By Derek Newton
Reposted from Forbes, with permission
One of the most persistent myths in higher education over the past handful of years is that the country is experiencing a wave of college closures. The second, more misleading and more destructive part of that myth, is that this wave of college closures is related to a decline in higher education’s value or social standing – that colleges are suffering, and closing, because they are not “worth it” anymore.
Maybe myth is a bit too far – schools are closing. But a catastrophe it isn’t. So, let’s call the “wave of college closures” idea greatly exaggerated and, not coincidentally, profoundly misunderstood.
Consider a recent list of college closures, published by an industry news site. That closure list is, according to the reporting, “at least 16 nonprofit colleges and universities” in 2024, although one on the list is actually a public school. So, right at the outset, it’s 15 private schools – representing a net loss of about 1% of the nation’s private non-profit degree-granting institutions. In 2023, the percentage of these schools that closed was less than 1%.
In any case, a look inside the numbers at these 15 or 16 school closings, shows that they are very unlikely to be part of some national trend across all higher education, caused by some big shifting landscape.
For example, even the coverage of this list says, “Most were small, private, tuition-dependent institutions that lacked robust endowments.” That’s true. In fact, if you look at the closure list school by school, most are downright tiny. One, a “fine arts” college in Philadelphia had an enrollment of “just over 100” students. Another had 429. Two others had 232 and 220 students. Another, 357. The Oregon College of Oriental Medicine enrolled a total of 160 students. The Delaware College of Art and Design had 129 enrollees.
Coverage of a few schools did not list their enrollments. But for the dozen schools for which enrollment was disclosed, the total number of students was 5,344 – fewer than 450 per school. For context, private non-profit colleges enroll about 5.2 million students. In other words, these closures impacted .1% of students in that sector – point one percent.
If you’re keeping count, 2024 private non-profit school closures represented 1% of institutions and .1% of students in those schools. It feels unwise to make judgements or conclusions about such a large sector based on such small percentages.
More importantly, three of the 16 listed closures were art schools. One, as mentioned, was a school of “Oriental Medicine” with an enrollment of 160 students. Likewise, none of those is a suitable proxy for the state of higher education.
To further consider that these reported college closures in 2024 were no national trend, several of these 16 were overcome by gross mismanagement or scandal instead of market or sector pressures.
One closure, the only public school on this list, was “beset by legal and fiscal issues” including a law enforcement inquiry for “alleged financial irregularities.” Another closed after “mistakes former officials made more than a decade ago. In 2010, the college discovered that it had improperly calculated financial aid awards by millions of dollars.” A third had, “mysterious financial challenges—which remain unexplained months later.” Another, “came after months of acrimony between employees and [the school’s] President” and allegations of “mismanaged college finances.” Yet another faced, “alleged mismanagement of funds” and “was also hit with a $4.3 million fine from the Education Department for alleged mismanagement of federal student aid dollars.” In another, “critics have alleged mismanagement played a part in the closure.”
Altogether, five or six of the 16 schools on this closure list were undone, at least in part, by incompetence or illegal activity – neither one being a fitting proxy for the national higher education ecosystem.
But most significantly, of the 15 private non-profit schools on this 2024 closure list, nearly half were religious schools. The reporting said, “seven of those headed for closure were religiously affiliated.” This is similar to the trend we saw in 2023, where more than half of reported college closures were religious schools.
That feels like a big story.
But it’s a story that has nothing to do with colleges. Instead, it’s easy to put frequent closures of religious schools under the umbrella of a significant and steady decline of religiousness or the influence of religion, rather than under an umbrella of a decline in higher education. Still, for reasons that are unclear, closures of religious, even church-run, schools are counted against the tally of higher education. Just like tiny art schools or colleges under law enforcement investigations, religious schools cannot be an appropriate stand-in for all higher education.
When you look under the headlines, of the 16 schools on this year’s closure list, only two were not art or oriental medicine schools, religiously affiliated, or swept up in scandal. Two. Maybe three. If you go with three, they had a combined reported enrollment of about one thousand students.
College closures can be heartbreaking and highly disruptive. And they are happening – no question about it. The sector is fluid. Colleges are merging, making acquisitions, or undergoing other changes. Nonetheless, the schools that close overwhelmingly tend to be very small, caught in mismanagement or legal trouble, and/or religious. There is still very little evidence to support that college closures are happening in any large numbers or that they are related in any way to national education dynamics.
