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US colleges struggling with low enrollment are closing at increasing rate (2019)

172 points by oska 7y ago

throwlaplace 7y ago
the photo and the first frame of the youtube video are from columbia (in ny). kind of ironic since elite schools probably aren't facing these issues. >According to Moody’s, in the next few years the closure rate for non-profit, U.S. private colleges will climb to around 15 a year—triple what it was in 2014. you know what kind of editorializing of titles i'd like? one that puts the lede front and center. there are 1687[1] private nonprofit unis in the US. so this is a rate of less than 1% a year. is that really alarming? [1] https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/2019-02-15/how-many-universities-are-in-the-us-and-why-that-number-is-changing https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/2019...
- oska 7y ago
  Happy to get pushback on this article submission. I did take note of the source (China Global Television Network) but the thesis presented of demographic change and increased wariness about taking on debt seemed plausible.
- wwweston 7y ago
  It's still an odd statistic if the demand for college-as-credential is holding strong or rising. Likely explanation: demographic dip. The demand for a credential is still high (perhaps even rising), but the number of college age students is either in a local dip or downward trend. And the value of a small college has always been marginal, so that's where the leading edge of the trend hits. Enrollment falls, tuition receipts with it, public funding is strained, the institution closes.
- ArtWomb 7y ago
  Elite research universities are definitely seeing constraints. Or, alternately speaking, theoretical physical and life sciences experiments are getting extremely expensive ;) I think the college of the future looks a lot like USC Film School. It's virtually identical to a production quality film or television studio. But tuition, room and board plus stipend will all be provided in part via corporate sponsorship or government funding. Product development exists symbiotically with research as "pure" funding is priced out, even by the wealthiest of donors Dominate the Fight: The Army's Synthetic Training Environment (USC-ICT) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWrquTLhMDU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWrquTLhMDU
  - killjoywashere 7y ago
    Ah, I've been wondering where all these slow training videos with atrocious, uncanny-valley NPCs in uniform come from.
scarejunba 7y ago
Let's be honest. US colleges did this thing where when they grew they also just grew costs without growing delivery. The problem with costs is they're sticky downward. This, of course, is a good thing that these colleges are closing. Can you imagine a place teaching economics when it cannot apply it to itself?
- swaits 7y ago
  Fueled by cheap, even free, money. Defense, housing, education, healthcare. The market does work.
  - ngold 7y ago
    A captured loan monopoly that puts kids in a non bankruptcy position since 2005. In 15 years, close to 2 trillion in debt.
  - JMTQp8lwXL 7y ago
    American universities are increasingly depending upon foreign enrollment as those students will pay full price. For Americans, the sticker price is just a starting point. There will be grants and haircuts that conveniently bring the cost down to the maximum amount of government loans that student can receive.
- thrower123 7y ago
  It's so comically analogous to the startup that hits a big investment round and goes on a hiring spree, signing a long-term lease on a swanky office, and then the profit never comes.
- cwperkins 7y ago
  My thoughts exactly, I am hoping that these closures start leading to lower costs. If the price of education outpaced wage growth for a decade then we need a big correction to get back to where we used to be.
- IggleSniggle 7y ago
  I agree with this, but the economics do have some unique pressures. Education doesn't really get more efficient relative to the society that it is in. You're always going to get the best result with small class sizes and time-intensive one-to-one instruction. If anything, it generally gets less efficient as you need an ever greater supply of education as prerequisite knowledge increases as the edges to make forward progress. Especially given this situation, tho, you'd expect institutions to do everything they could to keep the auxiliary costs down. Those fancy dorm rooms and rec centers sell the college more than an education you can't see with your eyes, tho.
3fe9a03ccd14ca5 7y ago
> While annual tuition was around $36,000, no one paid that. “We were actually discounting that about 67%. So the average student was really only paying about $12,000 for tuition,” said Allen. The opaque cost of college is one of the problems. If it cost $12k to go there they should advertise a $12k tuition and maybe wouldn’t be closing.
- JamesBarney 7y ago
  This seems very reasonable, but I've read enough to know it's more complex than you think. College admission officers are juggling a lot of complex math to figure out their student body. But the reason they don't charge 12k is for a couple of reasons. Some kids will pay the 36k(Usually screw ups with rich parents) and to attract top tier students that raise their rankings(which they need high to attract students) they need to give them large discounts and scholarships. Most people would prefer to go a 50k school with 38k in scholarships than a 12k school.
  - AnimalMuppet 7y ago
    > Most people would prefer to go a 50k school with 38k in scholarships than a 12k school. Sure. The psychology is completely different. "I went to an average place at an average cost" doesn't have the sizzle of "I went to an elite place, and I got a massive discount!"
- asmodlol 7y ago
  Meanwhile college is 500€ a year in France...
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - nicolas_t 7y ago
    That's true but the cost per student is much higher than that. I know that for example a student at a grande école back when I was in an engineering school early 2000 cost 35k euros per year to the state. It's probably even more now...
wyldfire 7y ago
> Part of the problem is demographics. > The number of high school seniors is dropping – dramatically in some parts of the country Are we headed for inverted pyramid like Japan?
- toomuchtodo 7y ago
  Yes. All developed countries are. Most of Africa is holding the fertility rate above replacement rate, but as they develop, education and birth control is wildly available, you'll see the fertility rate decline there as well. https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2014/02/World-population-by-level-of-fertility-without-projections.png https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2014/02/World-population-... https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate Disclaimer: Our World In Data is in non-profit YC19 batch.
  - kingkawn 7y ago
    I love imagining birth control being “wildly” available
    - toomuchtodo 7y ago
      I'm going to let my typo stand! There should be no shame in any type of consensual sexual activity.
      - kingkawn 7y ago
        A wonderful typo, I meant no snark or admonishment
        toomuchtodo 7y ago
        None assumed!
    - tetraca 7y ago
      Depending on where your waste water is dumped, it is.
ycombonator 7y ago
Population decline from not having kids.
- peedabble 7y ago
  Oh, I don't know, I'd say it could have something to do with colleges generating a bad rap in the context of being political, among other things.
jessehorne 7y ago
