Education

If U.S. Colleges Are Dying, Why Are Students Applying?

March 11, 2026
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Dear reader,

As we explore the numbers that help us understand our world, we are especially interested in looking at how the experiences of young people are changing. Last week, we touched on free school lunches. This week, we consider students applying to college.

As the fall semester began in September, a Gallup poll was published that presented bad news for fans of higher education. The percentage of Americans who consider college “very important” has been cut in half since 2013, falling to just 35 percent.

Colleges and universities have faced numerous challenges in recent years — the end of affirmative action, turbulent clashes on campuses, cuts to federal funding and more. So perception that their relevance is fading might not be surprising.

But this might be: The number of applications that colleges are receiving is up significantly.

We asked the reporter Susan Shain to tell us why, and why it might not be a sign that the tides are turning for universities.

— Matt Thompson

In the fall of 2024, colleges received nearly 54 percent more applications than they did a decade prior, according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics. But that doesn’t mean that 54 percent more students are applying to college. Instead, researchers attribute much of the surge to students applying to more schools.

As proof, they point to the number of enrollments, which rose only 8 percent over the same time period. The total number of students in college has actually declined since 2014.

Experts suggest two main reasons for the uptick in applications:

  • Many colleges stopped requiring standardized test scores during the Covid-19 pandemic. That made it less clear which schools students could get into, so they applied to more, with many shooting their shots at the most selective schools.

“When we see the numbers, it’s telling this positive story,” said Jimmy Aguilar, a researcher at the University of Southern California. “But we don’t know who those students are — are they the same students that we’ve been admitting already, who are just applying to more schools?”

The most recent report from Common App, which includes data from about a third of the roughly 2,600 four-year colleges in the U.S., does show increases in applications from underrepresented populations, such as Black and Latino students and those from rural or low-income areas.

The practice of applying to more schools comes with challenges for families, who must contend with an increasingly expensive and overwhelming process, and for college admissions officers, who must do more guesswork over which students will actually enroll if offered spots.

So, have we reached peak applications? Katharine Meyer, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, thinks we’re close. In the coming years, she said, several things could calm the frenzy:

These factors, she said, could make the process a little less fraught for both families and colleges.

When considering how many applications colleges now receive, it’s important to understand that perceptions of higher education have significantly changed. A degree used to be viewed as a golden ticket to a good life. But that’s no longer the case.

As the average price of tuition and fees for a four-year college roughly doubled over the past three decades (when adjusted for inflation) — and students became overwhelmed by debt, and wages stagnated — Americans began wondering if college was, well, worth it.

While completing college still leads to higher earnings overall, research suggests that the benefits depend on how much students pay and what they study. The risks are higher for students from less privileged backgrounds, with one researcher concluding that upward mobility is less attainable now than it used to be. The risk of a poor return on an investment in higher education is especially dire for students who take on debt but don’t graduate. (More than a third of students who enroll at four-year colleges do not earn degrees.)

National politics have also contributed to a shift in perceptions. In the Gallup poll mentioned above, a mere 20 percent of Republicans said college was “very important,” a precipitous drop from 68 percent in 2013. In a survey published last year, more than a third of respondents who didn’t have confidence in higher education pointed to campus politics as the reason.

Across the political spectrum, there’s growing demand for colleges to demonstrate their value by taking steps like lowering prices, providing clear cost-benefit analyses and creating more direct connections between coursework and jobs. If colleges fail to adapt, they may find themselves among the dozens that have been forced to close over the past decade.

  • President Trump has said that he wanted colleges to submit data on the race, gender, grades and test scores of its applicants. But he laid off most of the government workers responsible for analyzing such data.

  • After the Supreme Court’s ban on affirmative action in 2023, one early analysis shows that Black and Latino enrollment has risen at public flagships while dropping at the nation’s most selective schools.

  • In deals with the Trump administration, Columbia and Brown agreed to share their applicant data with the public to show that students were accepted solely on their academic merits. Research suggests that admissions based exclusively on this criterion could ultimately benefit the wealthiest students.

  • Some of the most elite universities have brought back standardized testing requirements. Emi Nietfeld, a journalist who grew up homeless and in the foster care system, says that’s a good thing, because test scores can help disadvantaged students stand out.

  • Course “shutouts” — a student’s inability to enroll in a required class — are also plaguing higher education. As The Times’s recent Your Money Adviser column laid out, this problem not only drives up the cost of college, but can also delay a student’s ability to graduate.

  • In 2023, Paul Tough explored for The Times Magazine how higher education has become a risky bet for many people, and why Americans are losing faith in college.

— Susan Shain

Test your knowledge: As The Times’s DealBook recently reported, applications to law school can serve as a sort of indicator for how the economy is doing. (When the economy is cooling, applications tend to increase.) According to the American Bar Association, about how much did the number of applicants increase in the U.S. in the past two years?

Tell us what you think: Are you a college graduate? If so, do you believe earning a degree has been a worthwhile investment? Or, if you did not go to college, do you think that was the right financial move for you? Let us know why or why not at dearheadway@nytimes.com.

More states take action on school meals: As last week’s newsletter hit inboxes, state leaders were mostly commemorating National School Breakfast Week by advancing efforts to cover the costs of meals for more students. South Dakota state senators and Hawaii’s state representatives voted related bills out of committee, and governors in New York and Michigan promoted their states’ efforts to feed kids. But in Utah, a related bill was voted down by a state house committee.

A correction to last week’s edition: Because of an editing error, last week’s edition of this newsletter misstated the connection between the National School Lunch Program and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. The lunch program is not part of SNAP. Children whose households participate in SNAP are automatically eligible for free school meals, so cuts to SNAP mean some children eligible for the lunch program would no longer receive the benefit without submitting additional paperwork.

The Headway initiative is funded through grants from the Ford Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF), with Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors serving as a fiscal sponsor. The Woodcock Foundation is a funder of Headway’s public square. Funders have no control over the selection, focus of stories or the editing process and do not review stories before publication. The Times retains full editorial control of the Headway initiative.



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