Less kids are enrolling in college due to several factors. A decline in birthrates (right around the 2008 recession), a decline in those who calculate that college provides a real return on investment and the cost of lost opportunity, and also a third strike in the form of federal funding cuts.
There's a bunch of example case sob story, a lot of emotional focus. Yet I didn't see much (obvious) about any positive paths forward.
It's far too late at this stage to prop up schools that are surplus relative to population. Re-purposing them for other educational tasks or possibly businesses (rather than just a shooting range complex) might be happening elsewhere.
College could be made less of a rat-race hassle. The core aspects of an education and experience in college probably should be more fool-proof (all the classes delivered as a scheduled package that works, threaded for multiple years with a couple slack openings for retakes). With some slack time built in for making up a dropped class or three (not entirely skipped semesters!). Also social mixer and electives courses. Though crack down on the crazy party stuff, moderation is key, and as a tea toter, I'd like to suggest a very strong look at banning all mind altering drugs (including alcohol, other than limited quantities for cooking) during the educational years.
As far as the question of if college is worth it? That might differ from person to person. Trades / Vocational work can also be fulfilling and maybe some people might enjoy that. We all need mechanics, electricians, and construction workers. Though those jobs might seriously benefit from some augmentation / automation / tech to prevent worker burn out and body damage.
somenameforme · 8h ago
Burn out and body damage from trades is not really factually based, especially not compared to something like software. You can actually quantify this. For instance the median age of a construction worker is 42. [1] In some states it's pushing near 50.
By contrast in software there is extreme defacto age discrimination. I don't think it's usually real age discrimination but simply companies don't really value experience in software much, and so somebody with many years years of experience is often seen as less desirable than somebody with little to no experience, but who you can pay a far lesser wage to. Whatever the reason, the point is that software is, for most, going to be a relatively short-lived career.
I can't find a good source for the data on the age of developers, though there are a million blog style or Q/A posts bemoaning the increasing difficultly finding a job as developers age. The Stack Overflow survey [2] is probably not representative, but matches observation at least, with a median age in the younger side of the 25-34 bracket. And that brief window of time you have in software is after you [typically] spend 4 years in college, and then spend however many years paying off your college debt before you finally get to enjoy your full salary.
And obviously I am speaking big picture here. There are people who have a catastrophic injury in the trades and live the rest of their life on disability from age 22. And there are software developers still coding at 50. But these are rare exceptions, and not the rule in either case.
Body damage math isn’t even close. BLS puts non-fatal injuries in construction at 2.3 cases per 100 FTEs. For computer systems design it’s 0.1 – that’s a 23× gap.whole job takes a toll over time.
The median age of 42 just means a lot of sore 40-somethings can’t afford to quit yet. Age alone doesn’t tell you how their knees and backs feel after 20 years of rebar.
Not sure how many people you know in the industry but most architects, managers, etc... are 40+ years old. Not even remotely difficult to get hired as a senior engineer, way more in demand than 20 years old devs
somenameforme · 3h ago
Here's the full table. [1] 2.3 is an extremely low rate for any job where you use your body in any way whatsoever. For instance it's the same rate as e.g. working in retail at a furniture store, and substantially less than the 3.6 rate for those working in retail at hobby/toy/game stores.
And yeah obviously software has plenty of room to transition into management and other late career roles. The same is true of the trades where common later stage transitions involve starting your own shop (with a career of connections/clients made it's not the big undertaking it might sound) or moving onto teaching. But it's the same problem in both cases, a small minority of people will achieve such transitions.
Sitting in a chair is also pretty terrible for your health. :)
chneu · 5h ago
The difference is one can then workout or take breaks, stand, or a variety of things to offset the sitting/sedentary time.
The trades can really destroy your body and there isn't really a way around this besides changing the working conditions.
mmooss · 7h ago
> Burn out and body damage from trades is not really factually based, especially not compared to something like software.
Your assertion isn't factually based - it's just another baseless claim on the Internet.
I don't know the factual basis about the harm labor does - it's one of those things that generally don't need it for most people - but basic knowledge and reasoning is that hard, and repetitive, physical labor daily for decades is going to cause some real physical problems. Most white-collar workers I know over 40 have bad backs. I know college kids who didn't last a summer on a worksite.
And as much better evidence, we have generations of reporting on it from the people who do physical labor. Those people have also long said they worked so their kids to do something different. I've never heard one who agreed with you - I've never heard anyone who agreed with you.
