component to it, but then there's also the out the top training So it'd be interesting to see how nsc moving forward may or may not end up tracking that Yeah See this is this is the problem Doug with success success always means people want you to do more work And will will thank you for thank you for the work you do there. Uh, this is great Well, I certainly appreciate this opportunity to speak and I always love these these conversations So thanks thanks to both of you appreciate it our pleasure. Take care. Thanks for the question So you can see if you do questions are great. Um, you don't have to have a beard in order to participate I mean it it helps a little bit, but you know, it's optional We have more questions just piling in Doug like like mad. Uh, let me bring up one from A great person Regina or even uh from guild education who asks what barriers are in place that prevent access and collection of better data A lot of current data focuses on first time full-time students, but the profile learned demographics is changing That's that yeah, well At the clearing house, uh, we don't have that kind of barrier aside from that that non-credit side that I talked about We do collect Uh, and everything I've been talking about is total enrollments regardless of whether they're full-time or part-time. We're counting head counts Um, and we're counting students like students do Transfer students who transfer in transfer out We keep track of all the all the different pathways among And between the institutions that students are students are traversing so Um, even even if they change states, you know, we're we're we're counting the same students all the time um Good point. Good point. It's uh It's it's a huge huge research effort. I mean Doug Doug how many people do you employ know just to do this? Well, let's see the clearing house as a whole Uh is somewhat over 300 now. Wow our research center is On about a dozen or so So Yeah, I mean, you know, so all of the data Comes from the clearing house. So most of those people are involved in The collection and processing and storing Of the data that comes in from the colleges and working with the colleges and universities to make sure that the that the data are are uh, um Are consistent and accurate And then I get the fun we get the fun part of Of analyzing it once it's here Slicing it and dicing it That's it Regina good question. And if you if you want to follow up, of course, we're happy to hear more We have a question from a digital pedagogy specialist at Bucknell university It's leslie harris and she asks do you think the reduction in enrollment in new york universities Is related to the loss of college age students in the northeast in general Or do you think there are the reasons for that decline? So back to new york question Yeah, I think it's it's definitely multiple reasons And I think it certainly starts with the declining population of college age students We're seeing that effect Across the northeast and in the midwest as well if you look over the last two years those regions Actually going back at least I think five years in our data those regions have declined the most In total enrollments compared to the south and the west But I think there are also Economic factors that go along with that population decline and particularly if you look at the economies in Some in in many of these states not just new york South here in pennsylvania In many areas of the state you're also seeing both population decline and economic challenges and mass affecting State and state supported enrollments As well Yeah, great question Leslie, thank you We had an interesting point here from the chat joel bloom notes that enrollment in the four-year cuny city university of new york Institutions has been steady to the top four or five of them I think I think leslie was referring to the whole sinney system leslie if i'm from wrong, please let me know Um, but uh, I'm glad to see cuny doing well. They do great stuff with with very little on the way of resources um peter gray has a question and I have to read this out loud carefully Uh, given the patterns noted uh declining enrollments at less likely to your public's before your private for profits What would one project about online versus in-person enrollments at such institutions? i.e. drawn to or move away from online Peter, how'd I do? And dug did that make sense? Yeah, it's that's a great question And I don't really know what to make of this one partly because our Our data doesn't track Which students are online and which students are in person? in the traditional in in the In math classes so so institution like now where everybody's online. It's not a big deal, but We we identify what we call and what what the department of education calls primarily online institutions and those you know, they're defined as Having at least 90 of their students enrolling online And so we can we can show what's happened in those types of institutions and it's It's hard to it's hard to make much sense. They've actually They Did very well last year in the first year of the pandemic. They increased their enrollments in many cases This year, they're doing less well. They're they're actually among the steepest declines compared to Non POI primarily online institutions. I call them Um, but it's the it's the large institutions that nowadays, you know, might have half of their students online Or all their students might be half online and half in person And we don't really have a way to to understand Where that's happening and and whether that's growing or not Well, that's a that's a great question and I I really appreciate your being candid about this I mean sometimes this feels like beating up fog trying to get a handle on it Um, we have a quick question from a mark bernard de fosco who was asking a clarifying question. Do