“This student, like many others, isn’t just responding to an immediate economic calculation. He’s also caught in an invisible (and increasingly visible) demographic force: America is running out of people his age. Even if colleges fixed their cost and value proposition tomorrow — even if tuition dropped and job prospects improved — there would still be fewer students like him to fill seats. We are hitting peak 18-year-old, and the decline is just beginning.”
I don’t know what “peak 18 year old” is trying to convey.
I believe peak supply of people in that age group. I.e for the up coming future there will be less and less students since there are just fewer kids
I believe the correct word to use is fewer in this case, since students are a finite countable thing. Sorry.
I my town, we just had the peak graduating class in terms of number of students. From this point forward, at least as far as we have data on (which would be around 4 or 5 year olds entering the school system) there will be fewer people graduating every single year.
Our number of 18 year olds has peaked
It’s a very dumb way to say that population decline is predicted.
The birth rate really has dropped below replacement levels in the US. Immigration might not fill that gap. With how actively hostile the current administration is to immigrants, that seems likely.
Most people immigrating aren’t freahly 18 even if they were able to keep up with the population decline. Yes there are people on student visas but it’s less than half the number of H1B visas.
“Peak X” is a phrase that is often used to convey the highest point in a long term trend. And if we are past that peak, that implies that the trend will continue to be lower and lower for the foreseeable future.
Consider the nation’s supply of 18 year olds that would normally enter college. We can’t just create more 18 year olds on demand, couples would had to have gotten busy 19-ish years ago to produce today’s supply of 18 year olds. With birth rates declining, not only are there fewer 18 year olds now than before, but those 18 year olds will be able to make fewer humans for the future when they all get busy with each other later.
We can’t just create more 18 year olds on demand,
Well, there’s an easy way to get a lot of 18 year olds, but ICE is making sure that won’t happen.
To me, the peak in “peak 18-year-old” to me sounds like the Urban dictionary definition of peak than anything else.
We’re @ peak 18 yo rn & its LIT AF🔥
The highest amount of 18 year old alive at one single moment in time
People have been having less children over the past two decades so now the amount of available 18 year olds is declining. This is happening inany countries for many reasons, usually increased prosperity retducing the need for children that will help you out
Some countries really went off a cliff (hello South Korea, are you okay? Please start accepting immigrants or you’ll cease to exist as a country) and others have it less, though still enough that it can cause severe problems. Less kids means that the gap between old and young widens twice as fast, and it means that you’ll have less work force available, and at the same time more people needing help, so the younger will have to work twice harder for the elder.
Why is this post so controversial?
Might be the unintelligible headline.
Literally just needed to day “peak number of 18 year olds” and, suddenly, wow! A real phrase that makes sense!
Possibly. It seemed like an obvious play on peak oil to me, but I guess not everybody got it
Because, unlike oil, humans are a renewable resource.
Like, oil, however, too many of us is unsustainable.
too many of us is unsustainable.
That’s very much a problem of yesteryear, given that we’re currently doing below replacement rate globally.
To sustain the current amount of humans, we are using unsustainable methods. That makes us unsustainable as well.
Some estimates from Wikipedia: “Climate change, excess nutrient loading (particularly nitrogen and phosphorus), increased ocean acidity, rapid biodiversity loss, and other global trends suggest humanity is causing global ecological degradation and threatening ecosystem services that human societies depend on.[9][10][11] Because these environmental impacts are all directly related to human numbers, recent estimates of a sustainable human population often suggest substantially lower figures, between 2 and 4 billion.[12][13][14] Paul R. Ehrlich stated in 2018 that the optimum population is between 1.5 and 2 billion.[15] Geographer Chris Tucker estimates that 3 billion is a sustainable number, provided human societies rapidly deploy less harmful technologies and best management practices.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_population
Point being, not only is it an issue that we can do nothing about, it’s also an issue that is already going away by itself. So the only thing really worth discussing at this time is how to deal with the fallout of that trend
It’s not going away any time soon. There’s currently 2 to 3 times as many humans as what would be long term sustainable with the way that we live. That means that it’s going to be a problem for at least many decades, but more likely a few centuries. It’s definitely not yesteryears problem. And sustainability should always remain a concern, in everything that we do. Many countries (not the USA obviously) are already taking steps to be more sustainable, but it’s baby steps compared to what is needed.
and we could already make more food and shelter than we need.
Why do you think it’s controversial? I don’t see any comments that would imply that
The vote ratio
Wow. That’s interesting
Absolutely interesting headline. Imagine instead a simple neighborhood built for 10 families surrounding a school for their kids. The families are 20 and 30 somethings since they just had kids. The kids walk to school every day. First the school has to be mostly kinder garden. Then first to 5th, then 7th to 9, then 10 to 12. Finally it becomes a university. At that moment the kids move away to other places. Their parents move to Florida and the cycle repeats itself. The houses get sold to young couples etc.
That’s in a nutshell why the housing economy is terrible. And also how home selling companies see our homes. They see our homes as part of some larger baby making machine. We get in the way after we’ve done our part.
No.
You have the air of a confidently incorrect Redditor, fucking do something about that you creep
Oh, well I don’t even know why I would need an explanation, I’m convinced.
