U.S. Colleges and Universities

A new analysis by Huron Consulting Group projects that about 442 of the roughly 1,700 private, nonprofit four‑year colleges and universities in the United States — enrolling some 670,000 students — are at risk of closing or being forced to merge over the next decade as enrollment and tuition revenue decline. The report, based on trends in enrollment, tuition dependence, assets, debt and cash on hand, identifies more than 120 institutions as at the very highest risk, many of them small, rural campuses similar to Sterling College in Vermont, which will shut down after this semester. Researchers and campus officials frame the problem as a basic supply‑and‑demand mismatch: there are more seats and classrooms than there are students willing or able to pay, in a period of sustained drops in college-going. Prior SHEEO data show that when colleges close, fewer than half of their students continue their educations and many lose credits, suggesting the projected wave of failures could strand large numbers of students academically and financially. Sterling, the seventh private college in Vermont to close since 2016, offers an early case study, having given students one final semester to finish or transfer instead of abruptly locking the doors as some other institutions have done.