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"This student, like many others, isn’t just responding to an immediate economic calculation. He’s also caught in an invisible (and increasingly visible) demographic force: America is running out of people his age. Even if colleges fixed their cost and value proposition tomorrow — even if tuition dropped and job prospects improved — there would still be fewer students like him to fill seats. We are hitting peak 18-year-old, and the decline is just beginning."

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[-] etchinghillside@reddthat.com 10 points 4 weeks ago

I don’t know what “peak 18 year old” is trying to convey.

[-] terminal@lemmy.ml 7 points 4 weeks ago

I believe peak supply of people in that age group. I.e for the up coming future there will be less and less students since there are just fewer kids

[-] Cethin@lemmy.zip 1 points 3 weeks ago

I believe the correct word to use is fewer in this case, since students are a finite countable thing. Sorry.

[-] GenderNeutralBro@lemmy.sdf.org 6 points 4 weeks ago

It's a very dumb way to say that population decline is predicted.

The birth rate really has dropped below replacement levels in the US. Immigration might not fill that gap. With how actively hostile the current administration is to immigrants, that seems likely.

[-] scintilla@crust.piefed.social 1 points 3 weeks ago

Most people immigrating aren't freahly 18 even if they were able to keep up with the population decline. Yes there are people on student visas but it's less than half the number of H1B visas.

[-] b34k@lemmy.world 4 points 4 weeks ago

I my town, we just had the peak graduating class in terms of number of students. From this point forward, at least as far as we have data on (which would be around 4 or 5 year olds entering the school system) there will be fewer people graduating every single year.

Our number of 18 year olds has peaked

[-] dhork@lemmy.world 0 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago)

"Peak X" is a phrase that is often used to convey the highest point in a long term trend. And if we are past that peak, that implies that the trend will continue to be lower and lower for the foreseeable future.

Consider the nation's supply of 18 year olds that would normally enter college. We can't just create more 18 year olds on demand, couples would had to have gotten busy 19-ish years ago to produce today's supply of 18 year olds. With birth rates declining, not only are there fewer 18 year olds now than before, but those 18 year olds will be able to make fewer humans for the future when they all get busy with each other later.

[-] unwarlikeExtortion@lemmy.ml 2 points 3 weeks ago

To me, the peak in "peak 18-year-old" to me sounds like the Urban dictionary definition of peak than anything else.

We're @ peak 18 yo rn & its LIT AF🔥

[-] Sergio@piefed.social -1 points 4 weeks ago

We can’t just create more 18 year olds on demand,

Well, there's an easy way to get a lot of 18 year olds, but ICE is making sure that won't happen.

[-] phoenixz@lemmy.ca -1 points 4 weeks ago

The highest amount of 18 year old alive at one single moment in time

People have been having less children over the past two decades so now the amount of available 18 year olds is declining. This is happening inany countries for many reasons, usually increased prosperity retducing the need for children that will help you out

Some countries really went off a cliff (hello South Korea, are you okay? Please start accepting immigrants or you'll cease to exist as a country) and others have it less, though still enough that it can cause severe problems. Less kids means that the gap between old and young widens twice as fast, and it means that you'll have less work force available, and at the same time more people needing help, so the younger will have to work twice harder for the elder.

[-] AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works 1 points 4 weeks ago

Why is this post so controversial?

[-] BananaIsABerry@lemmy.zip 4 points 3 weeks ago

Might be the unintelligible headline.

Literally just needed to day "peak number of 18 year olds" and, suddenly, wow! A real phrase that makes sense!

[-] AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works 1 points 3 weeks ago

Possibly. It seemed like an obvious play on peak oil to me, but I guess not everybody got it

[-] DomeGuy@lemmy.world 1 points 4 weeks ago

Because, unlike oil, humans are a renewable resource.

Like, oil, however, too many of us is unsustainable.

[-] AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works 3 points 3 weeks ago

too many of us is unsustainable.

That's very much a problem of yesteryear, given that we're currently doing below replacement rate globally.

[-] umbrella@lemmy.ml 2 points 3 weeks ago

and we could already make more food and shelter than we need.

[-] RunawayFixer@lemmy.world 1 points 3 weeks ago

To sustain the current amount of humans, we are using unsustainable methods. That makes us unsustainable as well.

Some estimates from Wikipedia: "Climate change, excess nutrient loading (particularly nitrogen and phosphorus), increased ocean acidity, rapid biodiversity loss, and other global trends suggest humanity is causing global ecological degradation and threatening ecosystem services that human societies depend on.[9][10][11] Because these environmental impacts are all directly related to human numbers, recent estimates of a sustainable human population often suggest substantially lower figures, between 2 and 4 billion.[12][13][14] Paul R. Ehrlich stated in 2018 that the optimum population is between 1.5 and 2 billion.[15] Geographer Chris Tucker estimates that 3 billion is a sustainable number, provided human societies rapidly deploy less harmful technologies and best management practices." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_population

[-] andrewta@lemmy.world 0 points 4 weeks ago

Why do you think it’s controversial? I don’t see any comments that would imply that

[-] AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works 2 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago)

The vote ratio was about 2:1 at the time of my comment

[-] TheV2@programming.dev -3 points 3 weeks ago
[-] dickalan@lemmy.world 1 points 3 weeks ago

You have the air of a confidently incorrect Redditor, fucking do something about that you creep

this post was submitted on 11 Oct 2025
20 points (95.5% liked)

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