Community college enrollment

[EdZ]

Regarding two topics often posted here:
1) inflation via lowered quality
2) fudged government unemployment numbers

Community college enrollment is going way up, e.g.,
http://www.theitem.com/article/20090...9902/-1/ITNEWS

http://www2.journalnow.com/content/2...unity-co/news/

http://www.thestarpress.com/article/...NION/908230313

Seems like two causes:
1) inflation: About 1/2 of new students are young people (based on last article). Hypothesis: they are enrolling in CC and tech schools since real colleges are getting too expenses, when both tuition inflation and other expenses are considered.

2) job loss: About 1/2 of new students are "older-than-average", i.e., recently un-employed or sporadically employed. Marginal enrollment increases are thus approx 12 to 15% due to unemployment. Seems quite a bit higher than recent uptick in government-reported rates. (Hmmm, or maybe not.)

[ASH]

Re: Community college enrollment

Regarding two topics often posted here:
1) inflation via lowered quality
2) fudged government unemployment numbers

Community college enrollment is going way up, e.g.,
http://www.theitem.com/article/20090...9902/-1/ITNEWS

http://www2.journalnow.com/content/2...unity-co/news/

http://www.thestarpress.com/article/...NION/908230313

Seems like two causes:
1) inflation: About 1/2 of new students are young people (based on last article). Hypothesis: they are enrolling in CC and tech schools since real colleges are getting too expenses, when both tuition inflation and other expenses are considered.

2) job loss: About 1/2 of new students are "older-than-average", i.e., recently un-employed or sporadically employed. Marginal enrollment increases are thus approx 12 to 15% due to unemployment. Seems quite a bit higher than recent uptick in government-reported rates. (Hmmm, or maybe not.)

Hi EdZ. Glad to see you posting here; welcome.

Your conclusions make sense to me -- although maybe I'd say "4-year schools" instead of "real colleges" ;).

[Starving Steve]

Re: Community college enrollment

While waiting for a doctor's appointment at a healthcare facility in the Santa Clara Valley ( the old Silicon Valley ), I was fortunate enough to have a local paper's classified ads handed to me. I scanned the "Help Wanted" section since I am always starving and starved for work. Here is what I noticed: the few job ops. listed were for TECHNICAL LABOUR such as welders, pipe-fitters, engineers who could over-see and manage workers at on-site projects, construction workers, project managers in different parts of the world, truck drivers, carpenters, oil drillers, geologists who could work on-site in drilling projects, machinists who can work on a lathe, etc. Also, in the "Help Wanted" ads, there were ads for healthcare workers of all types: nurses, doctors, emergency room helpers, etc.

I would have thought that a ten minute scan of the "Help Wanted" ads in San Jose-Santa Clara-Mtn. View would have meant looking at computer geek jobs. But those jobs were long gone. That observation was a shocker, and that observation nicely explained why one could now drive at >65MPH (>105KPH) on the freeways in the Santa Clara Valley, even during rush hour, whereas before, those freeways used to be jammed with cars and stopped-traffic.

The job market in the Santa Clara Valley of California now resembles the job market in Alberta: if you can do TECHNICAL AND SKILLED LABOUR IN THE OIL FIELDS, you have work. Your future is bright. If you can work in a hospital, you also have work. If you can drive a truck long-haul, you have work. If you can build or repair things, you have work. But if you are college educated and you can think, YOU CAN STARVE. :rolleyes:

The school system at all levels, even in universities, really needs to get a message and come-to-grips with the needs of the world in the 21st Century. The world now wants DO-ers; not dreamers, not thesis-writers, not debators, not academicians, not even office workers. The world wants technical KNOW-HOW.

Degrees mean NOTHING. Now the job market asks: what can one DO, and what can one PRODUCE, especially produce for export?