As much as I'd love to pursue higher education and to get a degree, I simply can't afford thousands of dollars every semester. I'm not 17 anymore so it's harder to convince me to get into that much debt. If I ended up owing 150k and could afford to pay back 1k a month, It would take me 12.5 years. I'm sorry but it's just not worth it. I can't think of many sober people that would disagree. If an organization like Khan Academy wanted to charge ~$1200 a year for a 4-year program that I could receive an accredited degree from, I'd sign up immediately.
- awb 7y ago
  > I'm sorry but it's just not worth it. I can't think of many sober people that would disagree. I've hired developers for the last 10 years and never looked at education, just skills. I think you're making a smart move and helping to hopefully boost these new forms of education that don't require sitting in a classroom for 4 years.
  - jessehorne 7y ago
    This makes me extremely happy to hear and it seems others are following the same path! Good on you. For me, it just seems like the logical way to go. Progress comes for us all, no matter how many years we've carried a tradition. If the colleges are struggling with low enrollment, it must be time to go back to the drawing board.
  - mehrdadn 7y ago
    The last 10 years have been hardly typical years for the job market, at least in software. I can't predict the future, but education is (or at least was) supposed to be a long term investment, and it might be a fallacy to assume the next 30-40 years will be like the previous 10.
    - StandardFuture 7y ago
      Well it is certainly possible that the labor market becomes even more saturated in software and education falls back into being an easy go-to natural filtration system. We are seeing the big tech companies more than ever use algorithmic puzzle questions, and startups using "culture fit" as easy go-to filtration systems. But, I imagine education might be an even simpler filter if labor supply keeps growing. It certainly makes for easy automated filtering if a person doesn't have a top-20 school listed on their resume.
nafizh 7y ago
>Allen is spending his remaining days wrapping things up. The coffee machines are going away and he’s now giving tours of the campus to prospective buyers, including Chinese buyers. This reminds me talks of China buying up land and properties in US. I wonder why they are doing this.
- IggleSniggle 7y ago
  Probably for the same reasons they buy US dollars.
- onlyrealcuzzo 7y ago
  Occam's razor / base rates. China is like 20% of the world's entire population. It's close to as much of the global economy as the US, or the EU. It's way bigger than Japan. There's a ton of wealth there, and a ton of rich businesses and people. As things stand right now, China should account for about 15% of all asset purchases globally. It's not surprising if a lot of land and schools and houses and business in the US are being bought by China. There's similar amounts being bought by the EU and Japan. A conspiracy theorist would tell you it's because a lot of people inside and outside of China think the RMB is over valued (by as much as 50%). There's probably truth to this, but compared to the above mentioned base rates -- the affects are likely negligible.
  - ericd 7y ago
    I would expect rates of land purchases in a country to be heavily biased towards its citizens, not be near their share of global GDP...
    - seanmcdirmid 7y ago
      The USA is an open market compared to other locales. It’s why the Japanese bought up a lot of real estate during the 80s, and why the Chinese are doing it now.
      - ericd 7y ago
porknubbins 7y ago
This is a little sad but probably inevitable. I went to one of these rural small liberal arts school decades ago (good faculty but no national reputation). Even then it felt anachronistic with a bunch of privileged young people studying like English and philosophy and history but in a giant beautiful isolated summer camp. There was no real connection to industry or jobs (or the outside world) and not much STEM so if you didn’t have connections you kinda got screwed. Makes me want to reread The Secret History though, it perfectly captured the weird cozy but suffocating vibe of being trapped in an isolated bubble with the same people for years on end.
- dcolkitt 7y ago
  Yet that environment is probably much closer to the original purpose of a university than most others. Philosophy students at a small liberal arts school are much closer in spirit to Renaissance-era Oxford, Sorbonne, or Bologna. At least compared to STEM majors at an urban campus in a work-study program. The point of a university pretty much is to hole yourself away from the broader world and engross yourself in the life of the mind squirrels away from practical concerns about the real world. It's kind of weird that we shoehorned this whole idea of career preparation for mass populations into an institution that's uniquely unsuited for that specific purpose. Then we get pissed off because when those same universities don't do a good job preparing students for the job market. But that's like complaining that a winter coat is uncomfortable to wear to the beach.
  - chii 7y ago
    > It's kind of weird that we shoehorned this whole idea of career preparation for mass populations into an institution that's uniquely unsuited for that specific purpose. it's because of the GI bill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G.I._Bill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G.I._Bill , which setup a generation of people who got cheap/free college. Then they, obviously being educated, did well, and it flowed out on to the rest of society. University was originally only for those who have the privilege of paying for it. And if you could afford it, you wouldn't need to worry about jobs or having to pay bills. But the recent college education dogma for jobs has transformed it to a utility, an "investment", and thus loans. There is a place for loans to college education, but not as high as i see right now.
alharith 7y ago
Did US Colleges struggling with low enrollment not close before? What kind of chicanery was going on to keep them open? Is the increasing rate a coincidence? The converse of this statement sounds borderline hilarious: US Colleges Not Struggling with Low Enrollment are Not closing at an increasing rate. Intuition tells me the larger colleges, especially those with sports pedigree are growing substantially, as consumers are now increasingly more aware of costs associated with degrees, and are opting in for more affordable options. The NCES projects an increase of 2% overall increase in enrollment in 4 year programs and a 3% increase in 3 year programs over the next 10 years, so these kids are going somewhere.
- killjoywashere 7y ago
  > Did US Colleges struggling with low enrollment not close before? What kind of chicanery was going on to keep them open? The rising tide of population growth lifted all boats. High school graduations peaked in 2013. That's total, not rate. Presumably the rate peaked even sooner. There's no more American-born students to victimize. And with the current administration's immigration policies, the US higher education market has had an "opportunity to explore a limited growth marketplace".
throwawayamused 7y ago
Well, well, well... if it isn't the consequences of your own actions. 1.) Colleges jack up their tuition to the point of being un-affordable (multiple years of salary), forcing students to take on massive amounts of debt at the start of their careers 2.) Prospective students are unwilling to become servitude to student loan debt at no-name small colleges and realize that college is hardly the only means for employment 3.) Small colleges close due to low enrollment
- Arete314159 7y ago
  1.5 --> students with massive amounts of debt delay childbearing, making next generation smaller...
- gjsman-1000 7y ago
  4.) Regardless of how you feel about it, college faculty and courses generally urged students to postpone marriage and childbearing, ironically resulting in less children to grow up and take college in the next generation.
