With fewer students going back to school in the fall, it’s safe to expect an impact on your family’s higher education costs.
The number of students graduating high school peaked in 2025 and is expected to keep falling for years, driven by a birth rate that dropped sharply during the Great Recession and never fully recovered.
Economist Nathan Grawe, who has spent years modeling these demographic trends, projects the college age population will shrink by roughly 15% between 2025 and 2029, according to an analysis published by the Association of Governing Boards.
That national picture looks different close to home. MTSU's own enrollment office reports admitting more than 9,000 freshmen for Fall 2026, up from 8,916 the year before. While the enrollment cliff
has arrived nationally, Middle Tennessee schools will likely be insulated from it, at least for a while.
At the same time, more families are weighing whether a four-year degree is worth its rising cost, a question landing at the same moment artificial intelligence is reshaping which jobs look like safe bets. A growing number of young people are looking at skilled trades instead. A recent report from JLL, covered by Fortune, found that by 2030 as many as 2.1 million skilled trades jobs in the U.S. could go unfilled. Electrician roles alone are projected to grow more than 9% through 2034, far outpacing average job growth. Community college enrollment in trade programs has already started climbing as a result.
Higher education is already adapting to the new normal. Smaller private institutions, which lean heavily on tuition revenue, may struggle to stay open. Many schools spent the last decade building new dormitories and campus amenities to attract students. With fewer students to fill them, some of that investment could go underused. We could see tuition discounting as schools compete for a smaller pool of applicants.
For your own family, the first step is simply knowing your options. A conversation with your financial advisor about your specific situation, and your specific children, is worth having sooner rather than later.
Many families have leaned on 529 plans for years, and they remain a powerful tool. A 529 grows tax free and can cover tuition, room and board, books, and up to $10,000 a year in K-12 tuition. What it is not built for is a child who decides college is not the right path.
But the rules have loosened here too. Funds can now be used for qualified apprenticeship programs, including many of the skilled trades gaining ground right now. Families can also change the beneficiary to a sibling or other relative, or roll up to $35,000 over a lifetime into the account owner's Roth IRA, as long as the account has been open at least 15 years.
This is the kind of conversation we are having with clients more often. With fewer families certain their child will attend a traditional four year school, some parents are asking whether they have put too much into a 529 relative to how likely that money is to be used the way they originally planned.
I wish I could tell you there is an easy answer. It usually comes down to weighing the 529's tax benefits against the flexibility of saving in other accounts alongside it.
For families who want that flexibility, other savings vehicles are worth a look. UTMA and UGMA custodial accounts are not restricted to education spending at all, which suits a family that is not yet certain what path their child will take. New Trump Accounts, created under recent federal legislation, offer another tax advantaged way to save for a child's future, including a government-seeded contribution for children born within a specific window of years. Many families find that splitting savings between a 529 and one of these more flexible accounts captures the tax advantage where it is likely to be used and preserves options where it is not.
None of this means college is going away, or that a four-year degree has lost its value for the right student. It does mean the path to adulthood is getting less predictable, and the savings strategy that made sense a decade ago may not fit every family today.
Jennifer Horton, CFP, CTFA, is an executive vice president and financial adviser at CapWealth. For more information, visit capwealthgroup.com.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Should you save for college when fewer students are enrolling? | Opinion
