What might the next American presidential administration mean for higher education?
I’ve been tracking the US election closely, given the many impacts its results could have on colleges and universities. Until last month I thought the race too close to call this far ahead, with each candidate having a 50% chance of winning, taking into account various factors and metrics: polls, prediction markets, the thirteen keys model, and so on.
Now, after the first debate and its fallout, I think it’s time to plan on the likelihood of a second Trump presidency.
Obviously this is a chaotic moment. News organizations are increasingly asking Biden to step aside, which is inflecting their report. A growing number of politicians, pundits, activists, and donors are openly calling for Biden to step down as well as to suggest replacements. There is a great deal of spin, leaking, lobbying, and a fierce amount of backstage scheming. Sifting through this as best I can, I think what’s emerging is that Biden’s chances have dipped down and Trump’s have grown. Poll-minder extraordinaire Nate Silver thinks Trump now has 2:1 odds over Biden.
Four months is a long time in politics. All kinds of things could happen: a health crisis for either candidate; changes to either the Gaza or Ukraine wars; twists to the American economy; domestic disasters, climate-driven and otherwise. To say nothing of Trump’s various legal processes… yet I think it’s prudent for academics to start taking a second Trump term as a serious possibility, and to start planning accordingly.
I don’t come to this conclusion with any delight. Personally, I’ve never been a Trump supporter. I have grave concerns about what his administration might do to the world, including higher education, and will do my best to stop such a thing from happening. Yet I think the election is playing out in such a way that we need to prepare. Others are making contingency plans, like NATO.
As a professional futurist, I have some practices and platforms which might be useful to academics and the academically-adjacent as they consider what Trump 2.0 might mean. After talking with my Patreon supporters and a bunch of colleagues, here’s what I can offer.
Future Trends Forum sessions First, I’m looking for academic experts on this election to meet with us. Professors of political science, government, economics, etc. are welcome. We can connect them with the Forum live audience to hash out a forecast of what the next presidency might mean for higher ed.
Second, I could run a scenario exercise, a virtual tabletop simulation. We would start with positing how election night might turn out, as participants (playing the roles they currently have, or wish to have) explore how they might react. We then advance to inauguration, then to one or two potential events which impact higher ed.
An online book club reading of Project 2025This is a Heritage Foundation book, a very detailed plan of actions for Trump to carry out. Project 2025 has won a great deal of attention as the most clearly visualized and publicly accessible vision of what such a presidency might look like. We can read it together, sharing our impressions, reactions, and plans.
A virtual workshop I could set up a virtual event whereby academics meet with election experts to learn, brainstorm, collaborate, and plan. This sounds like the Forum sessions I proposed above, but this would be longer. It might be two hours long, to allow a deeper dive. I could also break it into a series of (say) three live sessions, giving participants time to reflect between meetings; we could also add an asynchronous venue for interstitial conversation.
Sharing information and forecasts Over the next four months I can find and aggregate information which helps us better anticipate a Trump presidency. I’ve been doing that already to an extent. I can share the results here, as well as via YouTube vlogs and across social media. For now, a tag: #election2024.
What do you make of these ideas? Would any in particular be useful to you as you look ahead to November and beyond? Please let me know in the comments.
As June just ran its course, I wanted to share stories of academic cuts I’ve been tracking from that month.
I’ve actually been blogging this theme for months now (March 1, March 20, March 28, April, May), partly as evidence for some points in the book I’m writing. I also hope to establish something of a record for 2024.
I’ve arranged the stories into the customary categories, with an addition, followed by some reflections.
1 Closing colleges and universities
Union Institute and University (private; mostly or entirely online) announced it would close this Sunday, June 30, following several years of financial crisis, receiving a federal Department of Education emergency letter, being sanctioned by its accreditor, and being sued for unpaid wages. Their website, https://myunion.edu/, was down for a few days. Now the front page is a good bye message:
Like many colleges and universities across the country, PTC has faced declining enrollment, market pressures, and inflation in recent years due, in part, to the global pandemic and changing views of higher education.
