🔒Editorial: Colleges are in for a reckoning

While some industries have thrived, the pandemic certainly hasn’t made life any easier for Central Massachusetts colleges and universities. Although the medium- and long-term challenges the industry is facing were already there, they have only accelerated the last two years.

As WBJ Staff Writer Katherine Hamilton found out in her “Waiting on students” story, interest among high schoolers in attending college is waning. For some schools, like Framingham State University, this has a direct impact on the bottom line, as fewer students are now enrolling. But even for the more prestigious schools like Worcester Polytechnic Institute with long waitlists for a select number of spots, this trend should be concerning. A college education is no longer an automatic decision for an increasing number of people.

Affordability is at the heart of the decision for students who choose not to attend college. For the growing number of students whose parents cannot come up with the five- to six-figure cost of four years of college tuition, why would they choose to go deeply in debt when a number of career paths offer equal or better salaries and opportunities? Clearly a college education has significant advantages, but there remain long-term labor shortages in well-paying industries like manufacturing, construction, and health care, where entry-level jobs are available to people from certificate programs or simply those with the right attitude and willingness to learn.

While this reorientation of people’s career tracts was pushed forward by the start of the pandemic and the Great Resignation as professionals rethought their work-life balance, it has been in the works for a long time. Over the coming decade, more recent high school grads are considering professional pathways not requiring that four-year college degree. That means colleges, like any industry facing headwinds, are having to pivot, finding new ways to attract students.

Schools can grasp the significant potential to expand programming and become niche providers of workforce training. While the four-year bachelor’s degree will always have its place, the greater focus now is on a student’s return on investment for that degree. There remains a shortage of workers, and a number of fields offering high wages and plenty of demand, necessitating the need for further training. Identifying those niches, partnering with industry to identify key skills and developing programs, and building a pipeline of students is already being done by many schools in the region. And those efforts need to accelerate.

Even as people tire of the pandemic and (hopefully) can see this chapter coming to a close not so far down the road, we are still in a moment of great professional and economic upheaval. Being nimble, innovative, and responsive to the opportunities in the marketplace will serve not only our institutions of higher education, but the Central Massachusetts economy as well.