Higher education used to be the ticket to opportunity. Now, as colleges boast of ‘record breaking’ admissions, students are left with overcrowded classrooms and diluted resources. The door to success isn’t opening wider – it’s getting harder to push through. As a student, you do not need the statistics to see the manifestation of the over-admittance crisis. From a three-week wait to meet with an advisor, to the competitive sport that is finding a seat in a packed 300-person lecture, the effects of this crisis are impossible to ignore.
With the increased number of admitted students UConn and many other institutions have seen over the past few years, there is a serious threat of a dilution in academic rigor. Pressured professors are expected to manage record-setting class sizes, which forces them to teach differently than they would in smaller settings. After speaking with a UConn professor, he explained that the sheer size of his mostly freshman class this year makes it impossible to engage with students in the same deep and meaningful way. The conversations, feedback and mentorship that once defined his teaching are now replaced by broad lectures and surface-level interaction, not because he wants to teach this way, but because scale has made anything else unmanageable. Students who crave depth are left with fewer opportunities to challenge themselves, undermining the very purpose of higher education.
Beyond the decrease in academic rigor, we are also seeing the devaluation of degrees. What this means is that as colleges across the country admit more and more students, the number of individuals graduating with a diploma grows as well. I am not an economics major, nor do I pretend to be – but even the most basic rules of supply and demand suggest that when degrees become oversupplied, both their economic and symbolic value inevitably decline. The ticket of opportunity that once was a college diploma is increasingly looking like a participation trophy. A diploma is no longer a guarantee of landing a successful job. More often, it’s simply the baseline requirement to even get in the door.
The strain doesn’t stop at the value of a diploma. Right here on our own campus, as well as many other universities, we are directly experiencing the ripple effects of over-admittance. The unavailability of advisors, the shortage of tutors, the strain on dining services and the overcrowding of housing are just a few examples of pressure that is being put on campus resources. Students are not just competing for grades anymore; they are competing for time, for meals, for beds and for the very support systems the university promises them when it accepts them.
Just this past school year, UConn has arguably experienced one of its worse housing crises to date. UConn previously guaranteed housing for all students up to eight semesters, but in it’s updated housing contract for the 2025-26 school year, the on-campus housing guarantee policy is no longer in place. UConn President Radenka Maric wrote in March that a decision had been made to prioritize and guarantee housing for first-year students, which also meant that housing was no longer guaranteed for rising sophomores, juniors and seniors. This shift only adds to the growing list of stretched resources, leaving students with fewer guarantees and more uncertainty in nearly every aspect of campus life.
This is the paradox of education today: more access does not always mean better opportunity, and in many cases, it means quite the opposite. So, the question is: what is to be done? The answer starts with us. Students must use their voices to demand balance and to keep college accessible while also restoring academic rigor. That means investing more in tutors, advisors, housing and mental health services so students are not left fighting for scraps of support. It also means creating diverse pathways such as trade programs, community college pipelines, and flexible degree options that reflect the diverse ways students can seek opportunity in a changing world. Accessibility without support is empty and growth without quality is hollow. If universities want to boast about record breaking admissions, they must be prepared to back it up with record-breaking investment in their students.