  - killjoywashere 7y ago
    5) Those students, now parents, not only have fewer children, but having seen their older friends delay retirement to fund their kids education, and are now discouraging their own children from overspending on private schools.
  - commandlinefan 7y ago
    5) When they do finally start having children, consider what it costs to send a child to college, so have fewer children because they can't afford more.
Merrill 7y ago
>In Vermont, three colleges have ceased operations this year, losing roughly 1,000 students. So 333 students per college or an average freshman class of about 100 per college?
- fiftyfifty 7y ago
  Vermont has an uphill battle. The overall state population is declining, in particular younger adults are leaving in droves to move to bigger cities. There just isn't much in-state demand for high ed in Vermont and few out of state students looking to move there.
gjsman-1000 7y ago
Personally, besides a lot of this being self-inflicted, can we just mention how predatory colleges are? You're a young 17 year old. You can sign on to owe up to over a hundred thousand dollars, if you choose to go to a private college, even though you can't smoke or drink until you're 21 (and, if you live in Mississippi, you aren't legally at the age of majority until you are 21!). Not only that, but it's a really hard debt to get out of and they will strongly pressure your family to cosign, which (should you fail) is a great way to wreck a relationship. In fact, the 21 thing is pretty dumb anyway. You can get married, enter a lottery, take out over $100K in debt, or join the army and get killed, or gamble away your life savings, or buy gun ammunition, or sue people or get sued, but heaven forbid you buy a beer. Next, schoolbooks. Ludicrously overpriced, to try to convince you to "sell back" your books at the end of the semester for a pittance. Colleges claim to love diversity - if so, you might consider not price gouging books to oblivion and making it harder for lower classes to afford college, perhaps?
- quaquaqua1 7y ago
  Stop thinking so much. They just want you to pay them. They want your money. Even if you figure it out somehow before you sign in blood, society damn near forces the median human being to go to college as a pre-requisite to survival :) Actual parasites.
- trophycase 7y ago
  Diversity is mostly a corporate "ideology"
  - ewindal 7y ago
    No, corporate adopted it because it’s profitable right now.
    - dgellow 7y ago
      Just curious about this: What makes diversity profitable?
briandear 7y ago
Good. Make a product the market will buy at a price the market supports or go out of business. The American public has been sold a bill of goods when it comes to the necessity of student loan debt and degrees of questionable value. This isn’t a slight on higher education as a concept, but a condemnation of higher education as an industry. Higher education inflation exceeds that of even health care.
realbarack 7y ago
What happens to the campus when a liberal arts college shuts down? In Green Mountain College's case it seems like they're looking for a buyer to the tune of $20 million or so. [0] I think it'd be pretty rad if old college campuses turned into hubs for remote workers; who's working on that? [0] https://www.sevendaysvt.com/vermont/as-green-mountain-college-sells-off-its-assets-poultney-ponders-its-future/Content?oid=28561240 https://www.sevendaysvt.com/vermont/as-green-mountain-colleg...
- JonMR 7y ago
  There's something perverse about a liberal arts college campus being repurposed for co-working.
- symplee 7y ago
  Tinder theme park?
  - mpolichette 7y ago
    Isn’t that what they are now?
- typest 7y ago
  This sounds fantastically interesting, and I could see it being successful. Basically — go live in a (literally) college like setting, but you have a source of income. I would do it. Hit me up if you want to chat about this idea.
  - DrAwdeOccarim 7y ago
    The school probably already has a fat internet pipe, too. Maybe this is the kind of thing a town would want to finance for a short period of time. Maybe you set it up as a co-op with the town? What a fun idea, lol.
- topkai22 7y ago
  Once there is a place I’m supposed to go to work remotely, am I still working remotely? Complete Side note- I think there must be a market selling RVs to remote workers that work well as home offices. I converted a shed to a home office, but I spent almost as much as a similarly sized RV even after doing a lot of the work myself. The RV has the advantage of being easy to deliver, avoids building code restrictions, can come well wired for power and internet, and you get to have an RV.
zerof1l 7y ago
I feel like traditional universities is a dying breed. Of course some big and famous ones like MIT will stay, but in general it is not worth it. If you want to get a degree, instead of $36k a year, you can enroll into online university like UoPeople where the entire 4 year Bachelor Degree will cost you $4k. Disclosure: I'm not affiliated with UoPeople, but I did graduate from there.
- SparkleBunny 7y ago
  1.) When did you graduate? 2.) How has employment been? Not snark; genuinely curious.
- bitL 7y ago
  It's a nationally accredited university, not regionally, so you are out of luck getting into any regular university afterwards as all of them require regional accreditation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higher_education_accreditation_in_the_United_States#Regional_accreditation_compared_to_national_accreditation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higher_education_accreditation...
rando1010101 7y ago
cgtn?
rando1010101o 7y ago
cgtn?
KoftaBob 7y ago
Good riddance. Colleges want the benefits of the free market when it comes to nearly unlimited demand for higher education, but act like victims when students finally decide to be price sensitive. The vast majority of people go to college so they can get a job with that degree. When schools are charging obscene tuitions while simultaneously doing a terrible job at landing those students good jobs, I have 0 sympathy for them. Good riddance to these deadweights.
Proven 7y ago
What’s alarming about it? When people get in debt by pursuing economically unviable education, it’s a government problem. When people avoid doing that and educators go out of business, it’s also a problem. What’s up with that? Make up your mind people.
blisterpeanuts 7y ago
My 15-year-old will be dealing with the college rat race pretty soon. Some of her friends have been taking community college or online college courses in their later high school years. Some have graduated high school and are working, taking some remote courses at night, methodically working toward career goals while not going into debt. The old monolithic approach to college, really an extension of the K-12 system, seems increasingly impractical and irrelevant for today's needs. I agree with others here who argue for taking courses on an ad hoc basis, focusing more on growing a career starting from age 18, rather than immersing oneself in higher ed for four years, hoping and assuming there's a nice job waiting at the other end. Look, if you have $200K or $300K lying around, great, go to a nice liberal arts school and enjoy yourself for a few years. There are few things in life more fun than being a college student, stuffing your mind with knowledge during the day and getting soused at night. But in the real world... these little liberal arts schools are a luxury our society no longer can afford, nor do they really serve much of a purpose anymore. The only shame is that we potentially will lose some writers, poets, and artists.
- yakshaving_jgt 7y ago
  Paying tuition to the tune of $200k-300k is not a prerequisite to becoming a writer, poet, nor artist.
fastball 7y ago
Good.
droithomme 7y ago
