College enrollment rates tell us a lot about what concerns today’s young adults. But while geographic and other trends shift, children are still compelled by the same status, meaning, or freedom that motivated previous generations.
Ivy League schools, stalwarts of academic draw, have always performed well during college application season. Tens of thousands of high-school students apply, 3% to 8% matriculate, and a school renews its reputation of selectivity.
Of course, the Ivies have seen wild oscillations in enrollment over the past five years. The COVID pandemic altered school performance and college life — one (small) reason many schools cut standardized test requirements — affirmative action was overturned in 2023, and pro-Palestinian protests defined the elite universities later that same year. As a result, enrollment saw a dip, a surge, another significant dip, and finally a stable incline.
Events such as those listed have had immediate influence on Ivy League interest among applicants, but in the end, young people still want to attend. As with most people, the high-academia environment allures applicants who know the status an Ivy League education confers.
It is not that brief political happenings have held no long-term sway, though. Environment can also work against the Ivies, and indeed it has.
One recent but well-documented trend is the boom of Southern universities. College-aged students — especially ones from up North — are heading down South in droves. According to the Wall Street Journal, “the number of Northerners going to Southern public schools went up 84% over the past two decades, and jumped 30% from 2018 to 2022.” Add that to the strong increases overall in first-year applicants which Southern regions have experienced since 2019.
For many, the calculation is simple: College life in the South is fun, free, and warm. During the pandemic, Northern schools shut down and implemented mask mandates, while Southern schools placed little restriction on large-group gatherings. By 2024, obnoxious political protests and riots had, ironically, made the North-South atmosphere difference all the more stark. Likewise, people just seem friendlier in the South.
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A smaller contingent of students is boosting enrollment at religious colleges. Students of Generation Z lack meaning, in large part, and seek it at faith-infused schools. Unlike isolating, Left-loyal colleges, these provide the specific educational values students have trouble finding elsewhere.
As more and more students give up on college experiences in the North, it seems that enjoyment and purpose are trumping educational prestige. Their migration shows as much. This reality, however, speaks also to the usual particularity young people show in where they choose to associate. Status, freedom, and purpose are the same values college students have always sought, but it is a trademark of the modern age that these three are to be found in separate places.