Longtime readers may know that I attended two universities here in the Cincinnati area: Northern Kentucky University (NKU) and the University of Cincinnati (UC).
I have pleasant memories of both of them, but I especially enjoyed my time at NKU. I was a student there during the 1986-1987 academic year. The university had been founded the year I was born (1968). NKU felt like a dynamic academic institution that was rapidly growing.
Oh, what a difference 39 years can make. NKU is now suffering from a budget shortfall and declining enrollment. The university recently announced that it will eliminate 1% of its existing workforce. An unspecified number of vacant positions will also be eliminated.
I saw the news on Facebook, where the rule of thumb is: Don’t read the comments. But of course I did. There were plenty of people blaming both Donald Trump and “woke” professors.
More than one thing can be true at the same time. The Trump administration isn’t the most friendly to universities, and there is, indeed, a problem with ideologically leftist professors throughout academia.
But a version of this scenario was also true when I was a college student. The Reagan administration cut funding to higher education in the 1980s, prompting an outcry in some quarters. Some of my professors were far left-of-center, former hippies from the 1960s. They were then in their forties, and just moving into positions of authority in the university system. Many of them were not shy about voicing their opinions.
And yet, there was still a sense that the university system was healthy and sound…including at NKU.
Universities throughout the country are fighting a diverse set of problems nowadays, some of their own making, some not. Here’s a quick rundown.
Almost all universities have become profligate spenders. They have overspent on ill-thought construction projects, and the salaries of six-figure administrators and rock-star professors.
Here’s an example from NKU. In 2013, NKU paid former president Jim Votruba $287,000 per year to teach two courses. That’s about $404,000 in 2025 money.
And we wonder why NKU has a budget shortfall…
But the big problem is the declining number of 18-year-olds. When I was born in 1968, birth rates were declining—but then the yardstick was the postwar Baby Boom. Birthrates did rise again in the 1980s and early 1990s. But they leveled off in the latter half of the 1990s, and have fallen further in this century. Fewer infants in 2007 means fewer 18-year-old college freshmen in 2025. It’s a matter of simple math.
Universities are also suffering from a widespread perception that their product is overpriced and overrated. This varies by major. Despite the fatuous hype about “AI”, an engineering degree is still a better long-term bet than a sociology degree. But for now, at least, a four year degree doesn’t automatically confer clout.
This is a change from my salad days. Back then, the conventional wisdom was: if you got a 4-year degree, someone would hire you to do something.
Higher academia will not disappear, but the sector is clearly contracting. It’s easy to blame Trump or leftwing professors, and that’s the natural tendency of most people in these highly politicized times. But I reiterate: universities in the mid-1980s were also caught between a cost-cutting Republican administration and politically left-of-center academics.
The real problems are adults who are raising dogs and cats instead of kids, and university programs that aren’t matched to the needs of private-sector employers. Until those two conditions are fixed, university enrollment will continue to decline. So will the fortunes of the universities.
-ET