As others here have pointed out, if you have absolute top scores, and GPA, and have done awesome projects, then you can get a full ride somewhere. Just got to find that ride. If not, then wait until over 25 so that your parent's income isn't considered, assuming they make say more than $50k or so combined family income. (Ie more than the federal poverty line.) Top standardized test scores are necessary for financial aid and admittance to a top program. Plus a high GPA. The GPA requirement sucks since it's completely arbitrary. Maybe your GPA is low because you are super high IQ and teachers hated your guts. That happens often.
rolltiide 7y ago
The job market is still looking for a way to separate ideal candidates from the general population. The economy spends a lot of time dealing with unvetted untalented people that “need a chance“ to perform as much as someone that is unvetted but talented. It doesn't have to be college, but there isnt another system so robust and bussing as many people throught it. Sure corporations can try apprenticeship programs but that will take a decade for it to be broad enough.
jwilber 7y ago
Here’s a recent article from NPR discussing the problems smaller colleges face when enrollment decreases [1]. Many of the issues (faculty cuts, etc.) have been discussed here, but something I find interesting is that, in order to stay afloat, they’re changing the demographics they target. Namely, first-gen students (this has been an existing target for sometime) and returning adults: “ The challenge is that returning adult students are a lot harder to recruit. For high school students, Orians says, "we know where those people are. High schoolers are a captive audience." But when it comes to adults, she says, "they are everywhere. They are working. They are parents. They are engaged with their community." “ That said, they recognize recruitment isn’t always enough. They also plan to explore industry partnerships, further teacher training, and, most importantly, student retention: “ Last week, new numbers on graduation rates revealed that 60% of students who start college get their degree in six years. That's the highest its been in nearly a decade. “ 1. https://www.npr.org/2019/12/16/787909495/fewer-students-are-going-to-college-heres-why-that-matters https://www.npr.org/2019/12/16/787909495/fewer-students-are-...
grammers 7y ago
Why does colleges have to be that expensive? I'd love to study, but simply can't afford it. Other countries can do it for less, why can't we?
- honestoHeminway 7y ago
  You actually can enroll in other countries?
- newguy1234 7y ago
  Because the truth is that modern college is simply not efficient and I would even say is against adopting new technologies due to teacher unions. I want wikipedia university! Too bad their side project into that (wikiversity) is a failure.
- colechristensen 7y ago
  Waste on ever growing administration overhead and top tier administration salary combined with prestige construction unrelated to academic or research success. Fueled by cheap loans difficult to discharge in bankruptcy, a cultural idea that everybody needs a degree to be a worthwhile person, and a glut of degree-bearing people competing for lower and lower tier jobs.
mlang23 7y ago
I never understood why it is a desireable thing to put the young into unimaginablly high debt just to get educated. This, the death penalty and no public healthcare are the reasons why I dont really consider the USA as the role model for modern society they'd like to be.
scottlocklin 7y ago
College was obviously a bubble 10 years ago. Couldn't happen to a more deserving group of people. Better still: make all colleges responsible for student debt.
ptah 7y ago
> shrinking number of high-school seniors in the U.S. What would be the reason behind this?
- fiftyfifty 7y ago
  There are simply fewer kids, people have been having less children, getting married later or not at all etc: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/12/06/high-school-graduates-drop-number-and-be-increasingly-diverse https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/12/06/high-school-g...
torgian 7y ago
It's no wonder. Collegs/Univeristies are insanely expensive, even if you count the residential programs put into place. I can get my masters degree with 7k out of pocket in another country. As a US citizen. I haven't found a similar program in the States that is that cheap.
IanSanders 7y ago
Can self-organised education communities be a thing? A big chunk of university education is collaborative anyway (cringy "now turn to your peer and discuss", partnered lab work, group assessments) and it would help improve higher variety of skills. Maybe this way we can learn with an aim of learning, as opposite to optimising the grade.
hurricanetc 7y ago
The comments here are divorced from reality and the article. The average student loan debt for students who took out a loan is around $30,000. Some have more, as averages work, but most have less. How? About 30% of students graduate with no debt. Furthermore, the number of schools closing is absolutely trivial and if you read the article you would see that the real issue seems to be plummeting birth rates in the northeast US. The school in the article was charging $12,000 per year in tuition on average. A far cry from what the comments here would have you believe. “$150k in debt.”
- blaser-waffle 7y ago
  Someone on HN reading the article? HAH
Seenso 7y ago
For those who aren't aware: CGTN is the Chinese version of Russia Today. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/28/business/cctv-china-usa-propaganda.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/28/business/cctv-china-usa-p...
- bikenaga 7y ago
  Here's an article on Green Mountain from Inside Higher Ed. It contains a little more detail. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/01/24/green-mountain-latest-small-college-close https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/01/24/green-mountai...
joker3 7y ago
You think it's bad now? Wait until you see what happens in 2026. As many of you remember, the bottom dropped out of the US economy in 2008. As a result, many people delayed having children for a few years (or just decided not to). That means that the freshman class of 2026 is going to be significantly smaller than that of 2025, and that's going to shut down a large number of small and financially strapped colleges. It's difficult to imagine exactly what's going to happen afterwards, but we can be confident that things will be different.
- Gunax 7y ago
  Hmm, that's an interesting perspective I never considered. I wonder if it gets easier to get admitted to (med/law/top undergrad) schools if there is a population drop.
  - joker3 7y ago
    Probably in 2030 we're going to see a similar but smaller hit to those sorts of schools. What effect that has is anyone's guess right now.
metaphyze 7y ago
Why didn't they just ADVERTISE the tuition as $12,000 (or maybe $15,000) rather than $36,000 if they were discounting the tuition for 67% of the students anyway. A lot of people probably didn't even bother to apply because of sticker shock.
fiftyfifty 7y ago
Most of these colleges that are closing or merging are small private liberal arts schools, many have a religious affiliation. The main problem is not cost per say (as the article points out some of these schools are only $12,000/year), it's that many of these schools have not updated their curricula for decades. The degrees from these institutions offers little in the way of preparation for a 21st century career that could justify even their modest cost. There are plenty of small schools in the Northeast that are thriving, schools that have changed with the times that offer competitive programs in technology, science, medicine, business, politics, law etc.
gaius__baltar 7y ago
Don't let the door hit you, etc.