If it's so great, do you think many developers in SV would take construction jobs if they paid more? Managers? Other white-collar workers? Out in the cold and rain? No remote working for those jobs. :)
> There are people who have a catastrophic injury in the trades and live the rest of their life on disability from age 22.
There are many other injuries - losing fingers and toes, serious traumatic injuries to every part of the body. I knew a painter who fell off a ladder, fell three stories and landed in the splits. But they had a family and they were back at it as soon as they healed; it wasn't without pain. If you do it every day for decades, how do you never fall from the ladder?
> the median age of a construction worker is 42. [1] In some states it's pushing near 50.
Many have no choice.
kevin_thibedeau · 8h ago
There's also been the 20+ years of STEM dogma driving students away from liberal arts colleges teaching a classical curriculum.
poulsbohemian · 8h ago
True - but my alma mater (midwest liberal arts school) has had a CS program since the 1970s and added programs like data science over the past decade, plus always had a 3+2 engineering partnership with another school. In the small PNW town where I now live, the liberal arts college added a CS program a few years ago plus also had a 3+2 engineering partnership for decades. So my point is - even for those students who wanted to do something STEM related, these liberal arts schools started augmenting their programs a long time ago.
titanomachy · 8h ago
Most drugs are already banned. Lots of people do them anyways, especially college students.
decimalenough · 8h ago
The title is misleading. As the article itself notes, "Large flagship universities—blessed with strong academic reputations and high-profile sports programs—continue to boost local economies".
It's the second and third-tier institutions located in economically depressed areas, like the one profiled here (Western Illinois University’s Macomb campus), that are suffering. After all, why would you fork out a lot of money for a diploma that's worth little and won't even connect you with local job opportunities?
mmooss · 8h ago
> why would you fork out a lot of money for a diploma that's worth little and won't even connect you with local job opportunities?
To learn, to sharpen your mind, to grow and change yourself.
vineyardmike · 8h ago
You can do that in many institutions, why would you pick an institution with little reputation in these depressed cities?
The entire point is that reputable and well funded institutions with large campuses and thriving social and civic networks are doing fine. It’s small institutions that popped up to satisfy a once growing are being drained as demand falls.
Education is great, expanding your mind is great, but there is little incentive to foreclose other opportunities along the way in pursuit.
mmooss · 7h ago
> The entire point is that reputable and well funded institutions with large campuses and thriving social and civic networks are doing fine.
Can everyone get into those schools?
vineyardmike · 6h ago
> Can everyone get into those schools?
Obviously not everyone can get into every school. But overall enrollment volume across every institution is down, which means being a top X% student will get you into progressively better schools unless they cut overall class sizes. Obviously it’s the institutions at the bottom of the list which lose students first, which is the “problem” highlighted by this article.
whatever1 · 6h ago
I think after industrialization we started realizing how advanced knowledge of complex topics can multiply our impact and wealth. No wonder all nations strived to educate their people and their people aspired to go to colleges and get higher specialized degrees.
The reality is that the economy cannot occupy all these specialists and still requires a ton of fungible generalists. In fact we made so many specialists that themselves became fungible. Look at the tech layoffs, they casually throw under the bus industry legends, simply because everyone has become nearly replaceable.
And even from a societal perspective you would think that with more knowledge we would become more tolerant, more rational etc etc. Well how did that work out?
glimshe · 3h ago
Which you can also do through reading and even YouTube nowadays.
College is great but 1) Not for everybody and 2) only the rich can pay 50K-400K to "sharpen their minds" without a high-paying job in the other end.
We need more middle class jobs that don't require a 4-year college degree
kohbo · 8h ago
There are other ways to do that. School is an investment.
JumpCrisscross · 7h ago
> There are other ways to do that. School is an investment
For most people, yes. For our elites, I think one of the great losses over the past generations has been this financialisation of education. Measuring ROI solely in monetary terms, thereby sacrificing the civic and cultural parts for that which is easily measured and marketed.
trilbyglens · 7h ago
Imo college sports is a huge driver of this, as schools are more often seen as sports franchises these days than actual educational institutions.
mmooss · 7h ago
What other ways?
threatofrain · 8h ago
And why should you sacrifice the ability to connect with opportunity just because you wanted to expand your mind? It's unfortunate that people should be presented with this forced choice.
mmooss · 7h ago
> sacrifice the ability to connect with opportunity just because you wanted to expand your mind
Growing as a person and intellectually is a great opportunity, a lifelong change. Better than some immediate cash in an entry-level job.
erkt · 7h ago
In exchange for 100k in debt? Library is free.
mmooss · 7h ago
The 100K is a big problem.