you track? Uh student working hours that is when students are studying Do you track how many hours per week they work? For example? No, no another one that We'd love to be able to do but we don't have any information on unemployment Understood. Good. Good question mark. Good question. Uh, we also have a question slash mash note from uh, greg Who begins by saying dug is brilliant. I'm incredibly grateful to clearinghouse for being a tremendous asset and resource for those of us working in the iran So then here comes the question Does he see trends in enrollment and completion dated for colleges that are likely to close or merge? Greater consolidation among publics. So can the clearinghouse predict future consolidation? Wow, um Not yet, but check back in a year. We so this is actually what well This is actually an area that we are studying now. Uh, we're we're about uh, we're just getting getting rolling on a um a really interesting collaboration with uh, with shino the state higher education executive officers group um to study, uh college closures over in the last 10 years say and try to understand Really what happens after that not so much what happens before that? So maybe we can't predict closures, but what we're what we're really interested in is What's the impact on the students and can and what and we're trying to see All of the students who were enrolled when that college shut down How many of them successfully transferred and finished a degree somewhere else? and how does that compare to similar students at colleges that didn't close and looking for ways that state policy makers For example might be able to make Adjustments that would that would help to protect students and Keep them on track to to reaching their educational goals when their college does shut down well, it's a great question and uh I'm I'm going to look forward to your shio collaboration then and this time next year. Perhaps we'll Circle back and bring you back on and to see what kind of Isaac Asimov Foundation level of predictability We had another question from Lee Nichols out of western carolina About another demographic slice, which was we're seeing a shift towards more female versus male students Is that more widespread? And if so any indicators for why that shift is happening? Ah, yes, the gender the growing gender divide we we definitely There's definitely been a broader trend there We saw you know about two-thirds of last year's decline We're made up was made up of men male students and that was especially surprising to us Particularly because you know the men only make up about 40 percent of total enrollments to begin with So they were there they were declining at about twice the rate the percentage rate As females were particularly at again at community colleges This year the gender gap has equalized somewhat women actually declined more than men did in 2021 So over the over if you look at the two years combined from 2019 to 2021 Uh men are still have fallen somewhat more deeply than women, but they're they're they're more close to parity Again, it's it's Hard to understand the forces that might be behind that last year we talked a lot about The direct effect of the pandemic and the recession and how particularly for lower income communities that are that Where a lot of community college students come from it seemed to have different impacts on men and women women by most accounts Were more likely to be at home last year managing child care family care particularly when k-12 schools shut down and And it seemed that that It could have could have enabled them to keep up their studies online if they were already old Whereas men I think were more likely to be uh working frontline jobs um trying to keep earnings coming in and um We saw that the community college Programs and we looked at majors Uh that overwhelmingly enroll men like security and protective services firefighting manufacturing programs um those Programs just fell off a cliff in terms of enrollments and I think that's partly because again Men didn't have the the time to be in enrolling They were much more focused on on trying to keep the family finances in in Particularly older men intact And also I think the colleges had In many of those cases More difficulty transitioning those instructional programs into online delivery modes in the first place Um That's a that's a huge huge bottle for an answer What's a lot of a lot of intersecting forces, you know Aren't aren't we close to about 60 percent of the student body is now female and about 40 male? That's right. That's right. That's that's for all undergraduates. Yeah, and this is brand new Yeah, this is new in american history Yeah, yeah, although although it's been pretty close to that. I mean it only shifted by maybe one or two percentage points in the last year um, you know women have been Gaining ground very steadily for decades and Over the last 10 years. They've been holding pretty pretty close it in the upper 50 eight upper 57 58 percent range of total enrollments Great question. We can do a whole session on this and I We should if we can get some Some some more More research on this. Uh, we also have a wonderful person to ask a question. This is the splendid david scoby From bringing theory to practice and always a delight to hear from david So he has a great great subtle question Let's bring him up on stage and this is actually so neat. I'm actually going to arrange the stage in a cool way watch See that's pretty cool. Hello david Hey, uh, brian. Thank you for as always for uh, these conversations and I want to say how much I admire the work of the national clearinghouse It's really indispensable I want to go back doug to one of the earliest things you said kind of speculating about the forces underneath these defines and that it wasn't just an immediate response to