172 points by oska 7y ago

the photo and the first frame of the youtube video are from columbia (in ny). kind of ironic since elite schools probably aren't facing these issues. >According to Moody’s, in the next few years the closure rate for non-profit, U.S. private colleges will climb to around 15 a year—triple what it was in 2014. you know what kind of editorializing of titles i'd like? one that puts the lede front and center. there are 1687[1] private nonprofit unis in the US. so this is a rate of less than 1% a year. is that really alarming? [1] https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/2019-02-15/how-many-universities-are-in-the-us-and-why-that-number-is-changing https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/2019...

oska 7y ago
Happy to get pushback on this article submission. I did take note of the source (China Global Television Network) but the thesis presented of demographic change and increased wariness about taking on debt seemed plausible.
wwweston 7y ago
It's still an odd statistic if the demand for college-as-credential is holding strong or rising. Likely explanation: demographic dip. The demand for a credential is still high (perhaps even rising), but the number of college age students is either in a local dip or downward trend. And the value of a small college has always been marginal, so that's where the leading edge of the trend hits. Enrollment falls, tuition receipts with it, public funding is strained, the institution closes.
ArtWomb 7y ago
Elite research universities are definitely seeing constraints. Or, alternately speaking, theoretical physical and life sciences experiments are getting extremely expensive ;) I think the college of the future looks a lot like USC Film School. It's virtually identical to a production quality film or television studio. But tuition, room and board plus stipend will all be provided in part via corporate sponsorship or government funding. Product development exists symbiotically with research as "pure" funding is priced out, even by the wealthiest of donors Dominate the Fight: The Army's Synthetic Training Environment (USC-ICT) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWrquTLhMDU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWrquTLhMDU
- killjoywashere 7y ago
  Ah, I've been wondering where all these slow training videos with atrocious, uncanny-valley NPCs in uniform come from.

scarejunba 7y ago

Let's be honest. US colleges did this thing where when they grew they also just grew costs without growing delivery. The problem with costs is they're sticky downward. This, of course, is a good thing that these colleges are closing. Can you imagine a place teaching economics when it cannot apply it to itself?

swaits 7y ago
Fueled by cheap, even free, money. Defense, housing, education, healthcare. The market does work.
- ngold 7y ago
  A captured loan monopoly that puts kids in a non bankruptcy position since 2005. In 15 years, close to 2 trillion in debt.
- JMTQp8lwXL 7y ago
  American universities are increasingly depending upon foreign enrollment as those students will pay full price. For Americans, the sticker price is just a starting point. There will be grants and haircuts that conveniently bring the cost down to the maximum amount of government loans that student can receive.
thrower123 7y ago
It's so comically analogous to the startup that hits a big investment round and goes on a hiring spree, signing a long-term lease on a swanky office, and then the profit never comes.
cwperkins 7y ago
My thoughts exactly, I am hoping that these closures start leading to lower costs. If the price of education outpaced wage growth for a decade then we need a big correction to get back to where we used to be.
IggleSniggle 7y ago
I agree with this, but the economics do have some unique pressures. Education doesn't really get more efficient relative to the society that it is in. You're always going to get the best result with small class sizes and time-intensive one-to-one instruction. If anything, it generally gets less efficient as you need an ever greater supply of education as prerequisite knowledge increases as the edges to make forward progress. Especially given this situation, tho, you'd expect institutions to do everything they could to keep the auxiliary costs down. Those fancy dorm rooms and rec centers sell the college more than an education you can't see with your eyes, tho.

3fe9a03ccd14ca5 7y ago

> While annual tuition was around $36,000, no one paid that. “We were actually discounting that about 67%. So the average student was really only paying about $12,000 for tuition,” said Allen. The opaque cost of college is one of the problems. If it cost $12k to go there they should advertise a $12k tuition and maybe wouldn’t be closing.

JamesBarney 7y ago
This seems very reasonable, but I've read enough to know it's more complex than you think. College admission officers are juggling a lot of complex math to figure out their student body. But the reason they don't charge 12k is for a couple of reasons. Some kids will pay the 36k(Usually screw ups with rich parents) and to attract top tier students that raise their rankings(which they need high to attract students) they need to give them large discounts and scholarships. Most people would prefer to go a 50k school with 38k in scholarships than a 12k school.
- AnimalMuppet 7y ago
  > Most people would prefer to go a 50k school with 38k in scholarships than a 12k school. Sure. The psychology is completely different. "I went to an average place at an average cost" doesn't have the sizzle of "I went to an elite place, and I got a massive discount!"
asmodlol 7y ago
Meanwhile college is 500€ a year in France...
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- nicolas_t 7y ago
  That's true but the cost per student is much higher than that. I know that for example a student at a grande école back when I was in an engineering school early 2000 cost 35k euros per year to the state. It's probably even more now...

wyldfire 7y ago

> Part of the problem is demographics. > The number of high school seniors is dropping – dramatically in some parts of the country Are we headed for inverted pyramid like Japan?

toomuchtodo 7y ago
Yes. All developed countries are. Most of Africa is holding the fertility rate above replacement rate, but as they develop, education and birth control is wildly available, you'll see the fertility rate decline there as well. https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2014/02/World-population-by-level-of-fertility-without-projections.png https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2014/02/World-population-... https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate Disclaimer: Our World In Data is in non-profit YC19 batch.
- kingkawn 7y ago
  I love imagining birth control being “wildly” available
  - toomuchtodo 7y ago
    I'm going to let my typo stand! There should be no shame in any type of consensual sexual activity.
    - kingkawn 7y ago
      A wonderful typo, I meant no snark or admonishment
      - toomuchtodo 7y ago
        None assumed!
  - tetraca 7y ago
    Depending on where your waste water is dumped, it is.

ycombonator 7y ago

Population decline from not having kids.

peedabble 7y ago
Oh, I don't know, I'd say it could have something to do with colleges generating a bad rap in the context of being political, among other things.

