Churn in Education

The pandemic has challenged a lot of assumptions about both markets and demographics. We used to assume that school enrollment would remain stable according to demographics, and would continue to grow if population was growing.

But even as the pandemic is clearly winding down, we are seeing school enrollments fall in many parts of the country. Remote online learning has been very hard on children. It has damaged their academic development, and it has damaged their social development. The reliance of electronic learning has kept kids glued to electronics for more hours of each day, and more than ever before.

It used to be the case that real estate values were often influenced by school districts. The better the rating of the schools in the area, the more desirable that district would be from a real estate perspective.

We have seen falling enrollment in schools over the past two years. Part has been due to the pandemic. Parents have seen how their children have struggled. It’s been difficult monitoring online classrooms. In the end, for many it’s been simply easier and more effective to home school rather than try to oversee engagement in online learning.

Of the roughly 3.5 million full- and part-time public school teachers, more than one-third, or 38%, said that working during the pandemic has made them consider changing jobs.

At the college level, even more — about 55% — of faculty have seriously considered changing careers or retiring early, according to a separate report from Fidelity Investments and The Chronicle of Higher Education.

We are about to experience major churn in education.