Peter Zeihan shared the video below a few days after I commented about higher education's self-devaluation in Higher education’s self-devaluation. If you found my post interesting, you should listen to Zeihan's perspective for 6 minutes. I'll provide some data and thoughts to supplement what he has to say.
White-collar vs. blue-collar workers
Zeihan notes that we now have an oversupply of white-collar workers and not enough blue-collar workers. My March 14 Quick Takes had this chart from the BLS, with the following quotes:
Occupations that typically require a high school diploma or the equivalent for entry have the most projected openings of any education level: 7.1 million per year, on average, over the decade. And the occupations shown accounted for about one-third of those total openings.
This is more than double the number of college job openings.
Occupations that typically require a bachelor’s degree are expected to have 3.3 million openings each year, on average, over the projections decade.
This is consistent with Zeihan's assertion, but he goes on to anticipate a significant expansion of manufacturing in the United States, which would result in significantly more blue-collar jobs that the BLS does not appear to have accounted for. In either case, it appears that college degrees will lose value. Furthermore, AI will not be able to build your house, repair your plumbing, or perform most other blue-collar jobs.
Demographics
I’ve pointed out that there are declining numbers of students. Here is the graph from my post-U.S. demographics by age (June 1, 2023).
As you can see, there are fewer people in the younger age groups. This isn’t projected to improve. Here is the U.S. Census Bureau population pyramid projection for 2034, a decade from now. There are simply fewer potential students.
The loner generation
Zeihan makes an intriguing point on how the present generation is less interested in the social aspects of higher education. He has a point. This graph comes from The new CDC report shows that Covid added little to teen mental health trends (2/16/2023, Haidt). The amount of time that 15- to 24-year-olds spend with their friends has significantly dropped. This surely suggests the college experience may be less appealing to them.
The (in)ability to adapt
According to Zeihan, it takes 5–10 years for a college to make significant curriculum modifications, by which time it is too late. Again, he has a point, and it could be worse than he claims. The shared governance approach in higher education has major fundamental faults. One major factor is that faculty members are often unwilling to serve on committees during winter and summer breaks. This limits their ability to change the curriculum to about 30 weeks per year, which the winter break divides in half. During those 30 weeks, professors are often focused on teaching and other projects, so they have little time to discuss and plan for real change. Even if there were no turf battles or resistance to change, it would be difficult to accomplish anything. Add to all this the difficulty of faculty staffing changes caused by the tenure system, and you begin to see how higher education is geared to protect the status quo, and any change that might happen occurs at a snail’s pace.
Conclusions
My essay last week, Higher education’s self-devaluation combined with the ideas here should have every college president worried. There are fewer kids that could attend college, there is less of an incentive to attend college, and students may be less interested in the college “experience.” Add to that the decreased learning in higher education and other self-inflicted wounds, and it is reasonable to expect a number of colleges to close. We will see.
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