On March 31st, I opened my last college decision letter from Duke University. Possessing an admissions rate hovering around 6%, Duke is a powerhouse in the field of economics and forms a third of the elusive Research Triangle in the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area of North Carolina. My mouse wandered over to the admissions button, my eyes sauntering across the home page. The rejection letter stared back at me, unblinking, stoic.

I closed the tab silently and shut off my computer. 

From 2007 to 2021, admissions rates in many popular, private, non-profit, four year universities and colleges tanked. It is evident in Williams College’s ​​17.4% plunge to 8%, in UChicago’s 34.9% falling to a 6.2%, in Tulane’s 44% spiraling to a 9.73%. To the average adult, these figures may be surprising, but to so many American highschoolers heedlessly stacking Advanced Placement classes, studying until 3 in the morning for the dreaded SAT, and spending thousands on a private college counselor, these figures are a fact of life.

Despite this, according to Forbes, college enrollment has been decreasing for years, and hit a record low of a 4.9% drop in undergraduate students nationwide in 2021. Post-pandemic work shortages have made the job market increasingly accessible to those without a college degree, and the bad aftertaste of financial insecurity convinced many poorer would-be college students to put off further schooling for at least a few years.

These two conflicting findings point to one cause: the disparity between private, non-profit universities - like Harvard University, California Institute of Technology, University of Notre Dame - and, well, everyone else who is not as popular. Frankly, students nationwide yearn for the sweet, sweet stamp of success only a famous, acclaimed college or university can give them. For those colleges, admission rates are increasing. For others, it is plummeting, causing a frenzied rush of layoffs, cuts to academic and extracurricular programs, and even the merging of colleges to consolidate financial resources. 

Why even worry about these less-competitive colleges if they themselves aren’t competitive enough to weather the lack of applicants? The largest reason is that this divide between elite and non-elite colleges draws a parallel between the poor and the wealthy, the in-touch and the out-of-touch. As a New York Times article states, “By and large, urban state universities like Rutgers University’s Newark campus have done a much better job integrating with their environments than elite private universities,” which opens the doorway for many toward actual, effective student activism and a more down-to-earth mindset and awareness of the society they live in. 

In a broader sense, these colleges serve the underrepresented and disadvantaged within their community, offering them a hopeful ticket for a better life. But this tradeoff works both ways - these colleges, and only these colleges, will suffer enrollment issues because it is the underrepresented and disadvantaged who now have to make the decision between short-term vs long-term financial security. In working towards such themes as togetherness and connectivity - themes fervently debated and questioned post-pandemic, post-BLM, post-#MeToo  - it is essential to look at our schools, at our places of education, to see where this gap occurs.

Resources:

Nietzel, Michael T. "Latest Numbers Show Largest College Enrollment Decline In A Decade." Forbes. 10 Jun. 2021.

Admission Sight. “The Change of College Acceptance Rates Over Time.” Admission Sight. 24 Oct. 2021.

Anderson, Nick. Douglas-Gabriel, Danielle. “Colleges scramble to recruit students as nationwide enrollment plunges.” The Washington Post. 31 Mar. 2022.

Hounshell, Blake. “Measuring America’s Divide: ‘It’s Gotten Worse.’” The New York Times. 27 Jul. 2022.

Burns, Nick. “Elite Universities Are Out of Touch. Blame the Campus.” The New York Times. 2 Aug. 2022.