College students are increasingly voting with their feet when choosing a degree program that will produce a return on their financial investment. They are moving away from institutions that offer poor economic returns and toward those with a more promising payoff.
In Learning with Their Feet, Preston Cooper, Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, offers compelling evidence that students are not just responding to rising costs or demographic shifts. They are actively rejecting or choosing colleges based on quality, value, and outcomes.
Using over a decade of data, he documents a striking divergence in enrollment trends across the postsecondary landscape. Since its peak in 2010, undergraduate enrollment in the United States has declined overall. But that decline is far from uniform.