[thriftyandboringinohio]

Re: Community college enrollment

Two of mine just started college, and the youngest just enrolled in a local community college, despite being accepted at two major state universities and one private college. Two main reasons:

1. Local major state college (The Ohio State University, my alma mater) has become so selective that an honors student from a good suburban high school is no longer welcome on main campus - they must start at a distant branch campus. Only truly elite 4.0-or-above freshman are granted admission. Of course, state tax money is welcome from ALL families in Ohio, regardless of grades.:rolleyes:

2. Low price. Most college students in the area are good at knowing which “cheap credits” they can buy at the community college which are currently accepted at OSU and other nearby colleges. Mine will do 2 years cheap then xfer into big OSU.

Seems to me that the big old state universities are walking away from the business of giving a basic college education to the top two-thirds of the states' high school students. They appear to be striving for elite, pre-eminent rankings that exclude most students by definition (are they suffering from Princeton-envy?), and appear to be unconcerned if their tuition races towards MIT/Oxford/Harvard levels. The community colleges are gladly stepping into this market and finding a huge customer base.

I predict community colleges will devour huge market share from state universities and private colleges in the next ten years.

[don]

Re: Community college enrollment

While waiting for a doctor's appointment at a healthcare facility in the Santa Clara Valley ( the old Silicon Valley ), I was fortunate enough to have a local paper's classified ads handed to me. I scanned the "Help Wanted" section since I am always starving and starved for work. Here is what I noticed: the few job ops. listed were for TECHNICAL LABOUR such as welders, pipe-fitters, engineers who could over-see and manage workers at on-site projects, construction workers, project managers in different parts of the world, truck drivers, carpenters, oil drillers, geologists who could work on-site in drilling projects, etc. Also, in the "Help Wanted" ads, there were ads for healthcare workers of all types: nurses, doctors, emergency room helpers, etc.

I would have thought that a ten minute scan of the "Help Wanted" ads in San Jose-Santa Clara-Mtn. View would have meant looking at computer geek jobs. But those jobs were long gone. That observation was a shocker, and that observation nicely explained why one could drive at >65MPH (>105KPH) on the freeways in the Santa Clara Valley, even during rush hour.

The job market in the Santa Clara Valley of California now resembles the job market in Alberta: if you can do TECHNICAL AND SKILLED LABOUR IN THE OIL FIELDS, you have work. Your future is bright. If you can work in a hospital, you also have work. If you can drive a truck long-haul, you have work. But if you are college educated and you can think, YOU CAN STARVE. :rolleyes:

Don't disagree with you, Steve, but you're painting too bright a coat on construction jobs. I know a lot of people in that business and it is devastation row.

[bcassill]

Re: Community college enrollment

You know it's funny that this topic is here. My mother in law was a stay at home mom back in former Yugoslavia until she decided to go back to school to get a degree in architectural engineering. Funny thing was that her degree only took 2-3 years to complete because it didn't have all the normal fluff that you have to take at a 4 year university here like freshman English and all the electives that you have to pad your schedule with. I remember having to take classes in obscure music theory, russian literature (which wasn't bad), African-American history, etc. none of which had anything to do with my major, but I sure did have to pay for them.

[Quincy K]

Re: Community college enrollment

While waiting for a doctor's appointment at a healthcare facility in the Santa Clara Valley ( the old Silicon Valley ), I was fortunate enough to have a local paper's classified ads handed to me. I scanned the "Help Wanted" section since I am always starving and starved for work. Here is what I noticed: the few job ops. listed were for TECHNICAL LABOUR such as welders, pipe-fitters, engineers who could over-see and manage workers at on-site projects, construction workers, project managers in different parts of the world, truck drivers, carpenters, oil drillers, geologists who could work on-site in drilling projects, machinists who can work on a lathe, etc. Also, in the "Help Wanted" ads, there were ads for healthcare workers of all types: nurses, doctors, emergency room helpers, etc.

I would have thought that a ten minute scan of the "Help Wanted" ads in San Jose-Santa Clara-Mtn. View would have meant looking at computer geek jobs. But those jobs were long gone. That observation was a shocker, and that observation nicely explained why one could now drive at >65MPH (>105KPH) on the freeways in the Santa Clara Valley, even during rush hour, whereas before, those freeways used to be jammed with cars and stopped-traffic.

