The main reason is that so many courses are online now.
Remote college courses may be convenient, but they are boring.
That’s what I’m hearing from college-age young people now.
Online courses are no doubt convenient and often affordable, but lucky for me, my Dad was able to afford my 4.5 year stay in college. I wouldn’t trade meeting all those interesting people at that stage in my life for any online course in the world.
I loved the adventure of it. I also learned how not to complain long distance to the folks about little things at school. Let me handle it myself.
I work at a community college and our numbers are down. The traditional two year prep for transfer to a four year institution has dropped significantly. On the other hand our tech classes seem to be holding steady in terms of enrollment.
The online classes are nothing but busy work, you don’t learn anything. The online eight week classes are the worst of the lot. You write a lot of papers and have little to no actual instruction. The students and instructors are pushing for a traditional twelve or sixteen week in the classroom or a hybrid style classroom/online course but administration loves the mini-sessions because it’s lots of revenue bam-bam-bam class wise, but you are producing mediocrity with no practical learning or hands on experience.
The old guard four year prep instructors are furious that the college is adjusting to the fact the students want to learn a trade in a year or year and a half and then go to work. We are also having trouble retaining instructors in the trade/medical programs because they can make more money in the private sector.
A co-worker of mine’s cousin went to eighteen months of community college welding classes, passed and certified and his first year out of college was making around $60K-$75K a year. That is what the students want.