Climate Change is Coming for Higher Education

Why take on tons of debt to run a world on fire?

Photo by Himal Rana on Unsplash

In the wake of World War II, the GI Bill was passed to help American citizens who had fought in the war get an education and get ahead in life. Among other benefits, the bill included payments for tuition and living expenses to attend college. By 1956, about 2.2 million Americans had used the G.I. Bill to attend colleges and universities, along with another 5.6 million who participated in some kind of training program.

By 1960, about 7.7 percent of the U.S. population had graduated from college. By 1980, this number was 16.2 percent, and by 2000, it was 25.6 percent. By 2020, about 37.9 percent of the U.S. population above the age of 24 had graduated from college or another post-high school institution.

It is no coincidence that this steady increase in the education of America’s population coincided with the increase in livening standards in the U.S., increases in productivity, increases in the stock market, and increases in wealth and power of America itself.

That is all about to change.

The demographics were bad for colleges before climate change.

In America, kids who graduate high school are increasingly deciding not to attend college. In 2016, 70 percent of students who graduated high school enrolled in either a four-year or two-year college. By 2020, that percentage had dropped to 63 percent. COVID-19 had some impact on this, although the numbers had already turned south before COVID-19 hit. The generation going to college now in the U.S. will be smaller than those before it, but a smaller generation alone doesn’t explain the decrease in college enrollment. It is also not true that more kids are just skipping college to start work, as workforce participation numbers don’t corroborate that story. Business and political leaders in the U.S. should be worried, as a less educated workforce will be a drag on the country’s competitiveness and will also likely negatively impact the quality of life for the average American.

The bloom may be off the rose for college in America, as many people see how expensive the cost of a degree is and just don’t see the value of the money it takes to get a degree. In the United States, the average university student graduates with $40,000 in student loan debt that takes them 20 years to pay off. University education in most other developed nations is often highly subsidized, to keep costs low. Less than 1/3 of Americans now believe that college is worth the cost according to a 2022 survey.

So, we have likely already seen the high point of college education in America, which means running a college or running a business in a college town that depends on the college for continued growth is about to get a bit harder.

Then add climate change into the mix.

You don’t invest in the future when your future is bleak.

People go to college to invest in their future. The bargain always was, “You pay now for an education, and you will make up for that cost and more in the future, because that college education will more than pay off as your earning potential increases and you build a better future for your family.”

What happens if the “better future” part of that deal goes away, or is taken away, or is destroyed?

Colleges, which are already facing a demographic crunch from a generation that is smaller than the ones that came before, and increased skepticism from a public who doesn’t believe in the value-for-money proposition of college anymore are going to be increasingly hit with another headwind.

Despair.

Generation Z in the United States, those born between 1997 and 2012, are understandably the generation most anxious about climate change negatively impacting their future. Generation Alpha, the generation that follows Generation Z, will likely be more anxious than Gen Z. They just haven’t started taking surveys yet.

A 2021 survey of those in Generation Z, ages 14 and above, found that 83 percent of Gen Z Americans are concerned about the health of the planet and say that the quality of their environment affects their health and well-being. People in Generation Z, Generation Alpha, and those that follow them will have grown up in a time where impending climate doom, which most of them believe is coming, is over the horizon. How do you justify spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on an education when the grand bargain of that education – that it will make your life better – is just not true?

Yes, people will still go to college, but that despair headwind will take a toll. The belief that an increasing percentage of young people in America will choose to go to college in the maw of an impending climate catastrophe is absurd. Others will ditch wasting years on college to try to make a difference “now” before things get even worse.

The small college town is in danger.

The Covid 19 pandemic showed how dependent college towns are on the University in their town, and more directly the students that attend that University. It is estimated that some small businesses depend on local students for about 80 percent of their business. Such businesses won’t all go away because fewer people are going to college, but it will not be helpful. The current and future generations slated to go to college in the coming decades do not go because; their generation is just smaller than previous ones, college is seen as too expensive, or college is seen as a waste of time in a world falling apart, colleges and college towns will suffer. Some will disappear.

Those small liberal arts schools flourished when the baby boomers and their children went to school in a world that saw growing prosperity over the horizon; many of them would not survive. And the town that supports them will go too.

College is a luxury in a world where luxuries will fall away.

Higher education is great. But it is a luxury. I had the luxury of spending four years in college so that I could meet people from all over the world, be exposed to thoughts and ways of life that I hadn’t imagined before, and take the time to ease into learning how to be an adult in the world.

That luxury will seem superfluous the deeper we get into the depths of our climate crisis. As our society fractures under the weight of less water, less food, higher prices, more destructive storms and floods, and no answers to these existential threats offered by leaders in America, why would an 18-year-old ask their family to go into debt or do so themselves, for a dying way of life.

Life in a climate change-degraded world with a college education will likely be better than life in a climate-degraded world without a college education, but fewer and fewer people will have the luxury of making that choice, and increasingly those that do will say “What’s the point?”

None of my kids are teenagers yet but will all be of college age in the next 8 – 10 years. I wonder what they’ll think. I wonder what I’ll say when they ask me if I think it’s worth it.