Education: College, Who Needs It?

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It is clear from their cries of gloom and doom that a number of colleges and universities are endangered by falling enrollments. In fact, according to a study by the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education published this week, 110,000 freshman places in four-year institutions went unfilled last fall, 24% more than the year before. Are economic circumstances the major reason for those empty seats? Not according to the author of the report, Richard Peterson, a research psychologist for the Educational Testing Service.

Far more important, Peterson argues, is a fundamental change in the attitude toward college of white, middle-class youngsters. He sees signs that "a college education is not needed for what they consider the good life. More and more, they feel that they can live satisfactorily without a college degree." While some may simply be dropping out, or not going in the first place, Peterson believes that even more have a new-found desire for "nononsense" job training offered at vocational schools.

Shifts. Actually, in spite of the missing freshmen, the total enrollment figure is still growing, owing to the new popularity of two-year public colleges and graduate schools.* There is also a marked increase in the number of part-time students. While middle-class students are dropping out, or "stopping out," of college, blue-collar and minority students, who see education as their best means of access to the middle class, are taking their places. The number of Chicanes attending college increased by 19.1% last year, and blacks by 17.2% (although enrollment in black-studies courses fell by 8%). Women's enrollment rose too, by 5.1%.

The shifting student population is a costly matter to many institutions. California's huge, 19-campus state college and university system lost not only $1,000,000 in tuition when its fulltime enrollment declined by 4,530 this year, but another $2.9 million in state support, which fluctuates according to the number of students enrolled. To recruit new students, some colleges have resorted to colorful brochures, radio commercials and high-pressure salesmanship. At the University of Southern California, professors themselves are making follow-up phone calls to prospective students, and the appeals to ordinary high school graduates have been compared to the recruiting of athletes in previous years.

Innovations. Enrollment figures seem to indicate that to attract students, colleges should consider ways to accommodate stop-outs, special programs for minority students, more vocational training and new interdisciplinary curriculums. Largely because they lack the money, few schools have made such changes. Some that have, however, are flourishing. Three examples:

¶ In 1968 the University of Wisconsin focused the entire academic program at its Green Bay campus on environmental problems and saw enrollment there more than double to 3,450 this year. Students major in such broad topics as Ecosystems Analysis, for example, in which traditional subjects like biology and chemistry are related to the problems of controlling pollution.