Changes made to student loan programs and the so-called demographic cliff are set to impact Virginia college’s enrollment numbers, according to members of the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia, or SCHEV.
The forthcoming drop in enrollment is still being sussed out and may impact other regions worse than Virginia. But it will impact financial demands made by the Commonwealth's public and private institutions, especially as they work to train the next generation of high skilled employees.
The first cause for concern is changes to federally backed college loan programs made under President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill. They include maxing out lending amounts in ways that could see enrollment in higher skill programs decline.
“We will probably see reduced graduate enrollment and certainly reduced full time graduate enrollment,” SCHEV Policy Analytics Director Tod Massa told committee members in during the virtual meeting. “We will see more and more people working while attending graduate school and taking a class a semester. I don’t think there will be any surprises about that.”
Still, during what Massa called “times of economic change,” students may seek higher end degrees more often to prepare for a more stable economy.
“[Enrollment] will increase because the job market isn’t great?” SCHEV member Jennifery Montague asked, before we worrying about the impacts from the federal loan cap.
“I suspect it will lead to a decrease in enrollment,” Montague said.
The second hurdle to clear? The broader decrease in younger age groups across the country is leading to a “demographic cliff,” with fewer young people in the education pipeline all together.
But there was some disagreement about just how much schools could be impacted. Members expressed concerns about how national and local numbers differ, and their predictions aren’t always correct.
The discrepancies gave pause to SCHEV members who said they may have to step up and speak directly to legislators about the data’s accuracy.
At least one Virginia-based data aggregate, the Weldon Cooper Center at UVa, admitted data post-pandemic has been hard to digest but still points to a drop off due to demographic changes.
“Despite some uncertainty about where Virginia enrollment will increase or shrink, it is fairly clear that over the next decade the school-age population will shrink based on the fact that birth rates have fallen steadily over the last two decades not only in Virginia, but also in the U.S.,” reads one early 2024 education demographic report from Weldon Cooper.
A new, updated enrollment report from Weldon Cooper is expected sometime early next year.
Former Delegate Chris Peace, head of the state’s private college group the Council of Independent Colleges in Virginia, said Mid-Atlantic states like Virginia may be less impacted by the demographic cliff, but that just puts us on the defensive.
“Other states advertising, marketing in the Commonwealth, looking to take our students because Mid-West, New England, the Northeast, that is where some of the demographic issues are going to hit hardest.” Peace told Radio IQ.
He stressed college was still of value and people were paying for college knowing it's “still the biggest deliverer of economic freedom and mobility that they have available.”
Peace also worried about federal changes to the Pell grant program, a large source of private college tuition funding. New limits include excluding some students if they’ve got other, non-Title IV grant aid, and changes to the Student Aid Index, an income benchmarker, which could see Virginia’s private colleges lose nearly $30 million a year.
“Fewer people will be eligible as a result,” Peace said, suggesting colleges are being asked to “fix the plane mid-air.”
Much of the changes to college loan programs were designed to push people toward programs that end with higher paying jobs to pay off the loans. But Peace said the programs the schools he represents offer, including K-12 education, social workers and ministers, may not fit the “higher paying” bill but are still important.
“How will that impact the support for those programs, and a lot of other liberal arts?” he opined, pointing to the Department of Education’s Professional Degree definition that includes things like medical doctor but not physician's assistant or nurse practitioner.
“At a time when Virginia is looking to increase the number of nurses, the definitional issue is very limiting,” Peace warned.
Whatever issues continue into future college programs, Virginia’s legislature will likely address some of them during the 2026 session which starts in January.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
