Many Colleges Are Closing Their Doors

There's an evolution taking place in higher education that is in one way very unfortunate. It seems that enrollments at many colleges are declining, which suggests that a lot of young people have decided they don't want to get up to their chins in debt by taking out loans to go to school.

This is probably in the main a good thing. Most high school graduates don't need, and aren't suited for, college. On the other hand, the reduced enrollments mean that many colleges are closing, which also would not be a bad thing were the closures primarily affecting schools committed to DEI indoctrination rather than education.

Sadly, many of the schools that have closed their doors are small non-profit liberal arts colleges which are more likely to have maintained high academic standards.

An article by Laura Hollis at elaborates:

Siena Heights University, a small Catholic college in Adrian, Michigan, just announced that it will be closing at the end of the next academic year, after 105 years. Siena Heights -- whose enrollment has dropped 20% since 2008 -- follows other Michigan schools: Marygrove College closed in 2019, Finlandia University closed in 2023, and Concordia University Ann Arbor has shuttered all its undergraduate programs.

These are not isolated instances; they are part of a national trend.

Earlier this week, BestColleges.com published a list of colleges and universities that have closed since 2008. In that period, 194 private for-profit schools have closed. It used to be that for-profit institutions -- often viewed as fly-by-night organizations with poor academic standards -- were at greatest risk of closure. Not anymore. The traditional two-and four-year nonprofit colleges and universities are now facing perilous futures as well; 126 have closed since 2008.

A huge part of the problem is skyrocketing costs. In 1980, the average cost of one year at college -- tuition plus room and board -- was $9,438. In 2014, it was $23,872. In 2024-25, it was $38,270. Just since 2000, annual tuition and fees alone (without housing) at private colleges and universities have gone from $15,800 to almost $40,000.

Even if we look only at public universities, we still see staggering increases. Annual tuition at public universities went from $738 in 1980 to $9,349 in 2014. By 2024, the average public university tuition was $27,146.

Part of the reason for this is the proliferation of administrators in many universities. Many schools of all sizes have hired far more administrative staff than what's needed to provide their students with a good education.

They've also expanded their recreational programs to attract students, but to run a sport like, say, soccer which brings in little or no revenue, the school must provide facilities, equipment, insurance, busses for transportation, and staffing. Many schools have numerous such programs for both men and women and these programs need to be funded.

Hollis continues:

And as bad as those numbers are, they don’t reflect the true costs. Most students today must borrow to fund at least part of their education. Average federal student loan debt (not including other private loans) is now around $37,000 per individual borrower. A graduate who leaves college with, say, $50,000 in student loan debt and takes the full 20 years to repay the loan at a 7% interest rate will pay back $93,000 -- or nearly twice what she borrowed.

In aggregate, student loan debt in the United States exceeds $128 billion. That is $128 billion that won’t contribute to economic growth in the purchase of homes, cars or other consumer goods, won’t be spent on children, won’t be invested in new businesses.

Part of the tragedy of this is that many students graduate with enormous debt and a degree that will be completely unhelpful in paying the debt off. These unfortunate young people will have a great deal of difficulty buying a home, their marriage prospects will be diminished, and they'll be burdened for most of their adulthood by a debt that stifles them in their every attempt to flourish.

There's more on this at the link, but Hollis closes with this prediction:

It’s ... reasonable to assume that there will be demand for institutions of higher education that focus on students’ needs rather than the esoteric interests of faculty pressed to publish for publication's sake; that have practical residence options without expensive and unnecessary frills like granite countertops, flatscreen TVs, and indoor climbing walls; that focus on professional preparation and skills development; that encourage self-esteem based upon achievement rather than skin color, ethnicity, socioeconomic status or membership in a class of self-appointed elites.

Unfortunately, it's in large part the no-frills schools that are closing down first.