the Endemic and you you brought together two things that are often Thought to go side by side and I I want to Trouble that and see what you think you you rightly talked about growing economic anxiety and anxiety about completion in other words the Things that might constrain the decision to go to college or make it seem like a bad decision um and link that to The story that people go to college now primarily for job security and job Mobility and I want to separate out Economic anxiety about constraints from economic aspirations You you might want to go to college for all kinds of holistic reasons for well-being for community care along with job mobility But still decide not to do it for all the kind of cost or completion worries that that you were talking about and In our work. I'm I'm more skeptical that students Only have the job aspiration that seems to me They might have more rich. They might have richer aspirations, but that are short-circuited By the material anxieties that you're talking about how do we how do we tease those apart so that we can understand aspirations is different from constraints And and use that to try to change the cultural narrative a bit in the face of these It's really interesting At you know, one of the things that we saw this year that I think helps us to to Um separate those two. I think you're right. There's definitely those those those factors way very differently on different types of students And part of that is is I think what's shown up in the in the Data of this year when we looked at four-year colleges by selectivity And Last year if you look at if you compare the rates of enrollment of the line Among the different Barron's categories of four-year colleges. So admissions selectivity That's the only criterion there They all look the same. There's very little difference The declines were consistent across the board, especially among incoming new freshmen And that's where this decision is being made. I think that were that you're focusing on This year completely different thing The the top tier and only the top tier had increases A number of incoming freshmen the most selective public and private nonprofits And all the others to continue to decline and the less selective they were the steeper the declines So I think that Gets at exactly the distinction that you're talking about that it The students from And I'll I'll be You know There's a very broad brush Organization here, but Students attending less selective broad access colleges are much more likely to be low or middle income students Who are in my view going to be much more focused on that ROI and less less Well compared to the students at the top institutions Who are much much more likely to be high-income from high-income families They are more likely to be interested in Education for its own sake and less have less less of an anxiety regardless About their economic futures I'm not even I'm not willing to go there with you I mean, it's clear that the that the the less selective institutions where where Lower income and working-class Kids are going those those families are going to be way more driven by economic anxiety and the the the damage done by the Recession and the long-term inequality Crisis, I'm not sure we know enough yet about the the aspirations of those students who Might decide whose families might decide not to have them go to college But who still might view college as more than an economic ROI And I'd like to figure that out because we we tend to us we tend to equate those two factors together Right, and then you've done enough everything you do is great in terms of giving us data I think the rest of us need to figure out that research about aspirations Yeah, I mean You it's true. You can't really answer that question with the level of data that we have Um, I can speculate like I do Based on which students and which institutions But to really get at that you have to you have to talk to students You have to you have to survey and and look at look at why they're going and you know Brian, can I just add one more quick comment to it? Doug said I you just did but you can add more please I I think the focus on student well-being and mental health as a driver of these decisions Also points to kind of other factors that that we need to take into account in addition to the job security cost anxiety kinds of issues. Yeah That may be one of the outcomes of this pandemic is that we have more of that wraparound full service support David, thank you and everybody. Please follow bring theory to practice. They do very very important work. Thank you Thank you Friends, we're almost out of time We're coming up a real really close really close to the end of the hour And I want to make sure that everyone gets their chance to have their say and to share their thoughts We've got a couple of quick questions. I want to bring in here's one from Bart Trudeau and Bart asks Can you comment on anticipated changes in international enrollment? I don't know what to anticipate there. I've been I've been puzzling already in what we've been in the data about the disparity in international students between undergraduate and graduate students It's no different from the disparity overall where undergraduates are falling steeply The graduate students are increasing and so why International students I can understand why My assumption was that international students would be dropping across the board and yet graduate students International students to be doing just fine So perhaps Bill keep doing fine On the grad school side Maybe good question. Good question. I mean, this is a Huge topic and I love the way that everybody in the forum is is tackling it from different angles from gender from race from international and national status we have A comment slash question from marcia tuition fit and marcia. I