jessehorne 7y ago

As much as I'd love to pursue higher education and to get a degree, I simply can't afford thousands of dollars every semester. I'm not 17 anymore so it's harder to convince me to get into that much debt. If I ended up owing 150k and could afford to pay back 1k a month, It would take me 12.5 years. I'm sorry but it's just not worth it. I can't think of many sober people that would disagree. If an organization like Khan Academy wanted to charge ~$1200 a year for a 4-year program that I could receive an accredited degree from, I'd sign up immediately.

awb 7y ago
> I'm sorry but it's just not worth it. I can't think of many sober people that would disagree. I've hired developers for the last 10 years and never looked at education, just skills. I think you're making a smart move and helping to hopefully boost these new forms of education that don't require sitting in a classroom for 4 years.
- jessehorne 7y ago
  This makes me extremely happy to hear and it seems others are following the same path! Good on you. For me, it just seems like the logical way to go. Progress comes for us all, no matter how many years we've carried a tradition. If the colleges are struggling with low enrollment, it must be time to go back to the drawing board.
- mehrdadn 7y ago
  The last 10 years have been hardly typical years for the job market, at least in software. I can't predict the future, but education is (or at least was) supposed to be a long term investment, and it might be a fallacy to assume the next 30-40 years will be like the previous 10.
  - StandardFuture 7y ago
    Well it is certainly possible that the labor market becomes even more saturated in software and education falls back into being an easy go-to natural filtration system. We are seeing the big tech companies more than ever use algorithmic puzzle questions, and startups using "culture fit" as easy go-to filtration systems. But, I imagine education might be an even simpler filter if labor supply keeps growing. It certainly makes for easy automated filtering if a person doesn't have a top-20 school listed on their resume.

nafizh 7y ago

>Allen is spending his remaining days wrapping things up. The coffee machines are going away and he’s now giving tours of the campus to prospective buyers, including Chinese buyers. This reminds me talks of China buying up land and properties in US. I wonder why they are doing this.

IggleSniggle 7y ago
Probably for the same reasons they buy US dollars.
onlyrealcuzzo 7y ago
Occam's razor / base rates. China is like 20% of the world's entire population. It's close to as much of the global economy as the US, or the EU. It's way bigger than Japan. There's a ton of wealth there, and a ton of rich businesses and people. As things stand right now, China should account for about 15% of all asset purchases globally. It's not surprising if a lot of land and schools and houses and business in the US are being bought by China. There's similar amounts being bought by the EU and Japan. A conspiracy theorist would tell you it's because a lot of people inside and outside of China think the RMB is over valued (by as much as 50%). There's probably truth to this, but compared to the above mentioned base rates -- the affects are likely negligible.
- ericd 7y ago
  I would expect rates of land purchases in a country to be heavily biased towards its citizens, not be near their share of global GDP...
  - seanmcdirmid 7y ago
    The USA is an open market compared to other locales. It’s why the Japanese bought up a lot of real estate during the 80s, and why the Chinese are doing it now.
    - ericd 7y ago

porknubbins 7y ago

This is a little sad but probably inevitable. I went to one of these rural small liberal arts school decades ago (good faculty but no national reputation). Even then it felt anachronistic with a bunch of privileged young people studying like English and philosophy and history but in a giant beautiful isolated summer camp. There was no real connection to industry or jobs (or the outside world) and not much STEM so if you didn’t have connections you kinda got screwed. Makes me want to reread The Secret History though, it perfectly captured the weird cozy but suffocating vibe of being trapped in an isolated bubble with the same people for years on end.

dcolkitt 7y ago
Yet that environment is probably much closer to the original purpose of a university than most others. Philosophy students at a small liberal arts school are much closer in spirit to Renaissance-era Oxford, Sorbonne, or Bologna. At least compared to STEM majors at an urban campus in a work-study program. The point of a university pretty much is to hole yourself away from the broader world and engross yourself in the life of the mind squirrels away from practical concerns about the real world. It's kind of weird that we shoehorned this whole idea of career preparation for mass populations into an institution that's uniquely unsuited for that specific purpose. Then we get pissed off because when those same universities don't do a good job preparing students for the job market. But that's like complaining that a winter coat is uncomfortable to wear to the beach.
- chii 7y ago
  > It's kind of weird that we shoehorned this whole idea of career preparation for mass populations into an institution that's uniquely unsuited for that specific purpose. it's because of the GI bill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G.I._Bill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G.I._Bill , which setup a generation of people who got cheap/free college. Then they, obviously being educated, did well, and it flowed out on to the rest of society. University was originally only for those who have the privilege of paying for it. And if you could afford it, you wouldn't need to worry about jobs or having to pay bills. But the recent college education dogma for jobs has transformed it to a utility, an "investment", and thus loans. There is a place for loans to college education, but not as high as i see right now.

alharith 7y ago

Did US Colleges struggling with low enrollment not close before? What kind of chicanery was going on to keep them open? Is the increasing rate a coincidence? The converse of this statement sounds borderline hilarious: US Colleges Not Struggling with Low Enrollment are Not closing at an increasing rate. Intuition tells me the larger colleges, especially those with sports pedigree are growing substantially, as consumers are now increasingly more aware of costs associated with degrees, and are opting in for more affordable options. The NCES projects an increase of 2% overall increase in enrollment in 4 year programs and a 3% increase in 3 year programs over the next 10 years, so these kids are going somewhere.

killjoywashere 7y ago
> Did US Colleges struggling with low enrollment not close before? What kind of chicanery was going on to keep them open? The rising tide of population growth lifted all boats. High school graduations peaked in 2013. That's total, not rate. Presumably the rate peaked even sooner. There's no more American-born students to victimize. And with the current administration's immigration policies, the US higher education market has had an "opportunity to explore a limited growth marketplace".

throwawayamused 7y ago

Well, well, well... if it isn't the consequences of your own actions. 1.) Colleges jack up their tuition to the point of being un-affordable (multiple years of salary), forcing students to take on massive amounts of debt at the start of their careers 2.) Prospective students are unwilling to become servitude to student loan debt at no-name small colleges and realize that college is hardly the only means for employment 3.) Small colleges close due to low enrollment

Arete314159 7y ago
1.5 --> students with massive amounts of debt delay childbearing, making next generation smaller...
gjsman-1000 7y ago
4.) Regardless of how you feel about it, college faculty and courses generally urged students to postpone marriage and childbearing, ironically resulting in less children to grow up and take college in the next generation.
- killjoywashere 7y ago
  5) Those students, now parents, not only have fewer children, but having seen their older friends delay retirement to fund their kids education, and are now discouraging their own children from overspending on private schools.
- commandlinefan 7y ago
  5) When they do finally start having children, consider what it costs to send a child to college, so have fewer children because they can't afford more.

