Sustainable Higher Education: The Student Side

This write-up comes at the end of my time working at Fullstack and as I transition into my new position at SmartLab.

The higher education space is no longer sustainable. Something has to change.

To give you some context here from a personal perspective, I watched Fullstack Academy dwindle from over 300 employees to less than 200 in a matter of a year. I was laid off in March but was kept on part-time (basically, no benefits but worked a good wage still to live semi-comfortably). Before I joined Fullstack, I worked as a lecturer for Indiana University-Purdue University of Indianapolis (IUPUI). If you've been reading the news, though, Purdue is finally gone from the Indianapolis campus, and a large majority of the workforce on the Purdue side left or were forced to leave. Even the dean of the Purdue school left to be a teaching professor in a completely different state. Students who joined as Purdue students when the announcement came about were asked after 2 years to either transfer to an IU program on the campus or transfer to the West Lafayette campus of Purdue, which, mind you, is about an hour away and part of the choice of going to the Indianapolis campus is that its much cheaper tuition. You can commute from central Indiana to go.

IUPUI was where I was a student, grad student, and lecturer for 9 years. You can read about IU and Purdue splitting HERE

In the past two years, I've watched two places I've worked at drastically change their workforce and the many effects it can have on the students. It also has a huge effect on the workforce. Those individuals now had to change their lives drastically in a short period. Higher education does not have a history of folks jumping from place to place constantly. While pay is lower than the working industry typically, higher education has this place of stability where if you want to settle down, raise a family, and not worry about job stability, it's a great career choice. In June of 2024, that's not the case anymore.

So what happened?

We could discuss a number of factors explaining why that is, but I'm going to view it from two very different abstracted angles. One is from the student side, while the other is from the employee/workforce side. Today's article focuses on the student side. We'll jump into the workforce side once I feel more comfortable writing about that one.

Student Facing Issues

When higher education was a thing back before the 2000s, it was simple. You went to college to get a degree, or you flipped pizzas. In college, you got the grades, and then by showing the employer the piece of fancy paper, they gave you a job. Growing up in the Midwest, too, it was common that the job you took was the job you worked until you retired. You obviously bounced around positions at the company, but you did not leave.

The west coast of the country was known for folks migrating over there for growth and change, where they had the opportunity to change their lives, grow their mindset, and have a drastically different experience. We can even note this way back when Louis and Clark navigated out west. Folks did not want to because they felt comfortable. They chose to be uncomfortable and go out that way. A large portion of the West Coast mindset comes from that. It's why you see Hollywood, tech, video games, and many industries of rapid growth and change exist on the West Coast.

What has happened is that mindset has bled into all parts of the United States, for better or for worse at times.

For the better, it means that more people with that mindset are staying away from the West Coast and being centered in the Midwest or the East Coast. Folks want to change and evolve but do not necessarily want to uplift their entire lives somewhere—maybe to an adjacent state, but not across the country. This growth also causes some rebellion. Folks do not want to pay forty thousand dollars for a piece of paper. Some folks figure out the newest TikTok dance and decide to quadruple that amount in income without even paying for tuition.

As of 2023, 44% of adults over 25 have a college degree; more individuals do not have a college degree than do. Folks are persevering through their drive to show that they do not have to abide by the rules that higher education has had for decades. If their drive to do something on their own is low, they'll go through the system, as that's what they know best. Their drive may be in a completely different place than spending money on education and other outlets instead. That's also not to discredit those who choose not to pursue higher education degrees.

Why I'm mentioning drive is why do you think parents send their kids to schools when they are young? You could argue it for the social aspect, but in reality, many parents are working-class folks who do not even have the time when they get home from work to educate their children on math and reading. I was lucky growing up that my mom decided to be a stay-at-home mom and helped me a lot with phonics and basic math. I was way above my reading level, but that's all because my mom had the drive to ensure I was in good speaking condition because I struggled to talk as a kid. Not every parent has that drive (thanks, Mom). She sacrificed her job she liked to take care of me. Parents who truly want to drive home the educational values they believe in upon their kids probably would home-school them, but they don't. Their values aren't in that, which is why they send their kids off to school.

Students in 2024 have drive in places outside of education, and because of that, fewer and fewer students are signing up for courses. Teaching at Fullstack, many of our veteran students received stipends (the government paid for lack of a better term) to attend our boot camp. As long as it showed they attended, they got paid to learn. When the funding dried up to pay those students to attend, many students left. I had a cohort of students go from 45 to 19 in less than a week when this all occurred. Their drive was to get paid, not to learn for the long haul. We did have several veterans stay, but they took loans out to continue their coursework. Those students were driven. The others, though, were driven by, well, money. A lot of decisions for students to go into higher education are always financial based, whether they think it's a waste of money or an investment.

The student population in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s has changed. They care more about the views and likes on the videos they post and the money they make than about trying to learn something new. When there is a huge financial risk, especially in the current climate of workers getting laid off left and right, there is less and less drive to pursue a higher education degree.

The question I ask you, readers, is driving the leading factor of why students pursue their education in the current climate? What is that drive? Do all of them have to drive even if it's in different lanes?

Join me next time as I dive into the other side of education, the actual workplaces.