These external pressures, in addition to orchestrated attacks against the institution, have made it difficult for PTC to increase revenue generation and enrollment numbers to remain operational. Despite continued efforts to raise revenues and address the school’s long standing financial challenges, the nonprofit’s Board determined that long-term fiscal stability was no longer possible.
For fiscal 2023, the college racked up an operating deficit of $4.9 million, on top of a $1.3 million deficit the year before. From 2022 to 2023, its total operating revenues fell about 18.7% to $15.5 million.
As with other struggling institutions, financial woes followed enrollment drops. Between 2017 to 2022, Eastern Nazarene’s fall enrollment dropped by more than a third to 535 students. Since 2010, the headcount fell by nearly half, according to federal data.
One campus looks like it’s about to close, but denies it. Bacone College (Oklahoma; tribal-linked) filed for bankruptcy. Its website states that the campus “is open for day-to-day operations but will not be enrolling students until further notice.” Yet its leadership says this move is about redesign, not resignation:
Interim president Leslie Hannah told Inside Higher Ed that while the college doesn’t plan to close, it will take the next academic year off to reorganize in hopes of attracting a partner to merge with or to acquire Bacone.
Not enrolling a new class makes me think Bacone is likely to close, unless it can convince a merger partner of some value it has which is worth obtaining.
2 Mergers
An institution facing an existential crisis has an alternative to close: merging with another, healthier campus.
The California State University (CSU) system (public) recommended merging two of its institutions, the very different California Polytechnic State University (a/k/a CalPoly) with California State University Maritime Academy. Why? “growing financial challenges and enrollment declines at Cal Maritime.”
There’s more, including framing in terms of general trends:
Over the last seven years, Cal Maritime has experienced a 31% enrollment decline, from approximately 1,100 students in 2016-17 to just over 750 in 2023-24. That, coupled with rising employment and operational costs, has contributed to Cal Maritime’s fiscal crisis. These challenges are not unique to Cal Maritime, as colleges and universities nationally, including the state maritime academies, have been experiencing enrollment and fiscal challenges.
Then there’s a clear statement that a merger is a way to ward off personnel cuts or a closure:
Cal Maritime has implemented several actions and is considering additional steps toward reducing expenses and increasing revenues over the next three years. However, any further reductions to its budget risks compromising Cal Maritime’s critical infrastructure and unique academic mission.
How likely is this to occur?
3 Campuses cutting programs and jobs
Short of mergers and closures, struggling institutions can cut programs and positions. Alverno College (Wisconsin; Catholic; women’s college; founded 1887) declared financial exigency, which means it is in fundamental, extraordinary distress and can thereby take extreme measures. As the school’s official statement puts it, “a proactive measure to restore financial stability and secure Alverno College’s financial future.” That means:
cutting 25 full time faculty members
” 12 full time staff
reducing the number of undergrad majors from 43 to 29 and grad programs from 25 to 19
Note the curricular shift involved. Terminated programs include: cosmetic science; creative arts in practice; education, secondary; English; environmental freshwater science; environmental science; health education; history; mathematics; mathematics/computer science; media design; molecular biology; public health, policy and advocacy; religious studies; Spanish for the professions. Graduate programs cut are Master of Arts in Music and Liturgy and a Master of Music Therapy.
What remains as Alverno’s new focus? Business, communication, education, integrated studies, nursing, psychology and social work, and sciences. It’s a shift to preprofessional courses and a turn away from the arts and humanities, among other things.
The reason for this drastic step? A chronic budget deficit.
