The American economy is currently in the process of permanently reducing access to higher education.

American colleges and universities are currently in the process of reducing capacity, so not as many people will have access to higher education after a couple years. With that reduction in capacity will come a reduction in the number of people who get a college degree. And of course that will mean fewer people will be in a position to access professions that require a college degree.<br><br>I think it is fair to say that higher education is getting hit by a combination of factors. Over the last few decades a large number of people who never would have been interested in college in the first place were convinced they needed to go to college in order to get a good job in life. But a lot of them ended up being disappointed, because there wasn't all that demand for college-educated workers. And that disappointment is reflected in the sharp decline in enrollment that higher education has been experiencing in recent years.<br><br>But while there isn't all that demand for college-educated workers, colleges and universities have expanded beyond their ability to continue operating on the number of students that they are currently attracting. So to cut costs they are shrinking in size, closing some programs, downsizing others, eliminating certain jobs, and cutting student services. In other words, they are digging themselves into a deeper hole, because it's only going to be harder for them to attract students with less to offer and more cutbacks looming for the years ahead. So they will continue to lose students and become even smaller. And smaller colleges and universities have a lot more difficulty operating at a profit.<br><br>Over the last few decades a lot of colleges and universities expanded beyond their ability to be sustained, so a lot of them will be shutting down. But my guess is that some of them will continue on at a smaller size for several years, in the hopes that demand for their services will pick up. But for the most part that isn't going to happen, because higher education has been growing for so many decades. It was only natural for it to eventually stop growing and start shrinking, so demand is going to continue declining in the years ahead. When enrollment stops declining and starts going back up, that will be the time for colleges and universities to start growing again. But until then, they need to be downsizing, not growing.<br><br>In the meantime, all the people who were planning on going to college over the next several years will need to come up with a different plan. What they will discover is that there are a lot of good-paying jobs available to people without a college degree. And they will learn that there are other ways to pursue their interests in life that don't require a college degree.