A new report about college enrollment in Washington state raises red flags for employers
Soon, around 70% of jobs in Washington state will require some education beyond high school. Yet the rate of homegrown high school grads earning credentials here is on the decline, a new report says.
The projected rate of enrollment in colleges and universities dropped 10 percentage points between the high school graduating classes of 2019 and 2021 alone, according to numbers released by the Washington Roundtable, a nonprofit advocacy organization composed of executives from companies around the state. That comes at a time when 70% of the state’s open jobs between 2024 and 2029 are expected to require some degree of schooling beyond high school.
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“These students are going to be in a bind in terms of getting good jobs with advancement opportunities,” said Brian Jeffries, policy director for the Roundtable organization. (Figures in the report come from research firm Kinetic West.)
The low college-going rate here reaches back further than the pandemic, but postsecondary schooling has taken a nosedive nationally since 2020 as students took on financial hardship and child care. Resistance to college is driven by more complicated factors beyond just cost, including a belief that higher education isn’t required for a high-paying job.
But it isn’t just fewer bachelor’s degrees the Roundtable is worried about. Colleges and universities are also where people can get certified in certain trades and complete apprenticeships across a wide variety of disciplines. These also count as credentials.
“We hear people say that we need a lot more focus on the trades, but they’re captured in the data on credentials,” said Steve Mullin, president of the Roundtable.
The low college-going rate is somewhat of a puzzle in Washington, which has one of the most generous financial aid grants in the country for higher education. Yet students here fill out the required federal form for financial aid at a lower rate compared to the rest of the country.
This projected drop-off in credentials is happening at the same time as graduation rates have increased, another cause for concern, Roundtable officials say.
