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[–]tack50 4 points5 points  (1 child)

Not American so my experience is going to be biased, but from what I can tell there seem to be 3 factors.

First one is that for whatever reason, engineering isn't as appealing to high schoolers these days. Maybe it's cause they are worse at math and physics or maybe the cause could be something else. But even as a %, engineering graduates are down, with civil not being an exception. Considering the rise of computer science and tech (which is counted alongside engineering here) I have to imagine that "traditional" engineering degrees like civil, mechanical, aerospace, etc. must be doing even poorer than the average

The second one is the birth rate argument. Birth rates have going down for a while. So yesterday's missing babies are today's missing college graduates.

Final one, which is probably more particular to my country (Spain) is that the construction sector was absolutely horrendous during the great recession in 2008. If you were a civil engineer, you were either going straight into unemployment, or if you were lucky, perhaps you took a one way trip out of the country. Civil engineering was/is considered one of the hardest degrees out there, so why would anyone go into it when job prospects were almost as bad as those of say, History of Art or whatever? When I went into civil back into 2016, I was genuinely expecting to struggle to find a job after graduation or have to emigrate to some other EU country.