The library doesn't even approximate a substitute. Maybe you are a genius, but almost everyone needs teachers. Even experts need people to teach them new things, to mentor them, etc. They also need labs and equipment.
Also, the library you need for real reasearch is not free. It only exists in academia. Your local public library doesn't give you access to nearly the same resources, nor the essential reference librarians. (Maybe the NY Public Library? Does that have JSTOR, for example?)
CuriouslyC · 8h ago
Totally doable online from a beautiful beach in a much more affordable area. ChatGPT is better than a lot of professors I had and I went to a top tier university for my area of study, professors mostly were just there to do research and either weren't good teachers or didn't care to be.
sapphicsnail · 8h ago
I remember when Reddit blew up I started meeting people that had really specific bits of information, stuff that I would normally only see from someone with some sort of domain expertise, but were oblivious to the context in which that knowledge was produced and couldn't really do anything other than regurgitate the info. Really curious to see the sort of brain rot LLMs will bring.
mmooss · 7h ago
Agreed, and I've also met many people who have spoken with great confidence and ignorance.
rekenaut · 9h ago
Students entering smaller colleges now have to ask themselves more than ever whether their university will be open in four years when they plan to graduate. With increasing closures of private and public colleges alike, I’m sure this will continue to fuel the flight from regional schools to state flagships.
keiferski · 8h ago
Now really seems like an opportune moment for one of these third-tier colleges to rebrand itself as a trade school but aimed at students that would have otherwise gone to college (and not the traditional trade school audience.) I bet there is a ton of demand for a trades-based education but in a college experience wrapper.
alex43578 · 5h ago
I disagree. The changes a school would need to make to the school, the curriculum, and the faculty to switch from teaching accounting or gender studies to welding or HVAC would mean you'd be pasting an expensive University of Misc State logo and mascot onto a whole new enterprise, implicitly putting a premium on an educational path that's really all about ROI.
keiferski · 4h ago
I think many people would be willing to pay that premium for a college experience. And from the college's point of view, changing focus is certainly better than shutting down completely.
keiferski · 47m ago
Just to add to this: I did a little research into this idea and there seem to actually be a few places like this already - Thaddeus Steven’s Institute of technology is one.
timr · 8h ago
Anyone who looked at demographic trends 10+ years ago knew that this was coming. As far back as the late 90s, it was clear that universities were overinvesting into the one of the last echos of the baby boom.
somenameforme · 8h ago
A lot of people are, in general, in denial of what reduced fertility will bring. Consequences lag effect by decades so it's not exactly a secret what the future will hold. For instance most don't realize that Japan is still in the 'good ole days', relative to what awaits them in the future, even as places like Tokyo start to shrink today.
I also think people don't realize how fast things start happening once they do start happening. For another example there you can approximate the change in population due to fertility (once a fertility rate is shared among a population) as being a scalar on population of fertility_rate/2 every 20 years. So a fertility rate of 1 means each and every woman has 1 child on average, yet nonetheless that means your population ends up declining by 50% every 20 years, exponentially, until you start having a healthy number of children again, or go extinct.
So for a bemusing one one, North Korea and South Korea are still technically at war. And North Korea is going to win, simply by continuing to exist. South Korea with their fertility rate of 0.75 will not only see catastrophic population decline, but their entire economy will collapse alongside it. Going from 0.75 to a healthy fertility rate is probably not going to happen, so the North needs to merely wait, and keep having children.
nyokodo · 8h ago
> And North Korea is going to win, simply by continuing to exist.
Except their fertility is below replacement also and as a poverty stricken repressive regime that relies on food aid from South Korea, China, and probably Russia lately the latter having their own terminal demographic crises… they might not out-survive the south for long.
Your article gives North Korea a fertility rate of 1.78, which is substantially higher than even the US at 1.62. South Korea is an entirely different world at 0.75. So you're looking at a population change per 20 years of -11% in North Korea, -19% in the US, and -62% in South Korea!! None of these are good of course, but the timeline of decline and collapse are quite different. All numbers from here, which is just a cleaner representation of UN numbers: https://www.worldometers.info/population/world/
In the end I think the future will become much like the past in that fertility is essentially the point of a nation. What is a few generations of fading prosperity when the longterm cost is the very survival of said civilization? It's just a nonsense deal that nobody would ever agree to on a macro scale, but that most of all Western civilization is trending towards.