The job market in the Santa Clara Valley of California now resembles the job market in Alberta: if you can do TECHNICAL AND SKILLED LABOUR IN THE OIL FIELDS, you have work. Your future is bright. If you can work in a hospital, you also have work. If you can drive a truck long-haul, you have work. If you can build or repair things, you have work. But if you are college educated and you can think, YOU CAN STARVE. :rolleyes:

The school system at all levels, even in universities, really needs to get a message and come-to-grips with the needs of the world in the 21st Century. The world now wants DO-ers; not dreamers, not thesis-writers, not debators, not academicians, not even office workers. The world wants technical KNOW-HOW.

Degrees mean NOTHING. Now the job market asks: what can one DO, and what can one PRODUCE, especially produce for export?

Great post, Steve.

[mfyahya]

Re: Community college enrollment

1. Local major state college (The Ohio State University, my alma mater) has become so selective that an honors student from a good suburban high school is no longer welcome on main campus - they must start at a distant branch campus. Only truly elite 4.0-or-above freshman are granted admission. Of course, state tax money is welcome from ALL families in Ohio, regardless of grades.:rolleyes:

2. Low price. Most college students in the area are good at knowing which “cheap credits” they can buy at the community college which are currently accepted at OSU and other nearby colleges. Mine will do 2 years cheap then xfer into big OSU.


I predict community colleges will devour huge market share from state universities and private colleges in the next ten years.

I went to grad school at Ohio State. They have excellent engineering programs. I doubt that community colleges can match OSUs quality of education, at least in engineering. It also helps a lot to be around smart students.

Despite being so selective they don't seem to have any problems with enrollment. Their tuition fees seem to have become totally outrageous though

[Ghent12]

Re: Community college enrollment

While waiting for a doctor's appointment at a healthcare facility in the Santa Clara Valley ( the old Silicon Valley ), I was fortunate enough to have a local paper's classified ads handed to me. I scanned the "Help Wanted" section since I am always starving and starved for work. Here is what I noticed: the few job ops. listed were for TECHNICAL LABOUR such as welders, pipe-fitters, engineers who could over-see and manage workers at on-site projects, construction workers, project managers in different parts of the world, truck drivers, carpenters, oil drillers, geologists who could work on-site in drilling projects, machinists who can work on a lathe, etc. Also, in the "Help Wanted" ads, there were ads for healthcare workers of all types: nurses, doctors, emergency room helpers, etc.

I would have thought that a ten minute scan of the "Help Wanted" ads in San Jose-Santa Clara-Mtn. View would have meant looking at computer geek jobs. But those jobs were long gone. That observation was a shocker, and that observation nicely explained why one could now drive at >65MPH (>105KPH) on the freeways in the Santa Clara Valley, even during rush hour, whereas before, those freeways used to be jammed with cars and stopped-traffic.

The job market in the Santa Clara Valley of California now resembles the job market in Alberta: if you can do TECHNICAL AND SKILLED LABOUR IN THE OIL FIELDS, you have work. Your future is bright. If you can work in a hospital, you also have work. If you can drive a truck long-haul, you have work. If you can build or repair things, you have work. But if you are college educated and you can think, YOU CAN STARVE. :rolleyes:

The school system at all levels, even in universities, really needs to get a message and come-to-grips with the needs of the world in the 21st Century. The world now wants DO-ers; not dreamers, not thesis-writers, not debators, not academicians, not even office workers. The world wants technical KNOW-HOW.

Degrees mean NOTHING. Now the job market asks: what can one DO, and what can one PRODUCE, especially produce for export?

What are you saying? Degrees really are just pieces of paper? :rolleyes:

[flintlock]

Re: Community college enrollment

The world's getting bigger. The rate of growth of the best Universities just hasn't kept pace is all. Supply and demand. The best can be the pickiest. Nothing wrong with that. That doesn't mean you can't get a good education from a lesser school. Depending what you study, you may even get a better education. Smaller classrooms, more personal approach, less distractions like a Big Ten college football team that lately can't seem to win the National Championship( sorry, had to take a dig at Ohio State)

Good points Steve. Though I wouldn't say a the college degree has become worthless yet.

