The demographics of college are changing rapidly. Kids (and their parents) are abandoning traditional New England venues in favor of the South. The trend has become so pronounced that the London Times has taken note: “Why young Americans are shunning elite universities for the Deep South.”
Where young people used to travel to the well-to-do corners of New England for higher education, increasing numbers now want to attend state schools in the South — Alabama, Clemson, the University of Mississipi (“Ole Miss”), Tennessee, Charleston, Elon — drawn by good weather, exciting football, beautiful campuses and viral social media videos of game-day parties and sorority dance routines.
According to analysis of government data by The Sunday Times, universities belonging to the Southeastern Conference — there are 16, including USC [the University of South Carolina] — recorded a 91 per cent rise in undergraduate students from northeastern states in a decade from 2014 to 2023. USC’s enrolments went up 90 per cent in the same period.
The Times sent a reporter to Columbia, South Carolina, and the article uses the University of South Carolina as an exemplar of the trend. A few key words are missing, however–like “woke” and “left-wing.” More than anything, college kids and their families are fleeing the oppressive and anti-intellectual wokism that has infected most schools, especially in the North. This is the closest the Times comes to acknowledging that reality:
Krista Peterson, an admissions counsellor at College Goals, who works with wealthy clients in the northeast, believes that prospective students are also drawn by the politics down south. “They say it’s less ‘in their face’ when they are with teachers,” she said.
“It” being leftism, apparently.
But what interested me most was this map, which shows the net migration of students from state to state in 2022-2023. Blue is good, red is bad. The colors are based on raw numbers, not percentages, so big states stand out more. But take a look at Minnesota:
Every other state in the Upper Midwest, and almost every other state in the Midwest, is a net gainer of college students. Minnesota stands alone as a state that young people are fleeing.
Why? Two reasons. First, its schools are typically over-the-top woke. Second, students are looking for states where, after graduation, they will have better job prospects. In recent years–specifically, since 2011, when the state began a ran of disastrous Democratic governors–Minnesota’s economy has been in steep decline. Minnesota is the only state whose per capita GDP growth has fallen below the national average in every one of the last ten years. High school seniors probably don’t know that data point, but they, and their parents, can sense that they are on board a sinking ship.
So Minnesota’s students are heading out for greener pastures.
