Rewrite this article from the perspective of an incoming freshman.

A little-understood backlash against higher education is driving an unprecedented decline in enrollment that experts now warn is likely to diminish people’s quality of life and the nation’s economic competitiveness, especially in places where the slide is most severe.

“With the exception of wartime, the United States has never been through a period of declining educational attainment like this,” said Michael Hicks, director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at Ball State University’s Miller College of Business.

There are 4 million fewer students in college now than there were 10 years ago, a falloff many observers blame on Covid-19, a dip in the number of Americans under 18 and a strong labor market that is sucking young people straight into the workforce.

But while the pandemic certainly made things worse, the downturn took hold well before it started. Demographics alone cannot explain the scale of this drop. And statistics belie the argument that recent high school graduates are getting jobs instead of going to college: Workforce participation for 16- to 24-year-olds is lower than it was before Covid hit, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, or BLS, reports.

Focus groups and public opinion surveys point to other, less easily solved reasons for the sharp downward trend. These include widespread and fast-growing skepticism about the value of a degree, impatience with the time it takes to get one, and costs that have finally exceeded many people’s ability or willingness to pay.  

There has been a significant and steady drop nationwide in the proportion of high school graduates enrolling in college in the fall after they finish school — from a high of 70% in 2016 to 63% in 2020, the most recent year for which the figure is available, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

The decline is even worse in some states, though not all have data for the same periods of time.

The proportion of high school graduates in Tennessee who are going directly to college, for example, has fallen to 53% — down 11 percentage points since 2017. In Indiana, it dropped to 53% in 2020, down 12 percentage points from five years earlier and a pace state Commissioner for Higher Education Chris Lowery has called “alarming.”

Americans are increasingly dubious about the need to go to college. Fewer than 1 in 3 adults now say a degree is worth the cost, according to a survey by the nonprofit Strada Education Network, which conducts research into and financially supports ways of expanding access to higher education.

Meanwhile, months of discussion about whether the Biden administration will forgive all or some student loan debt has had the unintended consequence of reminding prospective learners how much people before them had to borrow to pay for college.

So has the fact that many of their parents are still paying back their own student loans.
From 2015 to 2019, Americans’ faith in higher education dropped more than their confidence in any other institution measured by the Gallup polling organization — an extraordinary erosion of trust, considering that this list includes the presidency, Congress, big business and the criminal justice system.

“There’s anti-elitism, anti-institutionalism, a perception that cost is out of control,” said Stephanie Marken, a partner in Gallup’s education division.

The problems have been evident for years, but colleges and universities in general have done little to address them.

They continue to advertise prices that few consumers actually pay but that discourage many from applying. They bury students in red tape, which is especially confounding for the increasing number of would-be applicants whose parents never went to college. And they often fail to make clear connections between academic disciplines and careers or keep up with the demands of the fast-moving labor market. 

A degree does, in fact, still pay off. Workers with bachelor’s degrees earn 67% more than people with only high school diplomas, according to the BLS. More than half of “good jobs” — those with salaries of at least $35,000 for workers under age 45 and $45,000 for people  45 to 64 — call for bachelor’s degrees, the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce estimates.

Yet since the start of the pandemic, the proportion of 14- to 18-year-olds who think education is necessary beyond high school has dropped from 60% to 45%, the nonprofit Educational Credit Management Corporation.

The pandemic only deepened the fears of students already struggling with self-confidence and skeptical about college, said Thea Cole, who also counsels students for Advise TN. “Their GPAs have suffered. So some of them are, ‘I don’t know if I can get in,’ or, ‘It will be too hard.’ ” Her colleague, Portia Cook, was more blunt: “My kids have a shorter fuse. When things start getting complicated, they’re done.” 

It’s not only recent high school graduates who are turning their backs on higher education. The number of Americans over 24 who are going for the first time or returning to college has also steadily declined, by 12% in the five years from the spring of 2017 to the just-ended spring semester. 

The United States has already fallen from second to 16th since 2000 among developed nations in the proportion of 25- to 34-year-olds with bachelor’s degrees. Countries ahead of it have increased their bachelor’s degree attainment during that time by an average of 177%, an analysis by an institute at the University of Pennsylvania found.