hope I don't garble this here There's also the notion of simply not having an aspiration Without a clear sense of aspiration a higher reluctance to enroll That's interesting Not quite sure what to make of that Well, I guess I guess marcia. Are you thinking for example of the the so-called great resignation with A lot of low-wage workers just pulling out and wanting to seek something else or you referring to Students or would be students perhaps just not having a lot of aspirations Um, a kind of great slacking if you will Please please toss in more or raise your hand. We're glad to bring you on stage Um, while he's thinking about that We had a really nice concise question from lee nickels. I'll bring this back because this is a nice one to finish up Oh, wait, wait, wait. Hang on. Hang on. Let me bring on mark. He just turned on stage. Here he is Hello mark Hello Yes, I I've been known for posing Questions that were more mark than anything. Um, so in a previous Stage member was I think it's david was talking about the difference between going to college for Job prospects versus going to college for gas aspirations of such an end One thing that that also might be in there is that Especially for the traditional student and I would say the traditional student up to age 24 is Is that just simply not really being at a maturity level where you really have a clear sense of ask what aspiration it is like um, and given the sort of possibility of debt That maybe the just sit back and say well until I have a clear sense of aspiration I'm just not going to pursue this at all Yeah It makes sense, but but I I think that particularly makes sense for for traditional age students I think that's kind of who you have in mind and and one of the things that that um, you know continues to puzzle me about what we've seen in the last two years is the the absence of any kind of regular Recession effect of older students um, who Um, particularly, you know in every recession that we've looked at and over the you can go back 30 40 years um older students flock to community colleges when unemployment rates go up They're looking to reskill and aspiration or not they're looking if you're out of work Your opportunities costs are low. It makes perfect economic sense to you know, you know the story Happen this time the pandemic completely broke the recession in that respect Right. Well, we certainly don't have a prior model where I see your recession and I raise you a pandemic like we didn't So, um You know combine that with uh, what many of us saw was You know institutions moving to online um, but not really moving to high quality online education just sort of Taking all of their classes online quickly just because they had to do it some way and as a function of that an awful lot of of the Reputation or the word on the street was Yeah, that online class from x y z community college is worse than being in person and why would I even do that so Um, you're right all of this stuff through Through this thing into a real uh topsy-turvy who knows what? Yeah, I think you're right you you had to be really it's not just a just aspiration you had to be really determined and committed um, I think to stick with a all online experience Um, especially when so much of the rest of your life was online too Last year I never heard anyone say give me more zoom Well, we tried to do it better Mark, thank you. Thank you for the great question and clarifying it and you see having a beard helps for getting on stage Someday I will be like you someday. Well, you're great now and thanks for the work of tuition fit Thank you Well, I'm afraid we're past the top of the hour. So we have to pull up stakes and and Doug you've been a fantastic guest I admire how you are able to communicate so concisely and so elegantly From such a swarm a vast amount of information. Uh, so clearly. Thank you very much Um, what's uh, what's the best way to keep up with you in the clearing house? Uh, well through that convenient link that you posted on our for our website Uh You can you can there's a link actually when you follow that That gives you an opportunity to subscribe for our blogs and press updates when new reports come out And Good. Yeah, and you should all do that and uh, thanks to uh, Todd said mac for all of his work on that end Um Doug once again, thank you so much. Please. Uh, take care keep doing the great work and all our applause to your hard working team Great. Well, and thank you for putting on this show again and thanks to all of your amazing, uh Participants for the great questions and great engagement on on these on these topics. It's been a lot of fun They are wonderful. Thank you, Doug But don't go friends Let me just show you where we are for the next couple of weeks and I just want a second doug's praise. These are great questions Thank you all Looking ahead. We're going to leap from enrollment to talking about Disability eco media literacy the climate crisis research universities libraries minority students on campus If you'd like to learn more about those and sign up for them I'm just going to form that future of education that us If you want to keep this discussion going everything from student aspirations to the differences between demographics and states Just head to twitter and use the hashtag FTE or hit me up at my blog brianalexander.org If you'd like to go into our past and look at our previous session with doug or sessions having to do with any of these Other topics just go to our archive at tinyorail.com slash FTF archive And if you'd like to keep talking come join us again next week. We're always glad to see you We're really grateful to all of you for thinking together As we approach collaboratively the future of higher education Until then keep up the great work everybody. Stay safe and we'll see you online Bye. Bye