We all ask ourselves the same question, what’s next? As students get closer to their graduation day, they have to think about the future. Whether you go to college, the military or straight into the workforce, the future is always to be thought about when it comes to adulthood.

As years go on, more and more students are choosing to attend larger colleges or none at all. With this epidemic spreading throughout the state, smaller colleges have begun to lose their popularity due to the increasing population among private colleges. Community colleges, like Community College of Beaver County (CCBC), often have lower tuitions encouraging people to attend the college they can afford.

It’s not easy choosing your future and where you want to go. As time goes on, these chances to go to a small college and pay a lower tuition may be going down. Throughout the past couple years, high school graduates are making the choice to go to bigger colleges that they may have dreamed of when they were a child. Other times, these students decide to attend colleges because they have the degree they aspire to earn.

As these students continue to go to these colleges, the enrollment rates with community colleges continue to go down. Throughout all of America, the enrollment in community colleges is set at 7.3 million students, whereas private colleges have around 17 million students enrolled, Columbia College states on their website. This can cause some problems with these facilities when it comes to finances that go through the programs. With the lack of money flowing through some programs it continues cause is issues to be resolved. The answer to these issues aren’t always proficient to the smaller programs, especially when the solution could be a shutdown.

Discussions have been made throughout Pennsylvania and those who run the system have endured cuts to the state funding. It has been stated that some community colleges will be making budget cuts in order to balance out the year others may have to take more drastic changes.

These drastic decisions could include a permanent closing or merging with another college. There could be a few problems that could rise if these colleges close down forever. What would happen to the students who spent years there earning a degree? Would those years of hard work transfer to another college? Would they diminish just like the money they put into their degree? These questions are ones that should be asked and should be answered before anything is final. Everyone wants to know what their future holds and with the lack of money they may not know where to go next.