Even before the pandemic, the nation was facing a shortage of more than 9 million college-educated workers over the next decade, affecting nearly every state and costing nearly $1.2 trillion in lost economic output, the center-right American Action Forum estimated. 

Economic rivals “could wish nothing better but to see the share of [American] adults who go to college drop by 12 percentage points,” Hicks said. “It is literally cataclysmic.”


system
Rewrite this article from the perspective of an incoming freshman.

A little-understood backlash against higher education is driving an unprecedented decline in enrollment that experts now warn is likely to diminish people’s quality of life and the nation’s economic competitiveness, especially in places where the slide is most severe.

“With the exception of wartime, the United States has never been through a period of declining educational attainment like this,” said Michael Hicks, director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at Ball State University’s Miller College of Business.

There are 4 million fewer students in college now than there were 10 years ago, a falloff many observers blame on Covid-19, a dip in the number of Americans under 18 and a strong labor market that is sucking young people straight into the workforce.

But while the pandemic certainly made things worse, the downturn took hold well before it started. Demographics alone cannot explain the scale of this drop. And statistics belie the argument that recent high school graduates are getting jobs instead of going to college: Workforce participation for 16- to 24-year-olds is lower than it was before Covid hit, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, or BLS, reports.

Focus groups and public opinion surveys point to other, less easily solved reasons for the sharp downward trend. These include widespread and fast-growing skepticism about the value of a degree, impatience with the time it takes to get one, and costs that have finally exceeded many people’s ability or willingness to pay.  

There has been a significant and steady drop nationwide in the proportion of high school graduates enrolling in college in the fall after they finish school — from a high of 70% in 2016 to 63% in 2020, the most recent year for which the figure is available, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

The decline is even worse in some states, though not all have data for the same periods of time.

The proportion of high school graduates in Tennessee who are going directly to college, for example, has fallen to 53% — down 11 percentage points since 2017. In Indiana, it dropped to 53% in 2020, down 12 percentage points from five years earlier and a pace state Commissioner for Higher Education Chris Lowery has called “alarming.”

Americans are increasingly dubious about the need to go to college. Fewer than 1 in 3 adults now say a degree is worth the cost, according to a survey by the nonprofit Strada Education Network, which conducts research into and financially supports ways of expanding access to higher education.

Meanwhile, months of discussion about whether the Biden administration will forgive all or some student loan debt has had the unintended consequence of reminding prospective learners how much people before them had to borrow to pay for college.

So has the fact that many of their parents are still paying back their own student loans.
From 2015 to 2019, Americans’ faith in higher education dropped more than their confidence in any other institution measured by the Gallup polling organization — an extraordinary erosion of trust, considering that this list includes the presidency, Congress, big business and the criminal justice system.

“There’s anti-elitism, anti-institutionalism, a perception that cost is out of control,” said Stephanie Marken, a partner in Gallup’s education division.

The problems have been evident for years, but colleges and universities in general have done little to address them.

They continue to advertise prices that few consumers actually pay but that discourage many from applying. They bury students in red tape, which is especially confounding for the increasing number of would-be applicants whose parents never went to college. And they often fail to make clear connections between academic disciplines and careers or keep up with the demands of the fast-moving labor market. 

A degree does, in fact, still pay off. Workers with bachelor’s degrees earn 67% more than people with only high school diplomas, according to the BLS. More than half of “good jobs” — those with salaries of at least $35,000 for workers under age 45 and $45,000 for people  45 to 64 — call for bachelor’s degrees, the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce estimates.

Yet since the start of the pandemic, the proportion of 14- to 18-year-olds who think education is necessary beyond high school has dropped from 60% to 45%, the nonprofit Educational Credit Management Corporation.

The pandemic only deepened the fears of students already struggling with self-confidence and skeptical about college, said Thea Cole, who also counsels students for Advise TN. “Their GPAs have suffered. So some of them are, ‘I don’t know if I can get in,’ or, ‘It will be too hard.’ ” Her colleague, Portia Cook, was more blunt: “My kids have a shorter fuse. When things start getting complicated, they’re done.” 