999900000999 · 7h ago
South Korea probably already has immigration reform ready to go. They’ll just do everything else before letting people meaningfully immigrate.
A “Korean” in 2100 might have Filipino, Indian, African ancestry.
In fact the way things are going Africa will probably end up as the nursery of the world for a few decades. Then birth rates will collapse there too.
The robots should be ready then
somenameforme · 4h ago
Think about the implications of what you're suggesting in practice. You're not going to attract tens of millions of desirable migrants. They literally don't exist. And this is even more true as South Korea is but an extreme example of a trend happening through most of all Western bloc nations.
So you're going to end up having to import people with relatively little education, skills or experience, who don't speak, read, or write the language, have no knowledge of the culture, dramatically different working/cultural values, and so on. Europe was, in many ways, a trial run for this sort of scenario on a far smaller scale than what you're talking about, and the results have not been good. Immigration is not really a sustainable solution.
999900000999 · 2h ago
When you’re 90 and need someone to give you a sponge bath, cultural differences don’t matter much.
You do get weird stories like Filipino nurses treating elderly WW2 era Japanese soldiers. I’m sure it’s only awkward for a moment.
You could have said the same thing about any new immigrants anywhere. How will the Irish fit in Boston?
How will Ukrainians make it in Chicago?
somenameforme · 5m ago
I think the Irish are a great example. We often think it was some huge migration because they had a really tough time integrating in spite of being near to completely culturally compatible. But the interesting thing is that that migration was negligible in size. The largest impact probably came after the Great Hunger in Ireland after which about a million migrants came to the US. [1] So that's a million migrants in a population of 31 million - 3.2%.
In fact for all the talk about the US being a nation of migrants we never had a foreign born population exceeding 14.8%. [1] And that was in 1890 after which a large number of anti-migration bills began being passed, culminating in a low of 4.7% in 1970. It's now up to 14.3% and once again issues are emerging at almost the exact same threshold. Go figure.
---
So now let's consider your idea. South Korea is trending towards a scenario where they will eventually be losing 62% of their population every 20 years. And obviously that is exponential - it's not like it slows down, not unless they start having babies again. To maintain this decline with immigration would require literally just replacing just about the entire former population of South Korea with migrants.
You're talking about migration on a scale unimaginably larger than anything before, with what by necessity would be an extremely low quality of migrant, simply owing the massive numbers needed. So the idea of using immigration to "solve" this is essentially just proposing populating an 'abandoned' land with whoever wants to come. And of course that's possible, but obviously this is not a solution to anything by any reasonable meaning of the word 'solution.'
When the Dutch government cut funding for universities they found a new cash cow: foreigners!
But for Chinese students the Netherlands is exotic nobody wants to go to Missouri I guess.
(Ironically the government is now complaining that there are too many foreigners and that everyone is speaking English).
burnt-resistor · 6h ago
Xenophobia is an automatic signal of ignorance/stupidity/insecurity.
I worked with a Chinese-American naturalized citizen who moved from PGP/Symantec to work at Stanford just long enough to get his kid the tuition discount (10 years still?). That's real love, dedication, and sacrifice for one's kids.
lifestyleguru · 5h ago
At least these students physically are in Netherlands? Over here there are many "private universities/academias" with students from outside of EU but they are permanently on "scholarship in Africa" or "yoga classes in India". It's basically a foot in the door for the EU stay permit.
Less kids are enrolling in college due to several factors. A decline in birthrates (right around the 2008 recession), a decline in those who calculate that college provides a real return on investment and the cost of lost opportunity, and also a third strike in the form of federal funding cuts.
There's a bunch of example case sob story, a lot of emotional focus. Yet I didn't see much (obvious) about any positive paths forward.
It's far too late at this stage to prop up schools that are surplus relative to population. Re-purposing them for other educational tasks or possibly businesses (rather than just a shooting range complex) might be happening elsewhere.
College could be made less of a rat-race hassle. The core aspects of an education and experience in college probably should be more fool-proof (all the classes delivered as a scheduled package that works, threaded for multiple years with a couple slack openings for retakes). With some slack time built in for making up a dropped class or three (not entirely skipped semesters!). Also social mixer and electives courses. Though crack down on the crazy party stuff, moderation is key, and as a tea toter, I'd like to suggest a very strong look at banning all mind altering drugs (including alcohol, other than limited quantities for cooking) during the educational years.
