Higher education enrollment declines 1.5%

From Current Term Enrollment Estimates – Spring 2017 by National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. Probably primarily just a product of declining cohort of 18 year-olds but clearly there are other dynamics in play including the increasing cost, the increasing repression on campus, and sometimes (such as University of Missouri which has declined 15% since its BLM protests) decreasing effectiveness of campus leadership and disconnect from the paying public. Strange we haven't seen much press about this.

From the article:

In spring 2017, overall postsecondary enrollments decreased 1.5 percent from the previous spring. Figure 1 shows the 12-month percentage change (fall-to-fall and spring-to-spring) for each term over the last three years. Enrollments decreased among four-year for-profit institutions (-10.1 percent), two-year public institutions (-2.5 percent), and four-year private nonprofit institutions (-0.2 percent). Enrollments increased slightly among four-year public institutions (+0.2 percent). Taken as a whole, public sector enrollments (two-year and four-year combined) declined by 0.9 percent this spring.