For students to stay interested in college, colleges and universities need to put money into them.
The economy in the US hit a rough spot seventeen years ago. For that and other reasons, people stopped having as many kids. It was called the “birth dearth,” and while the economy got better in the years that followed, birth rates did not.
The National Center for Health Statistics of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that the fertility rate in the United States hit a “historic low” in 2023. The fertility rate dropped more than 22% from 2007 to 2020, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Today, those first group of American children born into poverty are senior year of high school and are about to make one of the most important decisions of their young lives. Over the course of their lives, people who go to college and graduate still make more money than people who don’t. Universities depend on students becoming alumni and then donors to stay in business.
The long-awaited enrollment cliff is real. It’s caused by the birth dearth, which means there are fewer high school graduates to fill college dorms, classrooms, and labs. Concerns about the effects of the enrollment cliff have grown due to a number of university closings and a general drop in enrollment. Most colleges have been preparing for this to happen for the 17 years since 2008.
However, universities can always put their best foot forward to impress students. They’ll probably have to keep doing this until the gap between high school graduates and first-year college students gets smaller. Universities are getting ready by putting money into technology in a planned way. This includes infrastructure, high-performance computers, and better microphones for classrooms.
As the number of high school graduates drops, we think these four technologies could make a difference in 2025.
Onboard Artificial Intelligence Now
For a few years now, artificial intelligence has been a big deal in technology and higher education. When ChatGPT came out in November 2022, it sparked the release (or repackaging) of a lot of AI-enhanced products and big claims that AI could fix everything wrong with higher education.
There are, however, ways that AI can help higher education reach its enrollment goals, help students learn better, and lighten the load on university staffs whose numbers have been dropping along with enrollment.
David Seidl, vice president for IT and CIO at Miami University, used a clever analogy to sum up the growing interest in AI at last year’s EDUCAUSE conference in San Antonio. He also told his colleagues in the industry to be careful about how they use the technology.
“Everyone wants to sell you something, like a toaster with AI.” “And not all of us need a toaster with AI,” he said in October. “We need to figure out where it makes sense to put money into AI.”
Chatbots are useful and easy to set up, as long as they are kept safe. They can answer students’ questions at any time of the day or night. Any further than that, you might want to turn your attention to the data AI uses to get ready for the day when it can handle bigger tasks.
Get Your Data in Order
Colleges and universities have a lot of data, which can make or break any AI project, whether it’s on-premises or in the cloud. But the fact is that universities that don’t have clean, well-structured, and well-organized data will make AI tools that only give bad information.
Universities can get organized with the help of modern data platforms, and data can be collected and managed well with the help of strategic communication and teamwork.
AI needs data to make sense, so data needs to be important everywhere on campus. An institution that is data-driven must have a clear, top-down plan for how to collect and use data and check the accuracy of outputs that are based on that data.
Learn What Your Students Need, Then Give It to Them
Universities can then use that clean data to figure out what their students need to do well. Big language models will only make AI tutors smarter and better able to adapt. They have been around for a while.
In many schools across the country, data analytics tools that track student progress through learning management systems, keycard building access tracking, and university-run applications can help students do better in school and stay in school. One of the keys to avoiding the enrollment cliff that isn’t talked about enough is this.
Universities should care about more than just data. They should also care about what their students want, and they should try to match what those students are used to at home and in K–12 schools. It’s important that the Wi-Fi at your college is at least as good as what they had in high school, and the classroom should have interactive whiteboards, moveable chairs, and other modern teaching tools.
Turn Learning Spaces Into Training Grounds
Universities should bear in mind what tools students will need to know how to use after they graduate.
That could mean welding machines and other industrial tools, such as those used at the College of Lake County, or it could mean design software such as Canva.
It also means preparing students to use AI in the workforce, something that will become a core skill as AI continues to evolve. Special computing and virtual reality are also excellent training tools and can impress students visiting campus or showing an interest in enrolling.
Tools that combine a wow factor and future utility can turn enrollment trends around and push back the enrollment cliff for decades to come.