University of Lynchburg (private university; Virginia) announced it would cut academic programs, faculty, and staff. That’s 40 staff now, 40 faculty over the next three years, four vice presidents, a dozen undergrad majors, and five graduate programs. The reasons won’t surprise any of you: declining enrollment (“Between 2017 and 2022, fall headcount declined nearly 15%”) and financial pressures. The official announcement has some specific additions:
steadily declining birth rates that mean fewer college-aged students nationwide, the Federal Application for Student Aid (FAFSA) crisis impacting student financing, and the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic that will likely shape the state of education for the next several years.
Keystone College (private; Pennsylvania) announced it would cut faculty and staff positions, along with several academic programs (“chemistry, forensic biology, and child and family studies (teaching)”). Enrollment decline seems to be the major driver here. According to Higher Ed Dive,
The college, a 156-year-old institution, has struggled for years now. Between 2017 and 2022, Keystone’s fall headcount declined 25.7% to 1,131 students, per federal data. That number is down by even more — by 35.7% — from 2010. Its latest financials show a $2 million operating deficit for fiscal 2022.
Keystone’s restructuring moves come roughly two months after its accreditor, the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, warned that the college was at risk of losing accreditation and closing.
In early April, MSCHE asked that Keystone provide it with a teach-out plan. Later in the month, the accreditor warned that the college was “in danger of imminent closure” and gave Keystone until Aug. 1 to prove compliance with accreditation standards. Failure to do that could mean a loss of accreditation — and the access to federal financial aid that comes with it.
Keystone is also trying to find a merger partner, and might have succeeded:
All of this followed a deal for the college to be acquired by the nonprofit Washington Institute for Education and Research, which fell through earlier this year.
In a separate potential deal, Keystone in late May said it signed a letter of intent with an unnamed “strategic partner” to form what it labeled an “alliance.”
In the college’s words, the deal would provide Keystone with “a more secure roadmap for a long-term path forward.” For now, the college and the partner are keeping names and details under wraps.
Lindenwood University (private; Missouri) laid off two professors and a dozen staff in order to address a deficit. The reason? Enrollment decline which at least one official blamed on FAFSA:
Decreased year-over-year FAFSA filing numbers brought on by the stress, confusion and doubts applicants and their parents are experiencing due to this year’s federal aid delays closely mirror the crisis higher education endured during the pandemic, says Kenneth Ferreria, director of student financial services at Franklin Pierce University in New Hampshire.
“You have a group of students who, much like COVID, have evaporated,” he says. “They’re not even filing because they’re hearing from other students that this is such a mess.”
Starting June 2025, the private Lutheran institution will offer just nine programs — all in medical-related fields — on its physical campus. That’s down from 53 campus programs the university currently lists on its website. It will offer another seven online programs, mostly in education fields, which is down from more than 60 currently.
The reason is financial, as the institution operates at a very large deficit. Interestingly, its enrollment is actually growing. No word yet on faculty or staff cuts, but those would logically follow.
Emerson College (private; Boston) announced it would cut staff and not fill some faculty positions due to an enrollment drop. The campus president offered a mix of reasons:
“We attribute this reduction to multiple factors, including national enrollment trends away from smaller private institutions, an enrollment deposit delay in response to the new FAFSA rollout, student protests targeting our yield events and campus tours, and negative press and social media generated from the demonstrations and arrests.”
Some disagree, saying that Emerson’s rising prices are driving students away.
University of Nevada Las Vegas (public land grant; research-1) announced 25% cuts to all non-essential service programs, along with a hiring freeze. The official cause is an across the board cost of living increase in employee pay.
The Pennsylvania State University system will cut their employee numbers by 10%, after nearly 400 people accepted buyouts. Additionally, four chancellors will supervise 11 campuses; previously, there was one chancellor per school. “For example, the chancellor of Penn State Brandywine, Marilyn Wells, will also begin leading Penn State’s Mont Alto and York campuses this summer.”
Saint Cloud State University will cut programs, just not as many as previously announced, 42 instead of 46.
Following recent discussions on campus, including with bargaining units, officials have now opted to moderately lighten the cuts. St. Cloud State leaders elected to keep the university’s bachelor’s programs in manufacturing engineering technology and studio art, and master’s degrees in software engineering and social studies.
