Over 16 million students enrolled in an undergraduate degree, a 1.2% increase from the year before, according to a survey released Thursday by the National Student Clearinghouse, an education data provider.

But that growth came down almost entirely to rising interest in community colleges and undergraduate certificates, where enrollment massively outnumbered that at traditional four-year universities. While the number of new students seeking two-year associate’s degrees rose 2.2%, interest in bachelor’s degrees grew less than 1%. 

Overall, community colleges added 173,000 undergraduate students last fall, nearly double the number of new students at public four-year colleges. Private nonprofit universities actually suffered a decline in enrollment, losing nearly 60,000 students.

The report, which covers 97% of post-secondary enrollment across the country, illustrates traditional universities’ ongoing identity crisis while students rethink the validity of a four-year degree. As young Americans grow disillusioned by tales of crushing student debt loads, a tight labor market for entry-level jobs, and the threatening possibility that artificial intelligence might usurp some of those roles in the near future anyway, many are looking into other educational pathways.

One factor behind the divergence is cost. Average in-district tuition at public two-year institutions costs a little over $4,000 this year, while public four-year colleges tend to run in-state students around $12,000, according to the College Board. Universities and colleges tout rising tuition costs as investments into students’ futures, but while most data still suggests bachelor’s degree holders will earn more and face less unemployment over the course of their career, fresh grads are now facing a tough job market to navigate. In September, the unemployment rate for new college grads hit 9.5%, its highest since 2021.

The difficult labor market for entry-level roles has pushed more young people to low-cost alternatives, including community colleges and trade schools, which also surged in popularity last year. High-paying jobs that do not require degrees, such as escalator installation and electrical power-line repair, have gone viral among Gen Z audiences, and associate’s degrees and certificates are often functional pipelines for students interested in exploring skilled trades.

While the National Student Clearinghouse report did not say which areas of study community college-goers tend to opt for, other surveys have found that most students who are not planning on transferring directly to a four-year school favor degrees that will grant them quick entry to the workforce. These include nursing, engineering and information technology.

To be sure, earning a bachelor’s degree is still seen as a prerequisite for most knowledge work sectors. In addition to imparting social and creative problem-solving skills, recruiters still rank GPA and degrees highly in their search for new talent, although recent evidence suggests many companies are doubling down on hiring from top colleges. And alternative hiring pathways to white-collar work might have a harder time gaining traction than advocates claim. A Harvard study last year tracked hiring across hundreds of companies, finding that even when employers tout non-degree requirements in their job postings, only one in 700 new hires without a degree actually benefit from these programs.

For traditional colleges, slowing or declining enrollment adds to a list of financial pressures. Falling birth rates in the U.S. have contributed to a so-called enrollment cliff, a shrinking pool of eligible students that could lead to budget cuts and mergers or closures for less secure institutions. Another headache has been the sudden decline in international enrollment as the Trump administration has enforced strict visa requirements for students coming from abroad. 

International students are a significant revenue stream for schools, but the National Student Clearinghouse data suggests the U.S. has already become a less attractive destination. Graduate international student enrollment last fall declined nearly 6%, while the number of undergraduates from abroad grew 3.2%, less than half last year’s rate.

During World War II, the U.S. government tied agriculture to foreign policy by using taxpayer dollars to buy food from American farmers and send it to hungry allies abroad. This agricultural diplomacy continued into the Cold War through programs such as the Marshall Plan to rebuild European agriculture, Food for Peace to send surplus U.S. food to hungry allies, and the U.S. Agency for International Development, which aimed to make food aid and agricultural development permanent components of U.S. foreign policy.

During that period, the United States also participated in multinational partnerships to set global production goals and trade guidelines to promote the international movement of food – including the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization, the International Wheat Agreement and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.

When U.S. farmers faced labor shortfalls, the federal government created guest-worker programs that provided critical hands in the fields, most often from Mexico and the Caribbean.

At the end of World War II, the U.S. government recognized that farmers could not just rely on domestic agricultural subsidies, including production limits, price supports and crop insurance, for prosperity. American farmers’ well-being instead depended on the rest of the world.

Since returning to office in January 2025, Trump has dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development. His administration has also aggressively detained and deported suspected noncitizens living and working in the U.S., including farmworkers. And he has imposed tariffs that caused U.S. trading partners to retaliate, slashing international demand for U.S. agricultural products.

Trump’s actions follow diplomatic and agricultural transformations that I research, and which began with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Feed the world, save the farm

Even before the nation’s founding, farmers in what would become the United States staked their livelihood on international networks of labor, plants and animals, and trade.

Cotton was the most prominent early example of these relationships, and by the 19th century wheat farmers depended on expanding transportation networks to move their goods within the country and overseas.

But fears that international trade could create economic uncertainty limited American farmers’ interest in overseas markets. The Great Depression in the 1930s reinforced skepticism of international markets, which many farmers and policymakers saw as the principal cause of the economic downturn.

World War II forced them to change their view. The Lend-Lease Act, passed in March 1941, aimed to keep the United States out of the war by providing supplies, weapons and equipment to Britain and its allies. Importantly for farmers, the act created a surge in demand for food.

And after Congress declared war in December 1941, the need to feed U.S. and allied troops abroad pushed demand for farm products ever higher. Food took on a significance beyond satisfying a wartime need: The Soviet Union, for example, made special requests for butter. U.S. soldiers wrote about the special bond created by seeing milk and eggs from a hometown dairy, and Europeans who received food under the Lend-Lease Act embraced large cans of condensed milk with sky-blue labels as if they were talismans.

