Massachusetts higher education sector faces strong headwinds

A sharp drop in confidence in higher education, a trend observed regardless of party affiliation, gender, education level or age, represents a major challenge for colleges and universities around the world, not just in Massachusetts. Pictured is Bunker Hill Community College in Boston. (Massachusetts Department of Higher Education)

Massachusetts is famous for bragging about living by its wits. While other regions may claim a better year-round climate as an attraction, or natural resources or an industrial base that fuel their economies, the Commonwealth has looked to an excess of brain power as its comparative advantage.

This has made the last few decades a golden age in Massachusetts, as the global knowledge economy has richly rewarded places with economies built on the foundation of a robust higher education sector. But it also means that the difficult road ahead for higher education will pose a much greater threat to Massachusetts than to other states.

The fortunes of higher education, good or bad, “are more pronounced here than in any other state,” said Doug Howgate, president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, during a recent presentation and panel discussion the organization met on the economic impact of higher education in Massachusetts.

Massachusetts has the highest percentage of adults with a bachelor’s degree of any state – nearly 46% – and employment in Massachusetts’ higher education sector represents a greater percentage of total wages than in any state except Rhode Island.

The decline in the country’s college-age population is considered a serious threat to the sector. “We’re going to have a shrinking young population in this country, and that’s an existential threat to higher education,” Howgate said, summing up the way the issue has been framed. But Howgate said it’s a more nuanced story than that and, as his presentation made clear, it’s more complicated than just changes in population numbers.

During the 60-year period from 1952 to 2012, for example, the U.S. population under age 20 grew 51 percent, but higher education enrollment increased nearly 900 percent, or 16 times as much, Howgate said. In other words, it’s not just changes in the college-age population that matter, but, as Howgate put it, “the batting average that higher education has in convincing students that higher education is the place for them.” That batting average soared in the last half of the 20th century, and Howgate said that maintaining — or increasing — that average is where “long-term economic policy needs to go.”

Recent data already points to some slippage. From 2010 to 2021, the state’s resident population under the age of 20 fell by 4%, but higher education saw an even larger drop in enrollment, by 6.1%.

Part of the explanation is a national decline in confidence in higher education. From 2015 to 2023, according to Gallup results shared during a session by Evan Horowtiz of the Center for State Policy Analysis at Tufts University, there has been a sharp drop in trust in higher education, a trend observed regardless of party affiliation, gender, education achievement or age.

This trend corresponds to a decline in interest in pursuing higher education among high school graduates in Massachusetts, which is most pronounced in communities of color that represent a growing percentage of the state’s population.

In annual data collected by the state education department on high school completion plans, there was a drop from 2016 to 2023 in the share of those planning to enter higher education in the following year, from 80% to just over 70%. In Lawrence, however, where 94% of the student population is Hispanic, there has been a much steeper drop in the percentage of graduates who plan to continue on to college, from just over 70% in 2016 to 50% in 2023.

From 2010 to 2022, Howgate said, the state’s white population declined by 327,000, while the black and Hispanic population increased by almost the same amount — by 332,000 residents. “If we are to continue to maintain and grow our higher education sector and connect Massachusetts residents to the Massachusetts economy, what is happening in Lawrence is critically important,” he said.

Chris Gabrieli, president of the State Board of Higher Education, said addressing the huge demographic disparities in college completion rates must be a top priority. “We have a 30-point difference in this state between the probability of you getting a college degree six years after graduation [from high school] if you do not have low income or [are] White or Asian than if you are low-income, black or Latino,” Gabrieli said. “This should be completely unacceptable to all of us.”

The good news, he said, is that the state is taking steps that can significantly reduce that gap. Gabrieli highlighted the state’s commitment to early college programs, which allow students to take college courses – and earn credits toward a degree – while still in high school. He said evidence shows that early college participation is leading to 15 to 16 percentage points higher rates of college enrollment and persistence after high school.

“This is huge,” he said, calling it one of the largest effect sizes of any known educational strategy.

That article first appeared in Commonwealth Lighthouse and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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