(I first wrote about St. Cloud in 2023, then returned to it last month)
4 Budget crises, programs cut, not laying off people yet
Six of 13 University of Wisconsin campuses (public) project having significant deficits in the upcoming year.
New Jersey City University (public) confronts a $337 million debt, according to testimony before that state’s legislature. This follows a crisis in 2022, where NJCU revealed financial problems, leading to program cuts.
Union College’s most famous building.
Union College (private; liberal arts; New York state) attempted to create new majors, but the effort backfired when the initiating dean would not consider new hires for them, implying cuts would be in order. The reason is to address concerns about forthcoming financial challenges having to do with enrollment – not absolute numbers, but their composition:
Union’s challenge is not one of lowering enrollment — as it has been hovering just over 2,000 students for the last few years — but of attracting enough students to apply who do not require hefty financial aid to attend.
5 Countervailing stories
I wrote about Monroe Community College (New York) planning faculty layoffs last month. Now it looks like MCC’s trustees have reversed course, announcing they would not cut any faculty. That must have been some excellent faculty protesting and campaigning.
What can we learn from these stories?
First off, we need to recognize the human losses these developments represent. The stories feature real human beings whose careers, finances, and mental have just taken serious hits. Students, too, now face their academic records tied to institutions the world perceives as failing or collapsed. It’s too easy to lose sight of this essential reality when discussing finances, enrollment, and the macro picture.
Second, I note the rising incidence of FAFSA playing a role in such negative events. From University Business:
Ferreira described the pandemic and this year’s complications as a one-two punch. Greg Matthews, vice president for enrollment management at Western New England University, forecasts the second blow may be more dire for many institutions, considering they have fewer reserves to fall back on to mitigate another large deficit. Moreover, he’s hearing from more and more school recruiters that their institutions’ enrollment numbers are falling below last year’s.
In other words, we should expect more FAFSAgate fallout.
Third, the enrollment question has two levels, the first being raw numbers. Since most of American higher education is effectively privatized, depending therefor on tuition and fees, enrollment declines mean less income. Yet don’t forget the second level, namely the financial level of admitted students. Enrolling poor or working-class students can mean the institution receives less per head than when rich students take courses.
Fourth, the queen sacrifice is very much in play. (That’s my term for when a campus sacrifices faculty to survive. The analogy comes from chess, where the queen is the most important piece. Similarly, in colleges and universities the tenured faculty member has major advantages over other populations.)
Fifth, resistance has the ability to reverse administrative decisions, as we see in Monroe, New York. It is by no means guaranteed or even likely to succeed, based on what we’ve seen over the past decade, but it is a possibility.
Sixth: some institutions will solve their budget problems through cuts, gifts, new revenue, and so on. Some will not. Every budget crisis in the present day points to the possibility of cuts to come. Even through they might seem abstract or removed from the immediate work of teaching and research, we should heed them.
Seventh, I wrote this post based on public, largely open source information, relying on the good work of journalists. Colleagues and interested parties have forwarded me such stories. Other people have approached me quietly, sharing stories which haven’t been made public yet. I haven’t shared these yet, either because the people didn’t want me to, or because I had no other verification. There might be another stratum of cuts going on, it seems – perhaps small, but there, below the public’s notice. We need more transparency and better information.
Please, if anyone wants to share their news, contact me. You can use the comments below, publicly, or reach me privately here.
I stayed up last night live-tweeting the American presidential debate, starting here, possibly for my sins. I did that instead of finishing a post about academic cuts in June, which is still in the hopper. I should probably spend more time with my cats… Today I’d like to share my thoughts about what that debate and its immediate responses might mean for academia’s future.
I’m not going to summarize the debate here, nor analyze it either as a debate nor for its overall political implications. It’s easy to find plenty of examples of those around the web. Instead, here I’m focused on the higher education implications.
