College's current financial challenges (degrees, cost, high school, graduates)

[Slater]

Nothing really new about all this, but is this being overblown?:

"Increasingly, high school students are rethinking the value of college, with a growing number of them questioning the return on investment. Some have decided against a four-year degree.

To be sure, undergraduate enrollment was falling even before the pandemic, but remote learning — coupled with the sky-high cost of college — triggered a nosedive. The number of undergraduates enrolled in college nationwide is now down 9.4% compared to two years ago — a loss of nearly 1.4 million students.

Those steep declines caused tuition revenue to fall, putting some schools in financial jeopardy. A few have had to shut down entirely."


https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/05/coll...ost-covid.html

[joe from dayton]

A number of very small colleges have shut down because they did not have the enrollment or endowment to ride out the covid crisis. Obviously I am not familiar with all of the colleges and universities on the 'closed' list but, of the ones that I know about, a lot of them had less than 1,000 students, and a number of those had less than 500 students. Is the closing of a college with an enrollment of 350 students a problem or a market correction? Financially sound colleges have lost 10s of millions of dollars (per college) in revenue. My alma mater is financially sound and still anticipates it will take 3 to 5 years to return to normal finances.

Demographics have also changed in that the number of graduating HS seniors is on the decline (and has been declining) for a while. Smart colleges were already looking at these numbers and planning accordingly.

I am sure some are also thinking about the cost and value of degrees, degree types, and degree pedigree.

[Hemlock140]

I saw this starting in 2019 when the Art Institute of Seattle shut down after being in operation since 1946. They went under despite charging $40,000 tuition, and that was before Covid. When I owned a business I would hire graphic design students from there and several went on to do very well after graduating, others that went in another direction from their major. While student & parents complain about the high cost of tuition, it's still not enough to pay for the property maintenance, utilities, teacher and other staff benefits, apparently. Like any other business, the market determines who makes it ad who doesn't. Perhaps this will lead to more competitive tuition rates, and leaner, more efficient operations in those colleges that survive.