America's 'demographic cliff' is finally here — and set to wreak havoc on colleges: report

Matthew Chapman
January 8, 2025 

First-generation college students. (Nirat.pix/www.shutterstock.com)

The United States is finally approaching a long-forecast "demographic cliff" with a sharp drop in the number of 18-year-olds — and some of the first institutions to feel it will be colleges and universities, according to the nonprofit Hechinger Report.

"This so-called demographic cliff has been predicted ever since Americans started having fewer babies at the advent of the Great Recession around the end of 2007 — a falling birth rate that has not recovered since, except for a slight blip after the Covid-19 pandemic, according to the Centers for Disease Control," reported Jon Marcus. "Demographers say it will finally arrive in the fall of this year. That’s when recruiting offices will begin to confront the long-anticipated drop-off in the number of applicants from among the next class of high school seniors."

One of the effects of this has been that smaller schools in lower-population areas are being forced to close down. That happened in 2023 to Iowa Wesleyan University, which, founded in 1842, was the state's oldest co-educational higher education campus — and had piles of furniture, trophies, books, and other assets loaded off into trucks to be sold off. Doug Moore, who founded a company that was involved in the college's shutdown, reflected, “All the things that are mementos of the best four years of a lot of people’s lives are sold to the highest bidders.”

All of this is coming at a time when colleges and universities are already under increased scrutiny and pressure for decades of unsustainably rising tuition rates that trapped millions of people in mountains of student debt.

That trend has finally begun to reverse, with College Board data showing an inflation-adjusted decrease of 4 percent in overall public college tuition rates in the last decade, a 40 percent decrease in real annual public college costs, and a decrease in the share of students graduating with debt.

However, Marcus noted, the implications go far beyond colleges and universities.

"It’s a looming crisis for the economy, with fewer graduates eventually coming through the pipeline to fill jobs that require college educations, even as international rivals increase the proportions of their populations with degrees," he said.