Merrill 7y ago

>In Vermont, three colleges have ceased operations this year, losing roughly 1,000 students. So 333 students per college or an average freshman class of about 100 per college?

fiftyfifty 7y ago
Vermont has an uphill battle. The overall state population is declining, in particular younger adults are leaving in droves to move to bigger cities. There just isn't much in-state demand for high ed in Vermont and few out of state students looking to move there.

gjsman-1000 7y ago

Personally, besides a lot of this being self-inflicted, can we just mention how predatory colleges are? You're a young 17 year old. You can sign on to owe up to over a hundred thousand dollars, if you choose to go to a private college, even though you can't smoke or drink until you're 21 (and, if you live in Mississippi, you aren't legally at the age of majority until you are 21!). Not only that, but it's a really hard debt to get out of and they will strongly pressure your family to cosign, which (should you fail) is a great way to wreck a relationship. In fact, the 21 thing is pretty dumb anyway. You can get married, enter a lottery, take out over $100K in debt, or join the army and get killed, or gamble away your life savings, or buy gun ammunition, or sue people or get sued, but heaven forbid you buy a beer. Next, schoolbooks. Ludicrously overpriced, to try to convince you to "sell back" your books at the end of the semester for a pittance. Colleges claim to love diversity - if so, you might consider not price gouging books to oblivion and making it harder for lower classes to afford college, perhaps?

quaquaqua1 7y ago
Stop thinking so much. They just want you to pay them. They want your money. Even if you figure it out somehow before you sign in blood, society damn near forces the median human being to go to college as a pre-requisite to survival :) Actual parasites.
trophycase 7y ago
Diversity is mostly a corporate "ideology"
- ewindal 7y ago
  No, corporate adopted it because it’s profitable right now.
  - dgellow 7y ago
    Just curious about this: What makes diversity profitable?

briandear 7y ago

Good. Make a product the market will buy at a price the market supports or go out of business. The American public has been sold a bill of goods when it comes to the necessity of student loan debt and degrees of questionable value. This isn’t a slight on higher education as a concept, but a condemnation of higher education as an industry. Higher education inflation exceeds that of even health care.

realbarack 7y ago

What happens to the campus when a liberal arts college shuts down? In Green Mountain College's case it seems like they're looking for a buyer to the tune of $20 million or so. [0] I think it'd be pretty rad if old college campuses turned into hubs for remote workers; who's working on that? [0] https://www.sevendaysvt.com/vermont/as-green-mountain-college-sells-off-its-assets-poultney-ponders-its-future/Content?oid=28561240 https://www.sevendaysvt.com/vermont/as-green-mountain-colleg...

JonMR 7y ago
There's something perverse about a liberal arts college campus being repurposed for co-working.
symplee 7y ago
Tinder theme park?
- mpolichette 7y ago
  Isn’t that what they are now?
typest 7y ago
This sounds fantastically interesting, and I could see it being successful. Basically — go live in a (literally) college like setting, but you have a source of income. I would do it. Hit me up if you want to chat about this idea.
- DrAwdeOccarim 7y ago
  The school probably already has a fat internet pipe, too. Maybe this is the kind of thing a town would want to finance for a short period of time. Maybe you set it up as a co-op with the town? What a fun idea, lol.
topkai22 7y ago
Once there is a place I’m supposed to go to work remotely, am I still working remotely? Complete Side note- I think there must be a market selling RVs to remote workers that work well as home offices. I converted a shed to a home office, but I spent almost as much as a similarly sized RV even after doing a lot of the work myself. The RV has the advantage of being easy to deliver, avoids building code restrictions, can come well wired for power and internet, and you get to have an RV.

zerof1l 7y ago

I feel like traditional universities is a dying breed. Of course some big and famous ones like MIT will stay, but in general it is not worth it. If you want to get a degree, instead of $36k a year, you can enroll into online university like UoPeople where the entire 4 year Bachelor Degree will cost you $4k. Disclosure: I'm not affiliated with UoPeople, but I did graduate from there.

SparkleBunny 7y ago
1.) When did you graduate? 2.) How has employment been? Not snark; genuinely curious.
bitL 7y ago
It's a nationally accredited university, not regionally, so you are out of luck getting into any regular university afterwards as all of them require regional accreditation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higher_education_accreditation_in_the_United_States#Regional_accreditation_compared_to_national_accreditation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higher_education_accreditation...

rando1010101 7y ago

cgtn?

rando1010101o 7y ago

cgtn?

KoftaBob 7y ago

Good riddance. Colleges want the benefits of the free market when it comes to nearly unlimited demand for higher education, but act like victims when students finally decide to be price sensitive. The vast majority of people go to college so they can get a job with that degree. When schools are charging obscene tuitions while simultaneously doing a terrible job at landing those students good jobs, I have 0 sympathy for them. Good riddance to these deadweights.

Proven 7y ago

What’s alarming about it? When people get in debt by pursuing economically unviable education, it’s a government problem. When people avoid doing that and educators go out of business, it’s also a problem. What’s up with that? Make up your mind people.

blisterpeanuts 7y ago

My 15-year-old will be dealing with the college rat race pretty soon. Some of her friends have been taking community college or online college courses in their later high school years. Some have graduated high school and are working, taking some remote courses at night, methodically working toward career goals while not going into debt. The old monolithic approach to college, really an extension of the K-12 system, seems increasingly impractical and irrelevant for today's needs. I agree with others here who argue for taking courses on an ad hoc basis, focusing more on growing a career starting from age 18, rather than immersing oneself in higher ed for four years, hoping and assuming there's a nice job waiting at the other end. Look, if you have $200K or $300K lying around, great, go to a nice liberal arts school and enjoy yourself for a few years. There are few things in life more fun than being a college student, stuffing your mind with knowledge during the day and getting soused at night. But in the real world... these little liberal arts schools are a luxury our society no longer can afford, nor do they really serve much of a purpose anymore. The only shame is that we potentially will lose some writers, poets, and artists.

yakshaving_jgt 7y ago
Paying tuition to the tune of $200k-300k is not a prerequisite to becoming a writer, poet, nor artist.

