Indiana actually has seen a decrease in the percentage of high school students who attend college. Too many people here have anti-education views. The idea that everyone should be in a skilled trade and college is for brainwashing is sadly common.
The last time it was as low as in 2021 was in
2001, itself an anomalously low year, and the last time it was consistently as low as now was in the early 1990s. (Note that these numbers don't mean what you think they do, though: nowadays graduation rates are much higher, so these students are likelier to finish than they would have been in the 1990s, and colleges also enroll many more foreign students and are less dependent on American high schoolers).
In general, as the costs of attending college continue rapidly outpacing inflation, it increasingly makes less sense for people to go. There has also been a college mental health crisis which has gotten much worse since the early 2010s, corresponding with crackdowns from administration on many kinds of relatively unsafe socialization, which
in my observation (YMMV) have led to a cultural shift where college was universally seen as a fun and desirable thing to do in, say, 2007, but in 2022 is kind of commonly seen as a chore you have to go through so you can get a job. (Obviously both perspectives existed in both years, but I very strongly think the latter is gaining over time, and has gained
a lot in the past 15 years).
On the positive side, though, generally the going-to-college rate declines when the economy is good, because just getting a job looks more attractive, and goes up when the economy is bad, because people are likelier to think they need to get skills or certifications to make it in the workforce. On some level, "the college attendance rate has collapsed" is a weird sort of good sign for Biden's America, though this collapse is really big compared to earlier 'good economy' collapses and I think its nature is more structural.
(Also, note that the collapse is much stronger among men. Women have been going to college less, but not by any more than you'd expect given a generally good economy. The last time as few men went to college as in 2021 was, per the Bureau of Labor Statistics...sometime long before its data picks up in 1993).
