Colleges Keep Chasing 18-Year-Olds and Ignoring Everyone Else.

Written By Angeli Gianchandani

Higher Education Is Running Out of 18-Year-Olds and Out of Money, But the Real Problem Is Who Gets Matched to What.

Angeli Gianchandani writes about cultural intelligence, global leadership strategy, and the human dynamics that shape how leaders and organizations rise.

The Edge  |  By Angeli Gianchandani  ·  September 8, 2026  ·  4 min read

Recruiters cannot find workers, new graduates cannot find jobs, and both sides are arguing about the wrong cause. The debate has split into two lazy camps: "AI is killing jobs" and "it is not AI at all." People keep pointing at AI. AI is a tool. The real trouble starts upstream, in the talent pools feeding the door. That door sits at one end of a university's life. There is another end, the one nobody is watching, where a very different kind of student is waiting to walk back in.

Conor Grennan, CEO of AI Mindset and former Chief AI Architect at NYU Stern, sees the mindset as half the issue: companies that use AI to augment their people are hiring more humans. Others treat AI as a replacement and hire fewer people for the job. "That's not a technology story as much as it is a mindset story," he wrote. Stanford payroll data backs him up: where AI automates work, entry-level employment falls; where it augments people, it grows across every age group.

He is right about mindset. But universities carry a second problem companies do not: the talent pools themselves are shifting. Georgetown and Lightcast project a gap of 4.6 to 6 million college-educated workers by 2032, a credentials gap more than a population gap: the pipeline is not producing enough nurses, engineers, teachers, and skilled workers to match what open jobs require. How an institution reads that shift is a cultural choice before it is a strategic one, and nowhere is that choice starker than on America's campuses.

Meanwhile, the seats are emptying

Universities face their own demographic reckoning. Dozens of colleges now close every year. In 2025 alone, more than 9,000 higher education jobs were cut, University of Southern California posted a $251 million operating deficit, and Syracuse, despite a $2.5 billion endowment and a 150-year history, took on new debt and cut programs to close its own budget shortfall. Moody's projects expenses will outpace revenue again this year. Fewer 18-year-olds explain part of it, but not all of it.

But the crisis numbers describe a shortage. The real question is why institutions are not already solving it with what they have.

Cindy Gallatin spent three decades building those revenue streams inside institutions: former chief strategy officer at the University of New Haven, and the executive who grew Quinnipiac University's online division from zero to a multi-million-dollar operation. Her point: the opportunity is invisible from the outside, because it lives in the admissions process, the enrollment funnel, and the program catalog. "Most institutions do not have a demand problem. They have an execution problem," she told me. "The programs are already built, some of the data on adult learners is already sitting in their systems, and the revenue potential is waiting. What is missing is someone who understands the internal machinery of admissions and enrollment well enough to connect it to a new strategy, with new partners and new markets." 

Part of the reason, which no one has figured out: the metrics that define success,enrollment, graduation rates, selectivity, do not count this market at all. What is not measured does not get chased.

The same wave that empties the seats fills them

Gallatin named what is missing. Mary DeWitt shows what it looks like when someone finds it anyway. On Mississippi's Gulf Coast, DeWitt moved to the area in 2018 and joined the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Southern Mississippi's Gulf Park campus in 2019. Seven years later, she still takes pottery, jewelry-making, and Gulf Coast history classes, and has recruited her neighbors to join. "I keep going because of the new and interesting classes. I want to learn. I love it," she told the university this spring, as her chapter grew to a record 276 members. DeWitt is on the other side of the demographic wave. More than 18 million college-educated workers will leave the labor force by 2032 as boomers retire, widely described as the largest, most educated generation of retirees the country has seen.

The market Gallatin pointed to is barely touched. Just 0.2 percent of Americans over 55 are enrolled in any schooling, and by 2034 Americans over 65 will outnumber those under 18. Nationwide, Osher institutes serve about 130,000 members across 125 campuses, and nearly 100 university-based retirement communities now operate nationwide. Gallatin sees a second market hiding in plain sight, one that has nothing to do with age. "Colleges need to entertain the option of being a life-long learning partner," she said, pointing to corporate retraining: universities working directly with companies to reskill their own employees, a market built on new skills rather than new degrees.

Skeptics will note that a seminar membership costs less than a credit hour. The seminar serves its own purpose. What sits behind it, campus housing, degree programs, and loyalty, is the business, and loyalty is the deepest asset of all. 

A 72-year-old known by name on campus becomes a devoted advocate and, in time, a legacy donor. That is what happens when an institution invests in people and cares.

A CULTURE test for higher education

Gallatin named the execution problem. The CULTURE framework™ is how I solve it: Connect, Understand, Lead, Transform, amplified by Uplift, Responsibility, and Empathy.

Understand what was named at the start. Connect the generations the wave separated: graduates without a first rung, retirees with fifty years of ladders behind them, and mentors who show up on their own. Lead rather than retrench: AI fluency in every major, portfolios over GPAs, employer partnerships from freshman year. Transform the model itself: five generations now share the same workforce, from Gen Z entering it to the Silent Generation still teaching in it. A university built for one 18-year-old, a one-size-fits-all model cannot serve that range. Universities already widened the funnel once; an MBA or a master's brought in students in their 30s. They never widened it again. The system now has to plan for a full lifecycle: a first job at 22, a retooling at 45, Renaissance painting at 72, all under one roof.

Grennan's lesson holds for campuses as much as companies: augmentation over replacement, culture over crisis, is what grows. Gallatin has watched enough institutions freeze at the first sign of the cliff to know that fear does more damage than the cliff itself. Call the shortage what it actually is: a shortage of 18-year-olds. The other end of the door has been open the whole time.

About The Edge

The Edge is cultural intelligence for leaders, exploring culture, business, leadership, sport, and global systems through original reporting and analysis by Angeli Gianchandani.

Copy Editor

Enid Burns is a Detroit-based journalist and editor. Her work has appeared in CNN, the New York Post, and CNET. She serves as copy editor for The Edge, reviewing each article before publication.

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About the Author

Angeli Gianchandani is a global brand strategist and cultural intelligence practitioner. Her insights have been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Fast Company, and The Washington Post. She is Adjunct Faculty at NYU School of Professional Studies, Visiting Lecturer at African Leadership University, and holds a master’s in international relations from The Fletcher School at Tufts University. Her publication, The Edge, delivers cultural intelligence for leaders at the intersection of culture, sport, and brand strategy. Read more at mobilitygirl.com/theedge.

Angeli Gianchandani
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