[MulaMan]

Re: Community college enrollment

3) Real Estate estate agents and mortgage brokers training to be solar panel installers and nurses.

My predicatin is that the nursing shortage will soon correct itself and you will see more and more english speaking nurses again in America, many with great real estate experience.

[Wild Style]

Re: Community college enrollment

Regarding two topics often posted here:
1) inflation via lowered quality
2) fudged government unemployment numbers

Community college enrollment is going way up, e.g.,
http://www.theitem.com/article/20090...9902/-1/ITNEWS

http://www2.journalnow.com/content/2...unity-co/news/

http://www.thestarpress.com/article/...NION/908230313

Seems like two causes:
1) inflation: About 1/2 of new students are young people (based on last article). Hypothesis: they are enrolling in CC and tech schools since real colleges are getting too expenses, when both tuition inflation and other expenses are considered.

2) job loss: About 1/2 of new students are "older-than-average", i.e., recently un-employed or sporadically employed. Marginal enrollment increases are thus approx 12 to 15% due to unemployment. Seems quite a bit higher than recent uptick in government-reported rates. (Hmmm, or maybe not.)

I work at a university and can attest to the fact that enrollment for Universities is WAY down and I mean WAAAYYYY DOWN! Where as the local community college here is seeing a uptick in enrollment.

I think the problem for universities is two fold. First of course is expense. Second being quality of education at many of these places is sub par. Your columbias, NYUs, Harvards, Northwesterns, University of Miamis can get away with higher tuition as you have more exposure to research projects, top quality professors and a student body that will be well connected when they enter the work force. Were as some of these mediocre institutions can not boast of any of these things.

3) Real Estate estate agents and mortgage brokers training to be solar panel installers and nurses.

My predicatin is that the nursing shortage will soon correct itself and you will see more and more english speaking nurses again in America, many with great real estate experience.

the nursing shortage may not be as dramatic as it was in past years. I have heard from a few nurses that they have had their hours cut and their has been lay offs. Used to be they had a pool of nurses that would fill in the gaps for full time nurses because they had so much work. Now you once full time nurses going into the substitute pool and the ones that were once substitutes don't have jobs any longer. Also they have been shutting down some hospitals. In NYC they shut down two out in Queens. I think people are going to have to think outside the box when it comes to what field to go into.

[mashsoccer37]

Re: Community college enrollment

3) Real Estate estate agents and mortgage brokers training to be solar panel installers and nurses.

My predicatin is that the nursing shortage will soon correct itself and you will see more and more english speaking nurses again in America, many with great real estate experience.

A word on the nursing shortage from an actual nurse: As the economy gets worse the nursing shortage will fix itself. I graduated in '07 and took a job at a large (>1000 bed) hospital in Baltimore. Just recently met with the nurse recruiter that I was working with when I got hired, and she told me that turnover was now down more than 50%, there was only a 2.5% vacancy rate (compared to >9% a year prior), and in the past year they had been able to completely cut out agency nursing. Agency nursing is a third party company that contracts a nurse to come to the unit to cover needs (costs hospitals big bucks). Since the economy has tanked, agency nursing companies have scaled back big time, and at least regionally is hard to even find agency shifts.

We were discussing the causes of these changes, and she mentioned that the team had come up with the following conclusions:
1. Typically, since there are so many different fields in nursing, the turnover tends to be extremely high (For example, I am switching from a cardiac floor to a cardiac surgical floor after 18 months on the job). On average, new nurses tend to stay about 12-24 months on their floor and ~40% will change jobs. In this struggling economy, people are looking for job security and are not being picky about how they are being paid, as long as they're getting a paycheck.
2. Retired nurses are coming back and picking up hours to supplement their drained retirement accounts from the stock market tumble. On my floor, we have one example of this. I was just checking out my 403b account the other day, down 27% from the time of my hire! I'm only 23 years old and losing 27% of next to nothing still sucks, but I feel pretty heartbroken for the people that have worked all their life and are having to come out of retirement just to make ends meet.