It’s not only recent high school graduates who are turning their backs on higher education. The number of Americans over 24 who are going for the first time or returning to college has also steadily declined, by 12% in the five years from the spring of 2017 to the just-ended spring semester. 

The United States has already fallen from second to 16th since 2000 among developed nations in the proportion of 25- to 34-year-olds with bachelor’s degrees. Countries ahead of it have increased their bachelor’s degree attainment during that time by an average of 177%, an analysis by an institute at the University of Pennsylvania found.

Even before the pandemic, the nation was facing a shortage of more than 9 million college-educated workers over the next decade, affecting nearly every state and costing nearly $1.2 trillion in lost economic output, the center-right American Action Forum estimated. 

Economic rivals “could wish nothing better but to see the share of [American] adults who go to college drop by 12 percentage points,” Hicks said. “It is literally cataclysmic.”


user
Mesmo quando embarco nessa jornada da faculdade, posso dizer que estou nervoso.Eu li tudo sobre o declínio dos graduados do ensino médio indo para a faculdade.Ninguém quer que seus pais ou a si mesmos gastem todo esse tempo e dinheiro.Eu não tinha ideia de por que havia tantas notícias sobre esse tópico.Comecei a trabalhar e comecei a pesquisar.Afinal, estou prestes a fazer essa jornada e quero saber no que estou me metendo.

Primeiro, a economia fede.A economia dos EUA está em uma inclinação descendente há algum tempo.O que isso significa?Enquanto vasculhava a Internet, encontrei algumas informações do Diretor do Centro de Pesquisa Empresarial e Econômica e da Ball State University.Michael Hicks afirmou: "Com exceção da guerra, os Estados Unidos nunca passaram por um período de realização em declínio como essa".O que isto significa?Não tenho certeza, então tive que cavar um pouco mais.Atualmente, existem 4 milhões a menos de estudantes na faculdade do que uma década atrás.Obviamente, o Covid-19 prejudicou esses números.Mais jovens entraram na força de trabalho, em vez de ir para a faculdade.Esse conceito não concorda comigo.Eu queria um ano de folga antes da faculdade, mas não um que envolvia trabalhar.

Mesmo antes da pandemia, as inscrições para a faculdade começaram a diminuir.Não podemos culpar a pandemia por tudo.Diferentes grupos focais e pesquisas mostraram que as pessoas eram céticas de que o diploma universitário provaria resultados pelos quais alguns estavam dispostos a pagar.As estatísticas mostram que uma em cada três não acha que o diploma vale a quantidade de dinheiro sem gabarito.Pense nisso.Quando meus pais foram para a faculdade, o custo era inferior a US $ 30.000 em alguns estados.Agora, minha educação universitária custará mais de US $ 50.000 com empréstimos que me assombrarão até o dia em que morrer.As conversas sobre vale a pena continuar chegando várias vezes com meus amigos e seus pais.Quando meus pais foram para a escola, todos foram para a faculdade.Se você não foi para a faculdade, foi considerado um vagabundo.Não mais.Agora, os pais pareciam aliviados se o filho optar por sair da faculdade.

Empréstimos estudantis.Não inicie meu pai.Ele está pagando seus empréstimos nos últimos 20 anos.Parece que ele sempre estará pagando.Enquanto meus pais esperam para descobrir se o governo perdoará a dívida dos estudantes, eles pagam todos os meses como o relógio.Isso não me atrai nem um pouco.Imagine se você comprasse um carro, mas nunca o pagasse, não importa quantos anos se passaram.Por que você gostaria de pagar um carro por 20 anos?A faculdade não é diferente.As pessoas que nem se formam na faculdade ainda precisam pagar empréstimos para estudantes.Isso é um verdadeiro insulto.Você acha que as universidades estão abordando esse problema?Não.