Another war ends

But despite their critical contribution to the war, American farmers worried that the familiar pattern of postwar recession would repeat once Germany and Japan had surrendered.

Congress fulfilled farmers’ fears of an economic collapse by sharply reducing its food purchases as soon as the war ended in the summer of 1945. In 1946, Congress responded weakly to mounting overseas food needs.

More action waited until 1948, when Congress recognized communism’s growing appeal in Europe amid an underfunded postwar reconstruction effort. The Marshall Plan’s more robust promise of food and other resources was intended to counter Soviet influence.

Sending American food overseas through postwar rehabilitation and development programs caused farm revenue to surge. It proved that foreign markets could create prosperity for American farmers, while food and agriculture’s importance to postwar reconstruction in Europe and Asia cemented their importance in U.S. foreign policy.

Farmers in the modern world

Farmers’ contribution to the Cold War shored up their cultural and political importance in a rapidly industrializing and urbanizing United States. The Midwestern farm became an aspirational symbol used by the State Department to encourage European refugees to emigrate to the U.S. after World War II.

American farmers volunteered to be amateur diplomats, sharing methods and technologies with their agricultural counterparts around the world.

By the 1950s, delegations of Soviet officials were traveling to the Midwest, including Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev’s excursion to Iowa in 1959. U.S. farmers reciprocated with tours of the Soviet Union. Young Americans who had grown up on farms moved abroad to live with host families, working their properties and informally sharing U.S. agricultural methods. Certain that their land and techniques were superior to those of their overseas peers, U.S. farmers felt obligated to share their wisdom with the rest of the world.

The collapse of the Soviet Union undermined the central purpose for the United States’ agricultural diplomacy. But a growing global appetite for meat in the 1990s helped make up some of the difference.

U.S. farmers shifted crops from wheat to corn and soybeans to feed growing numbers of livestock around the world. They used newly available genetically engineered seeds that promised unprecedented yields.

Expecting these transformations to financially benefit American farmers and seeing little need to preserve Cold War-era international cooperation, the U.S. government changed its trade policy from collaborating on global trade to making it more of a competition.

The George H.W. Bush and Clinton administrations crafted the North American Free Trade Agreement and the World Trade Organization to replace the general agreement on trade and tariffs. They assumed American farmers’ past preeminence would continue to increase farm revenues even as global economic forces shifted.

But U.S. farmers have faced higher costs for seeds and fertilizer, as well as new international competitors such as Brazil. With a diminished competitive advantage and the loss of the Cold War’s cooperative infrastructure, U.S. farmers now face a more volatile global market that will likely require greater government support through subsidies rather than offering prosperity through commerce.

That includes the Trump administration’s December 2025 announcement of a US$12 billion farmer bailout. As Trump’s trade wars continue, they show that the U.S. government is no longer fostering a global agricultural market in which U.S. farmers enjoy a trade advantage or government protection – even if they retain some cultural and political significance in the 21st century.

Peter Simons, Lecturer in History, Hamilton College

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

“Chairman of the Fed, I’d put in the absolutely, positively no chance, no way, no how, for any reason,” the JPMorgan CEO said when asked at a Chamber of Commerce meeting on Thursday if he’d ever consider the role. “I would so much more prefer this job than that job. That’s a hard job, but I don’t want to do that job,” he later added. 

“Hard job” may be an understatement given unprecedented pressures on the Fed since President Donald Trump returned to the White House. Last Friday, the Justice Department launched a criminal investigation into the Federal Reserve and Powell’s testimony on the renovation of Fed office buildings. The probe follows a year of increased pressure on the central bank from the Trump administration to lower interest rates. 

In August, the president attempted to unseat Fed governor Lisa Cook over alleged mortgage fraud, the first time a president has fired a sitting governor in the central bank’s 112-year history. A federal court ruled that Cook could keep her seat while she fights the firing, but Cook’s future remains uncertain as the Supreme Court hears the Trump administration’s appeal later this month. 

In addition, the Fed faces the tricky task of trying to prop up the labor market by lowering interest rates without reigniting inflation.

Dimon said he would consider being Treasury secretary if asked, but he’s hesitant to take a job working under someone else. 

“I would take the call, consider it, and think about why and what they want. But what they want and how they want to operate would be important to me,” Dimon said. “But I’ve been my own boss for pretty much 25 years, and I like it that way.” 

This is not the first time Dimon’s name has been mentioned as a potential cabinet secretary. In 2024, then President-elect Trump announced that Dimon would not be in his administration after speculation that he would be nominated for Treasury secretary. Dimon agreed that he wouldn’t be the best fit, saying “I’m not about ready to start” having a boss again. 

Earlier this week, it seemed that Dimon and Trump were at odds after Dimon warned chipping away at the central bank’s independence “is not a good idea.”    

Trump later called Dimon out, saying “Jamie Dimon probably wants higher rates. Maybe he makes more money that way.” 

On Thursday, Dimon reiterated his opposition to interfering with the Fed’s independence because “it will drive rates higher not lower,” but said he and Trump were on the same page. 

“Everyone I know, including the president of the United States, says we need an independent Fed board,” Dimon said. “Most people I know, including the president of the United States, speak up about their opinion, which they’re free to do.”

Dimon and other CEOs such as Bank of America’s Brian Moynihan and Citigroup’s Jane Fraser did just that this week after Trump called for a one-year 10% cap on credit card interest rates. Dimon said that would limit access to credit and adversely affect people who lower credit credits. 

“If it happened the way it was described, it would be dramatic,” Dimon said, speaking to analysts during the earnings call on Tuesday. “It would be dramatic on subprime.”