Mass. higher ed sector facing stiff headwinds
A sharp drop in confidence in higher ed, a trend seen regardless of party affiliation, gender, educational attainment, or age, poses a big challenge for colleges and universities everywhere, not just in Massachusetts. Pictured is Bunker Hill Community College in Boston. (Massachusetts Department of Higher Education)
Massachusetts famously brags of living by its wits. While other regions may claim better year-round weather as a draw, or natural resources or an industrial base that fuel their economies, the Commonwealth has looked to a surfeit of brain power as its comparative advantage.
That has made recent decades a golden era in Massachusetts, as the global knowledge economy has richly rewarded places with economies built on the foundation of a robust higher education sector. But that also means the rocky road now ahead for higher ed will pose a far bigger threat to Massachusetts than to other states.
Higher ed’s fortunes, whether good or bad, “are more pronounced here than in any other state,” said Doug Howgate, president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, during a recent presentation and panel discussion the organization convened on the economic impact of higher education in Massachusetts.
Massachusetts has the highest share of adults with a bachelor’s degree of any state – nearly 46% – and employment in the Massachusetts higher education sector accounts for a larger share of total wages than in any state but Rhode Island.
A decline in the country’s college-aged population is being held up as a grave threat to the sector. “We are going to have a smaller and smaller young population in this country, and that is an existential threat to higher education,” said Howgate, summarizing how the issue has been framed. But Howgate said it’s a more nuanced story than that, and, as his presentation made clear, it’s more complicated than just changes in population numbers.
During the 60-year span from 1952 to 2012, for example, the U.S. population under 20 grew by 51%, but higher ed enrollment soared by nearly 900%, or 16 times as much, Howgate said. In other words, it’s not just changes in the college-aged population that matter but, as Howgate put it, “the batting average higher education has in convincing students higher education is the place for them.” That batting average soared in the last half of the 20th century, and Howgate said maintaining – or increasing – that average is where “long-term economic policy needs to go.”
Recent data already point to some slippage. From 2010 to 2021, the state’s population of residents under 20 fell by 4% but higher education saw an even larger enrollment decrease of 6.1%.
Part of the explanation is a decline nationally in confidence in higher ed. From 2015 to 2023, according to Gallup results shared during the session by Evan Horowtiz of the Center for State Policy Analysis at Tufts University, there has been a sharp drop in confidence in higher ed, a trend seen regardless of party affiliation, gender, educational attainment, or age.
That trend corresponds with a decline in interest in pursuing higher education among high school graduates in Massachusetts that is more pronounced in communities of color that are accounting for an increasing share of the state’s population.
In annual data collected by the state education department on plans of graduating high school seniors, there was a decline from 2016 to 2023 in the share of those planning to enroll in higher ed the next year, from 80% to just over 70%. In Lawrence, however, where 94% of the student population is Hispanic, there was a far steeper drop in the share of graduates planning to go on to college, from just over 70% in 2016 to 50% in 2023.
From 2010 to 2022, Howgate said, the state’s White population decreased by 327,000, while the Black and Hispanic population increased by almost the same amount – by 332,000 residents. “If we are going to continue to maintain and grow our sector of higher education, and connect Massachusetts residents to the Massachusetts economy, what is happening in Lawrence is critically, critically important,” he said.
Chris Gabrieli, chair of the state Board of Higher Education, said addressing the huge demographic disparities in college completion rates must be a top priority. “We have a 30-point difference in this state between your likelihood of earning a college degree within six years of graduation [from high school] if you’re not low income or [are] White or Asian than if you are low-income or Black or Latino,” said Gabrieli. “That should be completely unacceptable to all of us.”
The good news, he said, is that the state is taking steps that can meaningfully narrow that gap. Gabrieli highlighted the state’s commitment to early college programs, which let students take college courses – and earn credits toward a degree – while still in high school. He said evidence shows participation in early college is leading to 15 to 16 percentage point higher rates of college matriculation and persistence after high school.
“That’s huge,” he said, calling it one of the largest effect sizes of any known education strategy.
This article first appeared on CommonWealth Beacon and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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