I wouldn’t be surprised if it was many more than that. The higher ed apocalypse has been building up for years now.
The College Fix reports:
80 colleges could close in next 5 years: Federal Reserve studyUp to 80 colleges may close in the next five years, according to a study from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.This estimate comes as 28 colleges shut down last year, according to data from the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association. Over the past eight years, more than 100 colleges have shut down, as reported by The College Fix.The authors of this study call the trend “a major higher education policy issue.” One of the researchers provided further comment to The Fix via email.Robert Kelchen, a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia Consumer Finance Institute, described “three main drivers” contributing to the “declining enrollment.”These three factors are “a decline in the number of high school graduates in much of the country, a decline in the share of high school graduates going to college, and a decline in older student enrollment due to a solid economy.”“Not much can be done about the first factor, as it’s a math problem that colleges cannot solve,” Kelchen told The Fix via email.“The second is something that may change in the future when we get the next recession, but there is more skepticism about the value of higher education than in the past,” he said. “And the third is largely due to the ability to get decent jobs now without college, which typically changes during recessions.”The model has already been tested and found to be largely successful.The analysis selected “100 institutions with the highest predicted probability of closure,” based on factors such as enrollment declines, high tuition discounts, and shrinking endowments, among others, according to the report.These included declining enrollment, weak finances that have triggered federal oversight, demographic shifts, and an overreliance on tuition revenue. Researchers found 84 of these 100 institutions had closed within three years.
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