As far as the question of if college is worth it? That might differ from person to person. Trades / Vocational work can also be fulfilling and maybe some people might enjoy that. We all need mechanics, electricians, and construction workers. Though those jobs might seriously benefit from some augmentation / automation / tech to prevent worker burn out and body damage.
By contrast in software there is extreme defacto age discrimination. I don't think it's usually real age discrimination but simply companies don't really value experience in software much, and so somebody with many years years of experience is often seen as less desirable than somebody with little to no experience, but who you can pay a far lesser wage to. Whatever the reason, the point is that software is, for most, going to be a relatively short-lived career.
I can't find a good source for the data on the age of developers, though there are a million blog style or Q/A posts bemoaning the increasing difficultly finding a job as developers age. The Stack Overflow survey [2] is probably not representative, but matches observation at least, with a median age in the younger side of the 25-34 bracket. And that brief window of time you have in software is after you [typically] spend 4 years in college, and then spend however many years paying off your college debt before you finally get to enjoy your full salary.
And obviously I am speaking big picture here. There are people who have a catastrophic injury in the trades and live the rest of their life on disability from age 22. And there are software developers still coding at 50. But these are rare exceptions, and not the rule in either case.
[1] - https://www.nahb.org/blog/2023/06/age-of-construction-workfo...
[2] - https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2024/developer-profile#demog...
The median age of 42 just means a lot of sore 40-somethings can’t afford to quit yet. Age alone doesn’t tell you how their knees and backs feel after 20 years of rebar.
Not sure how many people you know in the industry but most architects, managers, etc... are 40+ years old. Not even remotely difficult to get hired as a senior engineer, way more in demand than 20 years old devs
And yeah obviously software has plenty of room to transition into management and other late career roles. The same is true of the trades where common later stage transitions involve starting your own shop (with a career of connections/clients made it's not the big undertaking it might sound) or moving onto teaching. But it's the same problem in both cases, a small minority of people will achieve such transitions.
[1] - https://www.bls.gov/iif/nonfatal-injuries-and-illnesses-tabl...
The trades can really destroy your body and there isn't really a way around this besides changing the working conditions.
Your assertion isn't factually based - it's just another baseless claim on the Internet.
I don't know the factual basis about the harm labor does - it's one of those things that generally don't need it for most people - but basic knowledge and reasoning is that hard, and repetitive, physical labor daily for decades is going to cause some real physical problems. Most white-collar workers I know over 40 have bad backs. I know college kids who didn't last a summer on a worksite.
And as much better evidence, we have generations of reporting on it from the people who do physical labor. Those people have also long said they worked so their kids to do something different. I've never heard one who agreed with you - I've never heard anyone who agreed with you.
If it's so great, do you think many developers in SV would take construction jobs if they paid more? Managers? Other white-collar workers? Out in the cold and rain? No remote working for those jobs. :)
> There are people who have a catastrophic injury in the trades and live the rest of their life on disability from age 22.
There are many other injuries - losing fingers and toes, serious traumatic injuries to every part of the body. I knew a painter who fell off a ladder, fell three stories and landed in the splits. But they had a family and they were back at it as soon as they healed; it wasn't without pain. If you do it every day for decades, how do you never fall from the ladder?
> the median age of a construction worker is 42. [1] In some states it's pushing near 50.
Many have no choice.
It's the second and third-tier institutions located in economically depressed areas, like the one profiled here (Western Illinois University’s Macomb campus), that are suffering. After all, why would you fork out a lot of money for a diploma that's worth little and won't even connect you with local job opportunities?
To learn, to sharpen your mind, to grow and change yourself.
The entire point is that reputable and well funded institutions with large campuses and thriving social and civic networks are doing fine. It’s small institutions that popped up to satisfy a once growing are being drained as demand falls.
Education is great, expanding your mind is great, but there is little incentive to foreclose other opportunities along the way in pursuit.
Can everyone get into those schools?
Obviously not everyone can get into every school. But overall enrollment volume across every institution is down, which means being a top X% student will get you into progressively better schools unless they cut overall class sizes. Obviously it’s the institutions at the bottom of the list which lose students first, which is the “problem” highlighted by this article.
The reality is that the economy cannot occupy all these specialists and still requires a ton of fungible generalists. In fact we made so many specialists that themselves became fungible. Look at the tech layoffs, they casually throw under the bus industry legends, simply because everyone has become nearly replaceable.
