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A Deeper Look at US College Closures
Breaking down Hechinger Report data by sector and maximum program length
Phil Hill
October 23, 2024
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I am just finishing up the Educause conference and plan some coverage of the event and EdTech industry in general soon. And of course we need to get into the new enrollment data for Fall 2024. In the meantime, I was interested in seeing the updated US college closures data from the Hechinger Report, as it should give us insight into institutional finances - and the impacts of Covid and recent enrollment plus financial challenges.
Hechinger Report had an update this week describing a recent uptick in closures (no surprise, but it’s good to have data).
College enrollment has been declining for more than a decade, and that means that many institutions are struggling to pay their bills. A growing number of them are making the difficult decision to close.
In the first nine months of 2024, 28 degree-granting institutions closed, compared with 15 in all of 2023, according to an analysis of federal data provided to The Hechinger Report by the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association or SHEEO.
There was an interesting quote putting this into perspective.
“It’s not corruption; it’s not financial misappropriation of funds; it’s just that they can’t rebound enrollment,” said Rachel Burns, a senior policy analyst at SHEEO, who provided the closure data to The Hechinger Report.
The article only provided one aggregated graphic, but thankfully the Hechinger Report also provides the data.
I’d like to share a deeper look at this college closure data, first by sector. Note that only one public college “closed”, but more importantly note that private, nonprofit closures are now exceeding for-profit closures, a reversal from the 2010s.