1. Enrollment Continues to Decline
 Meredith Jensen for NPR"This fall, there were nearly 250,000 fewer students enrolled in college than a year ago, according to new numbers out Monday from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, which tracks college enrollment by student.
"That's a lot of students that we're losing," says Doug Shapiro, who leads the research center at the Clearinghouse.
And this year isn't the first time this has happened. Over the last eight years, college enrollment nationwide has fallen about 11%. Every sector — public state schools, community colleges, for-profits and private, liberal arts schools — has felt the decline, though it has been especially painful for small private colleges, where, in some cases, institutions have been forced to close.
"We're in a crisis right now, and it's a complicated one," says Angel Pérez, who oversees enrollment at Trinity College, a small liberal-arts school in Hartford, Conn." >> Situational Awareness: The biggest factor for the years of decline is the strong economy. The last time U.S. college enrollment went up was 2011, at the tail end of the recession. As the economy gets better, unemployment goes down — it's currently at 3.5 % — and more people leave college, or postpone it, and head to work.
>> What They're Saying: "Decreasing demographics, a decreasing ability to pay, and an increasing lack of desire to pay from the people who can afford it." - Perez.
>> Of Note: Pine Manor (Mass.) College president Tom O'Reilly now makes regular recruiting trips to El Paso, Texas. "We're very intentional about who we're going to serve," says O'Reilly, who is specifically looking for students whose parents haven't gone to college. Texans now comprise 6% of Pine Manor's enrollment.
>> Read or Listen to NPR's Morning Edition
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Good Monday morning. The Bills are in the playoffs! The Bills are in the playoffs! (Guess which team is Steve's favorite)
Thing: Joy in Newtown
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