
Virginia Union University
by James C. Sherlock
Tastes change, and with them trends.
Between fall 2010 and fall 2021, total undergraduate enrollment in degree-granting postsecondary institutions in America decreased by 15% percent (from 18.1 million to 15.4 million students).
In Virginia’s 4-year public colleges and universities, the drop was 8% in that same period, right at the national average for state schools.
Virginia’s HBCU’s, except for the highest ranked, Hampton University, have fought the trend and increased their student populations dramatically recently.
The Great Recession baby bust arrives as a freshman student cliff in 2025.
National trends. The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) data on enrollment in undergraduate majors in 4-year public and private institutions of higher education (IHEs) show significant shifts in majors between 2010 and 2023.
There are winner and loser programs, with implications for staffing and perhaps offering a data basis for my magnet schools suggestion.
Between 2010 and 2023, undergraduate majors in:
- liberal arts and social sciences continued to decline;
- engineering majors have been in serious decline since 2019;
- health professions and related programs, having seen huge increases between 2010 and 2019, and physical sciences with smaller increases in those same years, since then are in decline;
- technology continues to gain, even faster since 2019, possibly signaling a shift from engineering to technology majors for the same types of students;
- Psychology, flat between 2010 and 2019, is in a major uptrend since.
Adjustments within higher education are clearly necessary to accommodate the declines in student populations, the coming student cliff and shifting educational preferences by students.
Rational adjustments are clearly identifiable but rarely seen in practice. Because administrations and faculty oppose them. The ramifications: Continue reading →