This is not an exhaustive account. I’d love to hear other people’s thoughts, as always.
Short term, through January 2025
There is a great deal of discourse around the option of replacing Biden as the Democratic party’s presidential nominee. If that happens, it’s possible that competition between potential candidates and factions will involve higher education policy issues, such as who would take which approach to student debt or which person can best fix the FAFSA debacle. It’s also conceivable that higher education policy will fall off the table, given the many other issues on tap. Additionally, academic political scientists may come forward as public intellectuals to help us understand, and perhaps to influence, the complex candidate succession process.
Right now this process is taking place in summer, so there are few faculty and far fewer students actually present on campuses. But if the candidate replacement struggle continues into fall, as it might (the Democratic convention is August 19-22), we could see partisan activity rise in college and university communities. This may engage students, faculty, and staff on different levels and in various ways, from racial justice to gender rights, not to mention Gaza.
On the other side of the debate, Trump clearly left open a path to oppose election results. This could elicit political unrest, which may well take place on campuses – at least elite institutions, as the Gaza encampments demonstrated. Political scientists and related faculty members may also play roles in on-campus education and public scholarship. Depending on how things play out at a given institution, we might see local or state police involved, or federal agencies.
A second Trump presidency
Going into the debate, Trump had an edge in most accounts (for example); it seems likely that last night’s performance might boost his chances. This means we have to take the possibility of a second Trump term seriously. Let’s see what his debate performance might tell us, starting with what either or both candidates said about postsecondary education.
During the debate both candidates praised funding HBCUs. Perhaps Trump will do more of this in a new administration, especially as he clearly wants to peel away black voters from Democrats. Such support might be symbolic or perfunctory. It might also exist alongside Trumpian anti-black racism (which CNN didn’t ask about last night, weirdly).
In the context of helping black Americans, Biden cited his student debt relief efforts. Trump didn’t respond to them, which is unusual, since he’s opposed them previously. Perhaps this means he won’t take any actions on student debt, but I would expect him to end any Biden efforts along these lines.
Biden took care to praise jobs not needing a college degree (“Those fabs, they call them, to – to build these chips, those fabs pay over $100,000. You don’t need a college degree for them”; source) . He celebrated such positions during this year’s State of the Union. Trump didn’t respond to this, but I think he’d align with Biden on this, not being a fan of education.
Beyond what Trump and Biden said about higher education directly, much of the debate concerned America and the world as contexts within which our academic institutions exist. We can derive some possibilities from that to see how they could impact colleges and universities.
I was pleasantly surprised to see the CNN staff raise climate change as a topic, and the difference between the two men’s reactions was clear. Trump’s refusal to address global warming and instead praising clean air and water might become a rhetorical trick for some academics to use. If Trump wins and continues his practice of denying or ignoring climate change, he will energetically undo Biden’s policies. This will make academic climate action more difficult, starting with a reduction in federal funds for research, teaching, and campus operations. If Trump manages to tamp down electric vehicle deployment, it might be harder for schools to swap out their carbon burners and to incentivize visitors to drive EVs. Will such actions depress academic climate action, or spur us on to greater efforts as part of #resistance 2.0?
Trump continually hit his points about reducing immigration. If he resumes the anti-immigrant policies of his first term, we should expect international enrollment to drop. International collaboration of all kinds might become more difficult. On campuses, will he go after academics when he launches mass deportations? As I asked in 2016 and 2020, will academics resist ICE when they request assistance in extracting students, faculty, or staff?
Trump spoke to economics mostly to praise his record and dun Biden’s, not revealing any changes from practice. We might therefore expect more of the same starting in 2025, including trade wars, tariffs, and tax cuts for the rich. What this means for higher education may include: economic instability, which can impact state support, private giving, and endowment returns; side effects on international collaboration and enrollment.