Ter um diploma é realmente necessário em algumas indústrias.Também é verdade que os graduados da faculdade tendem a ganhar mais.No entanto, a atitude sobre a faculdade necessária caiu de 60% para 45%, de acordo com a organização sem fins lucrativos Educational Credit Management Corporation.Mesmo os que já estão comprometidos com a faculdade estão duvidando da decisão.
assistant
<|system|>
</s>
<|user|>
Rewrite this article from the perspective of an incoming freshman.

A little-understood backlash against higher education is driving an unprecedented decline in enrollment that experts now warn is likely to diminish people’s quality of life and the nation’s economic competitiveness, especially in places where the slide is most severe.

“With the exception of wartime, the United States has never been through a period of declining educational attainment like this,” said Michael Hicks, director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at Ball State University’s Miller College of Business.

There are 4 million fewer students in college now than there were 10 years ago, a falloff many observers blame on Covid-19, a dip in the number of Americans under 18 and a strong labor market that is sucking young people straight into the workforce.

But while the pandemic certainly made things worse, the downturn took hold well before it started. Demographics alone cannot explain the scale of this drop. And statistics belie the argument that recent high school graduates are getting jobs instead of going to college: Workforce participation for 16- to 24-year-olds is lower than it was before Covid hit, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, or BLS, reports.

Focus groups and public opinion surveys point to other, less easily solved reasons for the sharp downward trend. These include widespread and fast-growing skepticism about the value of a degree, impatience with the time it takes to get one, and costs that have finally exceeded many people’s ability or willingness to pay.  

There has been a significant and steady drop nationwide in the proportion of high school graduates enrolling in college in the fall after they finish school — from a high of 70% in 2016 to 63% in 2020, the most recent year for which the figure is available, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

The decline is even worse in some states, though not all have data for the same periods of time.

The proportion of high school graduates in Tennessee who are going directly to college, for example, has fallen to 53% — down 11 percentage points since 2017. In Indiana, it dropped to 53% in 2020, down 12 percentage points from five years earlier and a pace state Commissioner for Higher Education Chris Lowery has called “alarming.”

Americans are increasingly dubious about the need to go to college. Fewer than 1 in 3 adults now say a degree is worth the cost, according to a survey by the nonprofit Strada Education Network, which conducts research into and financially supports ways of expanding access to higher education.

Meanwhile, months of discussion about whether the Biden administration will forgive all or some student loan debt has had the unintended consequence of reminding prospective learners how much people before them had to borrow to pay for college.

So has the fact that many of their parents are still paying back their own student loans.
From 2015 to 2019, Americans’ faith in higher education dropped more than their confidence in any other institution measured by the Gallup polling organization — an extraordinary erosion of trust, considering that this list includes the presidency, Congress, big business and the criminal justice system.

“There’s anti-elitism, anti-institutionalism, a perception that cost is out of control,” said Stephanie Marken, a partner in Gallup’s education division.

The problems have been evident for years, but colleges and universities in general have done little to address them.

They continue to advertise prices that few consumers actually pay but that discourage many from applying. They bury students in red tape, which is especially confounding for the increasing number of would-be applicants whose parents never went to college. And they often fail to make clear connections between academic disciplines and careers or keep up with the demands of the fast-moving labor market. 

A degree does, in fact, still pay off. Workers with bachelor’s degrees earn 67% more than people with only high school diplomas, according to the BLS. More than half of “good jobs” — those with salaries of at least $35,000 for workers under age 45 and $45,000 for people  45 to 64 — call for bachelor’s degrees, the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce estimates.

Yet since the start of the pandemic, the proportion of 14- to 18-year-olds who think education is necessary beyond high school has dropped from 60% to 45%, the nonprofit Educational Credit Management Corporation.

The pandemic only deepened the fears of students already struggling with self-confidence and skeptical about college, said Thea Cole, who also counsels students for Advise TN. “Their GPAs have suffered. So some of them are, ‘I don’t know if I can get in,’ or, ‘It will be too hard.’ ” Her colleague, Portia Cook, was more blunt: “My kids have a shorter fuse. When things start getting complicated, they’re done.” 