fastball 7y ago

Good.

droithomme 7y ago

As others here have pointed out, if you have absolute top scores, and GPA, and have done awesome projects, then you can get a full ride somewhere. Just got to find that ride. If not, then wait until over 25 so that your parent's income isn't considered, assuming they make say more than $50k or so combined family income. (Ie more than the federal poverty line.) Top standardized test scores are necessary for financial aid and admittance to a top program. Plus a high GPA. The GPA requirement sucks since it's completely arbitrary. Maybe your GPA is low because you are super high IQ and teachers hated your guts. That happens often.

rolltiide 7y ago

The job market is still looking for a way to separate ideal candidates from the general population. The economy spends a lot of time dealing with unvetted untalented people that “need a chance“ to perform as much as someone that is unvetted but talented. It doesn't have to be college, but there isnt another system so robust and bussing as many people throught it. Sure corporations can try apprenticeship programs but that will take a decade for it to be broad enough.

jwilber 7y ago

Here’s a recent article from NPR discussing the problems smaller colleges face when enrollment decreases [1]. Many of the issues (faculty cuts, etc.) have been discussed here, but something I find interesting is that, in order to stay afloat, they’re changing the demographics they target. Namely, first-gen students (this has been an existing target for sometime) and returning adults: “ The challenge is that returning adult students are a lot harder to recruit. For high school students, Orians says, "we know where those people are. High schoolers are a captive audience." But when it comes to adults, she says, "they are everywhere. They are working. They are parents. They are engaged with their community." “ That said, they recognize recruitment isn’t always enough. They also plan to explore industry partnerships, further teacher training, and, most importantly, student retention: “ Last week, new numbers on graduation rates revealed that 60% of students who start college get their degree in six years. That's the highest its been in nearly a decade. “ 1. https://www.npr.org/2019/12/16/787909495/fewer-students-are-going-to-college-heres-why-that-matters https://www.npr.org/2019/12/16/787909495/fewer-students-are-...

grammers 7y ago

Why does colleges have to be that expensive? I'd love to study, but simply can't afford it. Other countries can do it for less, why can't we?

honestoHeminway 7y ago
You actually can enroll in other countries?
newguy1234 7y ago
Because the truth is that modern college is simply not efficient and I would even say is against adopting new technologies due to teacher unions. I want wikipedia university! Too bad their side project into that (wikiversity) is a failure.
colechristensen 7y ago
Waste on ever growing administration overhead and top tier administration salary combined with prestige construction unrelated to academic or research success. Fueled by cheap loans difficult to discharge in bankruptcy, a cultural idea that everybody needs a degree to be a worthwhile person, and a glut of degree-bearing people competing for lower and lower tier jobs.

mlang23 7y ago

I never understood why it is a desireable thing to put the young into unimaginablly high debt just to get educated. This, the death penalty and no public healthcare are the reasons why I dont really consider the USA as the role model for modern society they'd like to be.

scottlocklin 7y ago

College was obviously a bubble 10 years ago. Couldn't happen to a more deserving group of people. Better still: make all colleges responsible for student debt.

ptah 7y ago

> shrinking number of high-school seniors in the U.S. What would be the reason behind this?

fiftyfifty 7y ago
There are simply fewer kids, people have been having less children, getting married later or not at all etc: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/12/06/high-school-graduates-drop-number-and-be-increasingly-diverse https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/12/06/high-school-g...

torgian 7y ago

It's no wonder. Collegs/Univeristies are insanely expensive, even if you count the residential programs put into place. I can get my masters degree with 7k out of pocket in another country. As a US citizen. I haven't found a similar program in the States that is that cheap.

IanSanders 7y ago

Can self-organised education communities be a thing? A big chunk of university education is collaborative anyway (cringy "now turn to your peer and discuss", partnered lab work, group assessments) and it would help improve higher variety of skills. Maybe this way we can learn with an aim of learning, as opposite to optimising the grade.

hurricanetc 7y ago

The comments here are divorced from reality and the article. The average student loan debt for students who took out a loan is around $30,000. Some have more, as averages work, but most have less. How? About 30% of students graduate with no debt. Furthermore, the number of schools closing is absolutely trivial and if you read the article you would see that the real issue seems to be plummeting birth rates in the northeast US. The school in the article was charging $12,000 per year in tuition on average. A far cry from what the comments here would have you believe. “$150k in debt.”

blaser-waffle 7y ago
Someone on HN reading the article? HAH

Seenso 7y ago

For those who aren't aware: CGTN is the Chinese version of Russia Today. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/28/business/cctv-china-usa-propaganda.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/28/business/cctv-china-usa-p...

bikenaga 7y ago
Here's an article on Green Mountain from Inside Higher Ed. It contains a little more detail. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/01/24/green-mountain-latest-small-college-close https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/01/24/green-mountai...

joker3 7y ago

You think it's bad now? Wait until you see what happens in 2026. As many of you remember, the bottom dropped out of the US economy in 2008. As a result, many people delayed having children for a few years (or just decided not to). That means that the freshman class of 2026 is going to be significantly smaller than that of 2025, and that's going to shut down a large number of small and financially strapped colleges. It's difficult to imagine exactly what's going to happen afterwards, but we can be confident that things will be different.

Gunax 7y ago
Hmm, that's an interesting perspective I never considered. I wonder if it gets easier to get admitted to (med/law/top undergrad) schools if there is a population drop.
- joker3 7y ago
  Probably in 2030 we're going to see a similar but smaller hit to those sorts of schools. What effect that has is anyone's guess right now.

metaphyze 7y ago

Why didn't they just ADVERTISE the tuition as $12,000 (or maybe $15,000) rather than $36,000 if they were discounting the tuition for 67% of the students anyway. A lot of people probably didn't even bother to apply because of sticker shock.

fiftyfifty 7y ago

Most of these colleges that are closing or merging are small private liberal arts schools, many have a religious affiliation. The main problem is not cost per say (as the article points out some of these schools are only $12,000/year), it's that many of these schools have not updated their curricula for decades. The degrees from these institutions offers little in the way of preparation for a 21st century career that could justify even their modest cost. There are plenty of small schools in the Northeast that are thriving, schools that have changed with the times that offer competitive programs in technology, science, medicine, business, politics, law etc.

gaius__baltar 7y ago

Don't let the door hit you, etc.