The Washington Post headlines an article with this descriptive title.
Colleges are now closing at a pace of one a week. What happens to the students?
As you can imagine, student outcomes aren’t great, many do not go on elsewhere to finish up. Lost credits is an often cited reason. Alumni are left wondering about the value of a degree from a defunct school.
I am more interested in why the schools are closing, which the WaPo article addresses thusly.
“It’s simply supply and demand,” said Gary Stocker, a former chief of staff at Westminster College in Missouri and the founder of College Viability, which evaluates institutions’ financial stability. The closings follow an enrollment decline of 14 percent in the decade through 2022, the most recent period for which the figures are available from the Education Department. A decline of as much as 15 percent is projected to begin next year.
Students should note that public institutions are unlikely to shut down. Should a public IHE close, it was likely a member of a system. Other campuses of the system will accommodate affected students.
As a retired faculty member, I wonder what’s happening to the laid off faculty. I’d guess their job market is terrible, the norm in shrinking “industries.”
The other DrC and I were fortunate to ride the boom in IHE growth and we benefitted thereby. It no longer has those rosy prospects. The underlying factor was and is demographics - a student base that is both changing and shrinking.