It’s not only recent high school graduates who are turning their backs on higher education. The number of Americans over 24 who are going for the first time or returning to college has also steadily declined, by 12% in the five years from the spring of 2017 to the just-ended spring semester. 

The United States has already fallen from second to 16th since 2000 among developed nations in the proportion of 25- to 34-year-olds with bachelor’s degrees. Countries ahead of it have increased their bachelor’s degree attainment during that time by an average of 177%, an analysis by an institute at the University of Pennsylvania found.

Even before the pandemic, the nation was facing a shortage of more than 9 million college-educated workers over the next decade, affecting nearly every state and costing nearly $1.2 trillion in lost economic output, the center-right American Action Forum estimated. 

Economic rivals “could wish nothing better but to see the share of [American] adults who go to college drop by 12 percentage points,” Hicks said. “It is literally cataclysmic.”

</s>
<|assistant|>
Mesmo quando embarco nessa jornada da faculdade, posso dizer que estou nervoso.Eu li tudo sobre o declínio dos graduados do ensino médio indo para a faculdade.Ninguém quer que seus pais ou a si mesmos gastem todo esse tempo e dinheiro.Eu não tinha ideia de por que havia tantas notícias sobre esse tópico.Comecei a trabalhar e comecei a pesquisar.Afinal, estou prestes a fazer essa jornada e quero saber no que estou me metendo.

Primeiro, a economia fede.A economia dos EUA está em uma inclinação descendente há algum tempo.O que isso significa?Enquanto vasculhava a Internet, encontrei algumas informações do Diretor do Centro de Pesquisa Empresarial e Econômica e da Ball State University.Michael Hicks afirmou: "Com exceção da guerra, os Estados Unidos nunca passaram por um período de realização em declínio como essa".O que isto significa?Não tenho certeza, então tive que cavar um pouco mais.Atualmente, existem 4 milhões a menos de estudantes na faculdade do que uma década atrás.Obviamente, o Covid-19 prejudicou esses números.Mais jovens entraram na força de trabalho, em vez de ir para a faculdade.Esse conceito não concorda comigo.Eu queria um ano de folga antes da faculdade, mas não um que envolvia trabalhar.

Mesmo antes da pandemia, as inscrições para a faculdade começaram a diminuir.Não podemos culpar a pandemia por tudo.Diferentes grupos focais e pesquisas mostraram que as pessoas eram céticas de que o diploma universitário provaria resultados pelos quais alguns estavam dispostos a pagar.As estatísticas mostram que uma em cada três não acha que o diploma vale a quantidade de dinheiro sem gabarito.Pense nisso.Quando meus pais foram para a faculdade, o custo era inferior a US $ 30.000 em alguns estados.Agora, minha educação universitária custará mais de US $ 50.000 com empréstimos que me assombrarão até o dia em que morrer.As conversas sobre vale a pena continuar chegando várias vezes com meus amigos e seus pais.Quando meus pais foram para a escola, todos foram para a faculdade.Se você não foi para a faculdade, foi considerado um vagabundo.Não mais.Agora, os pais pareciam aliviados se o filho optar por sair da faculdade.

Empréstimos estudantis.Não inicie meu pai.Ele está pagando seus empréstimos nos últimos 20 anos.Parece que ele sempre estará pagando.Enquanto meus pais esperam para descobrir se o governo perdoará a dívida dos estudantes, eles pagam todos os meses como o relógio.Isso não me atrai nem um pouco.Imagine se você comprasse um carro, mas nunca o pagasse, não importa quantos anos se passaram.Por que você gostaria de pagar um carro por 20 anos?A faculdade não é diferente.As pessoas que nem se formam na faculdade ainda precisam pagar empréstimos para estudantes.Isso é um verdadeiro insulto.Você acha que as universidades estão abordando esse problema?Não.

Ter um diploma é realmente necessário em algumas indústrias.Também é verdade que os graduados da faculdade tendem a ganhar mais.No entanto, a atitude sobre a faculdade necessária caiu de 60% para 45%, de acordo com a organização sem fins lucrativos Educational Credit Management Corporation.Mesmo os que já estão comprometidos com a faculdade estão duvidando da decisão.</s>
