Go to college when there is nothing else to do?

The old joke about teaching was a simple one liner: if you can't, teach.  Increasingly, the reality seems to be that if you can't, go to college--for students, too!

Enrollment at the university where I teach has been on the rise for a few years, as the following chart shows.

Given that most students way prefer not to be in classes, and given that we have not experienced any remarkable demographic surges that could drive this growth, the most obvious cause that we can hypothesize is, well, the Great Recession and the high levels of unemployment, right?

The following chart shows the unemployment rates in Oregon and the US over the same time period:

A remarkable level of similarity in how the lines in both the charts seem to go and up and down at the same time, eh!

It might also seem that even though unemployment rates have started dipping downwards, enrollment numbers seem to be climbing to new highs. But, notice that the growth rate itself has slowed--the changing slope of the enrollment line.  Further, we can hypothesize that there will be a lag between economic conditions improving and enrollment correspondingly changing.

But, there could be a "hidden" reason that is even more possible as the agent for continued enrollment growth: the unemployment rate we look at is the "U-3" number and not the U-6 number.  This distinction is important because U-6 counts:

Total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force

U-6 is, after all, a much higher rate than is U-3.  In April 2012, for instance, while the official unemployment rate was 8.1%, U-6 was a whopping 14.5%

The chart below compares U-3 and U-6 numbers for Oregon:

 Huge differences, right?

At a 16.9% U-6 rate:

“It will take more than normal job growth to get folks back to work,” said Nick Beleiciks, a state employment economist, at Tuesday’s release of the latest unemployment numbers.

 Thus, enrollment continues to grow?  But, will students be really interested in learning for the sole purpose of knowing?

The graduate student enrollment has already turned into a negative growth, which could reinforce the notion that graduate school was nothing but a place to kill time until one found productive employment?

Of course, with enrollment reflecting horrible economic conditions, the student debt situation, too, is kind of a natural corollary, isn't it?  When we begin to look at the entire higher education industry along these lines, the worthlessness of a graduate degree and, to some extent, the wasted time and effort in getting an undergraduate degree, become all the more troubling. 

All these mean one more aspect: if and when the employment and economic conditions really take off for the better, then it could bring back enrollment down to what I would consider as more realistic levels. Universities like mine seem to operate as if this growth will happen forever, and they might be in for a rude awakening?