As much as we (Coogs) hate Rice University; Rice actually benefits Houston because of the backgrounds of typical Rice students as well as the fact they get many out of state kids into the city. In fact, majority of Rice kids come from out of state.
The fact that Houston has both a private and a Power 4 public school in its own city is very, very vital and puts Houston miles above other cities.
That being said, birth rates are most likely going to affect small colleges and flyover state universities. Given that UH primarily gets kids from its own city, I donāt think UH will ever have to worry about birth rates anytime soon.
UH is only going up from here, and we can do it even with just focusing on Houston kids.
I agree that the birth rate thing will have little effect on UHās enrollment, simply because the greater Houston areaās population, including its college aged population, will keep increasing largely through immigration and migration. It may affect other schools a lot, but wonāt affect UH much, given that the vast bulk of our students come from a local area where the population (including the college age population) wonāt decrease anytime soon.
On the sprawl thing, however, that will always be limited by the length of a reasonable commute. Any significant sprawl further West than Fulshear, for example, is unlikely, given that.
Given the size of the homes and quality of the school districts, donāt look for suburbs like Katy, Fulshear, The Woodlands, or much of Cypress (Bridgeland, etc) to decline anytime soon.
My parents built their huge suburban dream home in Katy over two decades ago, and believe meā¦.that neighborhood has NOT lost any value.
I disagree that immigrants are going to be the ones that impact Houstonās growth. Most of the growth Houston will see will be from people moving from other states, mainly for Houstonās āaffordable housingā all of which are majority in suburbs.
The entire US is in the middle of a perpetual housing supply shortage which is making housing prices higher and higher, and thereās no way that immigrants are going to be able afford them. Given that outer suburbs are mostly red, I donāt think immigrants will ever see tax credits or any type of credit to buy a home subsidized by natural citizens.
But again, this leads back to the fact that Houston doesnāt have much room to sprawl anymore, and as long as housing keeps going up, property taxes will keep going up. And to many Houstonians, property taxes are already very high.
I think the Houston housing market will remain relatively the same for the foreseeable future, but itās going to be the late 2030s when I predict Houston will be in a financial crisis because sprawling will be impossible and too expensive by that point, and property taxes will become unaffordable for many resulting in a cascade of declining suburbs from the outer edge to the suburbs built from the 90s.
But like I said. Because Houston has both an incredibly prestigious top 20 university coinciding with a Power 4 Public University, Houston wonāt end up like Detroit or something
Actually, Detroit has 2 Power 2 Universities close to it and the similarities between Detroit and this immigration wave are strikingly similar.
When the auto manufacturers ramped up in Detroit, they needed cheap uneducated labor to work at the Automobile assembly lines so they targeted poor uneducated African Americans from the south as part of āThe Great Migrationā movement to Detroit, Chicago, New York and California.
When the Big Autos cut staff, or relocated, the huge working class was left with a city with NO JOBS for that relocated labor force hence the decline of Detroit.
Now the managers of the assembly lines and those with the corporate jobs already had posh houses in the suburbs and they gladly sent their children to Michigan and Michigan State. The children of the auto workersā¦nopeā¦they were too busy trying to survive once the rug was pulled out from them.
For those that donāt think this current immigration push is 100% the same concept, but on a bigger scale, you are blind.
Cheap labor, and with no benefits, is only helping the elite class make more profits. Sureā¦there will be a few that use it to create a next generation of college students but most will face the same exact fate of the Detroit Auto workers and just like with Detroit, Houston will be collateral damage increasing the divide between the Haves and Have Notsā¦just look at our rapidly rising house prices.
Houston is NO LONGER an affordable city compared to other other Sunbelt options like Oklahoma City, San Antonio, etc
There are still plenty of immigrants coming to the greater Houston area from places like South Asia, the Far East, and Nigeria.
Anyone living in Katy or Sugar Land knows that. I live in Katy Cinco Ranch II, and there are three Indian households just on my street alone!
And those immigrants are not, as a general rule, low skilled manual laborers.
Disproportionately professional class, in fact.
And they have big college ambitions for their kids.
UH will continue to get lots of those kids, as well as the kids of professional class migrants from other states.
Thatāll largely mitigate the effects of any baby bust. The baby bust will be hard on some schools, but for those reasons, will have minimal impact on UH.
Those are not indicative of the current wave of immigrants coming in from the open Southern Borderā¦Iām referencing the illegal immigrant component
Nigerian immigrants place a very high value on higher education for their childrenā¦so do Asian immigrantsā¦they are non negotiables to them.
In fact, i am so impressed by the Nigerian culture- their emphasis on family and educational opportunities but those groups tend to enter legallyā¦hence the game plan once they arrive
But I doubt most of those are coming to do union factory jobs.
I am guessing that most of those are coming to be farm labor, do construction, roofing, or landscaping work, or work in low level service jobs (maids, restaurants, etc).
Not exactly like internal migration to the Rust Belt.
Actually its exactly like the migration to the ānowā rust best in the 1920s and 1930sā¦THAT region was booming and didnāt get teplaced by the Sunbelt cities until the start of the 1970s and even then the Sunbelt cities were blank slatesā¦
Speaking of a decline in college students nationally (which UH isnāt likely to be greatly be affected by, for reasons Iāve stated), I just read this.
College enrollment is already dropping, but the drop is more complex than people realize, and cannot be explained purely by recourse to declining birthrates.
Quote: Between 2012 and 2022, white undergraduate enrollment fell by 22 percent across all sectors of higher ed, from about 9 million to 7 million students, a Chronicle analysis of federal data shows. Black enrollment dropped 19 percent, Asian enrollment was up 2 percent, and Hispanic enrollment surged by 31 percent.
The greater Houston area, with its large Hispanic and Asian populations, will undoubtedly help UH continue to grow, given that college enrollment among those two groups is apparently growing.
I was a personal trainer while in college, and just happened to work with a Nigerian guy at the same gym who went to UH. Looked like he could tear you in half if he wanted, but was one of the kindest people Iāve known. He was from Lagos and his dream was to finish college and move back home and open a gym.
Iāve always had great interactions with Nigerian immigrants.
U of Michigan and Michigan State are both an hour out of Detroit.
Rice and UH are within the urban core of UH. Students that attend UM/MSU donāt depend on Detroit for infrastructure but do depend on Detroit for tax revenue.
Rice and UH both share the tax revenue within the urban core of Houston (inner loop), and students in these universities really have no reason to use suburban infrastructure unless they commute from there or are going out of town via car.
Detroit was impacted by putting all their eggs in the auto industry basket, but Detroit also failed because all the money continued to flee outward to suburbs. Once the sprawling stopped, the people on the outside left for other cities, and that resulted in the bankruptcy of Detroit. This coincided with the initial racial aspects of white flight / suburbs yes, but thatās essentially what happened.
Houston not only has 2 quality universities, but it is also diversifying its industries that will keep people here such as the Med Center, Chemical Plants, Major Shipping Ports, and hopefully Houston starts embracing the Energy Transition instead of fighting against it
The only immigrants taking those jobs are the ones already educated or the ones headed for education. Auto assembly workers (and most jobs of that era) didnāt require degrees
Iām not sure about the two co-flagships (Michigan and Michigan State), but I know that enrollment at the ādirectionalā Michigan schools has been in STEEP decline.
Central Michigan had almost 30K students when I was getting my degree there in 2007-2008.