Welcome to the September edition of The American Enterprise. This month, we are featuring pieces from Preston Cooper on the drop in college enrollment, Jay Cost on the power shift from Congress to the executive branch, Howard Husock on the golden age of public housing, Kevin R. Kosar on the future of the US Postal Service, and Dalibor Rohac on the myth of "cheap" Russian energy.

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September 2025

Welcome to the September edition of The American Enterprise. This month, we are featuring pieces from Preston Cooper on the drop in college enrollment, Jay Cost on the power shift from Congress to the executive branch, Howard Husock on the golden age of public housing, Kevin R. Kosar on the future of the US Postal Service, and Dalibor Rohac on the myth of "cheap" Russian energy.

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The College Enrollment Plunge Is a Correction, Not a Crisis ([link removed] )





College enrollment crisis ([link removed] )





By Preston Cooper

If there was an era we might call “peak higher education,” it was right after the Great Recession. Unemployment spiked ([link removed] ) , especially among younger people. Those who couldn’t find work, or who wanted to advance their careers at a time when promotions were scarce, turned to higher education for a leg up. Millions took the opportunity to attend college or go back to complete their degrees rather than take their chances in a weak labor market.

As the economy cratered, Congress obliged the swelling demand for higher education with more funding. Higher student loan limits, heftier Pell Grants, and the new American Opportunity Tax Credit all fueled the college craze. Leaders offered moral encouragement as well. In 2009, President Barack Obama set a goal ([link removed] ) of making the United States the most-educated nation in the world. And who can forget Michelle Obama’s infamous “you should go to college” rap video ([link removed] ) ?

College enrollment duly spiked. The number of undergraduates on college campuses peaked ([link removed] ) at 18 million in fall 2010. Open-admissions colleges that specialize in enrolling marginal students ramped up. The University of Phoenix—the nation’s most famous online mega-college—enrolled a third of a million students in the fall of 2010.

The federal government’s proximate goal of increasing college enrollment was a smashing success. But in retrospect, the era of peak higher ed looks like a mixed bag. Advocates celebrated more students going to college and bettering themselves. But many students left school with a bitter taste in their mouths.

Many of the marginal students never finished college at all. In 2008, the six-year completion rate at the University of Phoenix was a mere 9 percent ([link removed] ) . Barely one-fifth of students who attended community college finished their programs ([link removed] ) , and many of those who did couldn’t transfer their credits to a four-year school. New college graduates found themselves ([link removed] ) employed in lower-wage jobs that had not traditionally required bachelor’s degrees. Millions felt they had poured time and money into college yet had little to show for it.

Student loans compounded the resentment. Colleges gleefully encouraged their students to take on debt, promising that the benefits of a college education would allow borrowers to repay with ease. It worked out for some people. But millions of others, especially those who took on debt but didn’t finish school, found themselves with unaffordable loan payments. Loan repayment rates plummeted ([link removed] ) . The saga culminated in President Joe Biden’s ill-starred (and wildly expensive) attempt at mass debt cancellation.

Pride goeth before the fall, and the stage was set for a collapse in college enrollment. An improving economy and flat growth of new high school graduates contributed, but so did a drop in public confidence ([link removed] ) in higher education.

Enrollment fell steadily from 2010 onward. By fall 2023, there were 3.2 million fewer undergraduates seeking degrees on college campuses than there were in the throes of the Great Recession. Many defenders of higher education have called this a crisis ([link removed] ) .

But new research ([link removed] ) I recently published at AEI shows that the college enrollment plunge is the opposite of a crisis. In fact, it’s an overdue correction.

The colleges doing a good job—those offering high-quality degrees at reasonable prices and graduating most of their students—aren’t the ones losing enrollment. Rather, almost all of the drop in student numbers is from low-quality colleges—those schools that students would likely be better off avoiding in the first place.

Measuring College Quality

To get to the bottom of what’s really driving changes to student enrollment, I set out to measure the change in student numbers at high- and low-quality institutions.

To define quality, I used four different measures of student outcomes: the share of students who finish their degrees within 150 percent of the normal time to completion, the rate at which borrowers pay down principal on their student loans, the rate at which borrowers default on their loans, and the median earnings of former students after leaving school. While these variables all measure different things, they tend to be correlated with one another: a school with a low graduation rate usually has a low loan repayment rate. I therefore create a composite measure of each college’s outcomes in 2010, weighting the four variables equally.

Using this measure to divide colleges into five equal-sized groups, or quintiles, based on their enrollment in 2010 immediately reveals huge disparities in educational quality. Students who attended a college in the bottom quintile graduated at a rate of 16 percent, compared to 72 percent for the top quintile. Students attending schools in the bottom quintile are seven times more likely to default on their loans. They also earn just $30,000 per year, compared to $50,000 for the top quintile.

Students who attend higher-quality colleges obviously end up much better off. Some of this is likely due to the characteristics of the students they enroll. Open-enrollment colleges in the bottom quintile probably enroll students with worse grades in high school, who struggle to pass their college courses and graduate on time.

But much of the disparity in outcomes is likely due to institutional quality. Some colleges do better by their students than others. Moreover, the fact remains that the outcomes a typical student can expect if they attend a low-quality college are much worse. If attending a higher-quality school isn’t an option, many of those students would be better off not attending college at all.

Trends in College Enrollment, 2010–23

Dividing colleges into groups based on their outcomes reveals stark changes in their aggregate student numbers over time. The lowest-quality colleges saw the biggest plunge in enrollment: Schools in the bottom quintile lost 47 percent of their undergraduates from 2010 to 2023. The University of Phoenix—the largest college in the bottom quintile in 2010, with over 330,000 students—lost three-quarters of its enrollment. The mega-school has shrunk so much that the University of Idaho has seriously explored ([link removed] ) an acquisition.

But high-quality colleges did well. Schools in the top quintile increased their enrollments by 8 percent between 2010 and 2023....

Read the full piece here > ([link removed] )



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Dalibor Rohac





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The Golden Age of Public Housing--and Why It Didn't Last ([link removed] )

Howard Husock





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You Can't Replace Congress with the President ([link removed] )

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The US Postal Service Is Going Broke ([link removed] )

Kevin R. Kosar



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