And even from a societal perspective you would think that with more knowledge we would become more tolerant, more rational etc etc. Well how did that work out?
College is great but 1) Not for everybody and 2) only the rich can pay 50K-400K to "sharpen their minds" without a high-paying job in the other end.
We need more middle class jobs that don't require a 4-year college degree
For most people, yes. For our elites, I think one of the great losses over the past generations has been this financialisation of education. Measuring ROI solely in monetary terms, thereby sacrificing the civic and cultural parts for that which is easily measured and marketed.
Growing as a person and intellectually is a great opportunity, a lifelong change. Better than some immediate cash in an entry-level job.
The library doesn't even approximate a substitute. Maybe you are a genius, but almost everyone needs teachers. Even experts need people to teach them new things, to mentor them, etc. They also need labs and equipment.
Also, the library you need for real reasearch is not free. It only exists in academia. Your local public library doesn't give you access to nearly the same resources, nor the essential reference librarians. (Maybe the NY Public Library? Does that have JSTOR, for example?)
I also think people don't realize how fast things start happening once they do start happening. For another example there you can approximate the change in population due to fertility (once a fertility rate is shared among a population) as being a scalar on population of fertility_rate/2 every 20 years. So a fertility rate of 1 means each and every woman has 1 child on average, yet nonetheless that means your population ends up declining by 50% every 20 years, exponentially, until you start having a healthy number of children again, or go extinct.
So for a bemusing one one, North Korea and South Korea are still technically at war. And North Korea is going to win, simply by continuing to exist. South Korea with their fertility rate of 0.75 will not only see catastrophic population decline, but their entire economy will collapse alongside it. Going from 0.75 to a healthy fertility rate is probably not going to happen, so the North needs to merely wait, and keep having children.
Except their fertility is below replacement also and as a poverty stricken repressive regime that relies on food aid from South Korea, China, and probably Russia lately the latter having their own terminal demographic crises… they might not out-survive the south for long.
1. https://www.newsweek.com/how-north-korea-news-births-compare...
In the end I think the future will become much like the past in that fertility is essentially the point of a nation. What is a few generations of fading prosperity when the longterm cost is the very survival of said civilization? It's just a nonsense deal that nobody would ever agree to on a macro scale, but that most of all Western civilization is trending towards.
A “Korean” in 2100 might have Filipino, Indian, African ancestry.
In fact the way things are going Africa will probably end up as the nursery of the world for a few decades. Then birth rates will collapse there too.
The robots should be ready then
So you're going to end up having to import people with relatively little education, skills or experience, who don't speak, read, or write the language, have no knowledge of the culture, dramatically different working/cultural values, and so on. Europe was, in many ways, a trial run for this sort of scenario on a far smaller scale than what you're talking about, and the results have not been good. Immigration is not really a sustainable solution.
You do get weird stories like Filipino nurses treating elderly WW2 era Japanese soldiers. I’m sure it’s only awkward for a moment.
You could have said the same thing about any new immigrants anywhere. How will the Irish fit in Boston?
How will Ukrainians make it in Chicago?
In fact for all the talk about the US being a nation of migrants we never had a foreign born population exceeding 14.8%. [1] And that was in 1890 after which a large number of anti-migration bills began being passed, culminating in a low of 4.7% in 1970. It's now up to 14.3% and once again issues are emerging at almost the exact same threshold. Go figure.
---
So now let's consider your idea. South Korea is trending towards a scenario where they will eventually be losing 62% of their population every 20 years. And obviously that is exponential - it's not like it slows down, not unless they start having babies again. To maintain this decline with immigration would require literally just replacing just about the entire former population of South Korea with migrants.
You're talking about migration on a scale unimaginably larger than anything before, with what by necessity would be an extremely low quality of migrant, simply owing the massive numbers needed. So the idea of using immigration to "solve" this is essentially just proposing populating an 'abandoned' land with whoever wants to come. And of course that's possible, but obviously this is not a solution to anything by any reasonable meaning of the word 'solution.'
[1] - https://www.museum.ie/en-IE/Collections-Research/Folklife-Co...
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_the_United_Stat...
(Ironically the government is now complaining that there are too many foreigners and that everyone is speaking English).
I worked with a Chinese-American naturalized citizen who moved from PGP/Symantec to work at Stanford just long enough to get his kid the tuition discount (10 years still?). That's real love, dedication, and sacrifice for one's kids.