The financial team in the hospital is expecting that as the economy improves (yes, they believe what the media is telling them to believe) that the nursing shortage will go back to previous levels. Turnover rates will begin to increase as nurses begin to switch to more personally desirable jobs in nursing. They are expecting the retired nurses to stick around for as long as they can and go back into retirement. And they are also expecting the agency nursing companies to flourish again. Fact of the matter is, nursing schools are not producing enough nurses to replace the baby boomers. Unless hospitals begin closing, or hospitals start closing beds on large scales, there will be a long-term nursing shortage.

[Quincy K]

Re: Community college enrollment

A word on the nursing shortage from an actual nurse: As the economy gets worse the nursing shortage will fix itself. I graduated in '07 and took a job at a large (>1000 bed) hospital in Baltimore. Just recently met with the nurse recruiter that I was working with when I got hired, and she told me that turnover was now down more than 50%, there was only a 2.5% vacancy rate (compared to >9% a year prior), and in the past year they had been able to completely cut out agency nursing. Agency nursing is a third party company that contracts a nurse to come to the unit to cover needs (costs hospitals big bucks). Since the economy has tanked, agency nursing companies have scaled back big time, and at least regionally is hard to even find agency shifts.

We were discussing the causes of these changes, and she mentioned that the team had come up with the following conclusions:
1. Typically, since there are so many different fields in nursing, the turnover tends to be extremely high (For example, I am switching from a cardiac floor to a cardiac surgical floor after 18 months on the job). On average, new nurses tend to stay about 12-24 months on their floor and ~40% will change jobs. In this struggling economy, people are looking for job security and are not being picky about how they are being paid, as long as they're getting a paycheck.
2. Retired nurses are coming back and picking up hours to supplement their drained retirement accounts from the stock market tumble. On my floor, we have one example of this. I was just checking out my 403b account the other day, down 27% from the time of my hire! I'm only 23 years old and losing 27% of next to nothing still sucks, but I feel pretty heartbroken for the people that have worked all their life and are having to come out of retirement just to make ends meet.

The financial team in the hospital is expecting that as the economy improves (yes, they believe what the media is telling them to believe) that the nursing shortage will go back to previous levels. Turnover rates will begin to increase as nurses begin to switch to more personally desirable jobs in nursing. They are expecting the retired nurses to stick around for as long as they can and go back into retirement. And they are also expecting the agency nursing companies to flourish again. Fact of the matter is, nursing schools are not producing enough nurses to replace the baby boomers. Unless hospitals begin closing, or hospitals start closing beds on large scales, there will be a long-term nursing shortage.

You are 23-years-old and are here at iTulip. That is very cool. You are way ahead of the curve.

I would assume that you have a hard time finding acceptable suitors.

[Serge_Tomiko]

Re: Community college enrollment

The school system at all levels, even in universities, really needs to get a message and come-to-grips with the needs of the world in the 21st Century. The world now wants DO-ers; not dreamers, not thesis-writers, not debators, not academicians, not even office workers. The world wants technical KNOW-HOW.

Degrees mean NOTHING. Now the job market asks: what can one DO, and what can one PRODUCE, especially produce for export?

While I somewhat agree with what you say, I loathe a future where the value of a man is purely in regards to his utility. The great promise of modernity was that technological progress would reduce the amount of work required of humans such that they would be freed to pursue those elements of culture that make life worth living. This promise of course has been a failure.

We could train tens of millions of doctors or whomever to work in whatever fields are necessary to sustain our present gargantuan population, but we would still be faced a huge surplus population, dwindling natural resources, and the continually compounding problems of exponential population growth.

Are we to abandon the traditions of civilization merely to deal with the problems created by a few lunatics in power who thought technology would cure the world of all its ills? Our universities, as flawed as they may be given their infestation with liberal nutjobs and communists, are all that is left of a civilization now in rapid decline.

We must analyze every imperative for which we argue in terms of the long term consequences. Your advice may lead to immediate prosperity for the few who choose the path you proscribe, but it will not preserve the fruits of human civilization or lead to a better world for the entirety of your people.

If anything, I would argue that the training of medical professionals and engineers for most pursuits should cease. We still must maintain a nuclear defense, but I can think of no other technological pursuit that is necessary or desirable.