Trump claimed to defend Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, but I think the reality is that he’ll weaken all three. This may incentivize faculty and staff to work longer and/or to take on additional work in order to try making up the shortfall. State governments may also choose to spent more to make up for federal losses, which could then pressure support for public higher education.
On abortion, Trump argued for leaving the matter to state governments. If he adheres to this – and doesn’t support a federal abortion law – we might see a continued shift of some students, staff, and faculty away from strongly anti-abortion states.
To return to the possibility of domestic unrest, Trump claimed he would use National Guard or other federal forces on violent protestors, or would threaten to do so. Again, to the extent such unrest occurs in academic spaces, it might encounter national forces.
Several academic topics didn’t appear, which surprised me, given their prominence in current political discourse. Trump charged Biden with being a weak Palestinian (one of the more surreal moments of the night), but didn’t criticize campus protestors nor allege antisemitism. Critical race theory and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) never appeared. LGBTQ+ politics in general were missing. Title IX didn’t appear, despite the two administrations (three, if you include Obama’s with Biden as vice president) fighting over laws and directives. Neither did higher education’s cost and reputation problems merit discussion. Last night’s debate doesn’t give us insights into what Trump’s next term might reveal on these points. (Here are more to consider.)
Let me pause here. I think that’s a good amount of ideas to chew on for now.
I hope I succeeded in offering a relative calm and analytic reflection. That’s not how I feel. Last night I was aghast, horrified, depressed, hollering. This day my friends and family have been discussing what a disaster the debate was. I’m scared for what the outcomes may mean for the nation and my family.
I, for one, would like to help academia deal with an increasingly likely Trump presidency. More to come on that score.
Over to you all. What did that debate indicate about higher education for you?
Greetings from London, where I’m attending a CIEE event on international study. It’s good to be back in this city, if only for a few overscheduled days.
I’d like to share notes for my talk here. Since I gave it without slides, the only images I’ll share are screen grabs and photos I took, like this one of the unsuspecting audience:
To frame my quick talk, recall my old question: how can higher education best respond to the climate crisis?
I began with a big picture overview: the specter of global warming as a grand civilization crisis. I noted the sheer size and complexity of the problem. It impacts everything, including climate change. I mentioned the many ways colleges and universities can react and be influenced by the crisis, then focused down to the question of international study. How can we reduce the carbon footprint of study abroad? What are the available options?
I didn’t get to show this Climate Reanalyzer image, but described it.
One option is to consider alternatives to flying. Students can take trains to destinations. This can work well in Europe, coastal China, America’s east coast, and… not many other places, given the limited availability of train infrastructure. We can also turn to ships and boats, but similarly that also only works in a limited sphere. Using these options a study abroad program would have to re-localize or regionalize its scope.
A second option is to go virtual. We already know how to do virtual trips through combinations of web content, live video, and asynchronous video. There have been examples of immersive experiences in virtual reality for a long time. Now extended reality (examples: Hololens, Magic Leap, Vision Pro) offer even greater immersive possibilities. So student can have *some* experience of another part of the world. Yet this runs into all kinds of problems, such as yielding a much narrower and shallower experience, not to mention cost and digital divide challenges.
(I told the crowd a little about my own experience with decarbonizing professional travel)
A third option is for study abroad to embrace climate change at a programmatic level. First, students can study global warming through themed internships, exchanges, formal classes, and just cultural immersion. Host groups can identify climate-relevant opportunities, from civil engineering projects to solar installations, agricultural experiments, and more. Imagine an economics major working with a company attempting to decarbonize operations, or a political science student interning with a government wrangling climate policies. As I keep saying, climate change is deeply transdisciplinary.
Second, students could travel abroad for non-climate topics, but explore global warming in that content. Imagine, for example, a student spending months in Madrid to work on their Spanish language and culture understanding. They can keep an eye out for how climate appears there: consumer behavior, popular attitudes, new regulations, emerging products and services, even the language used. This will take some preparation on the “sending” institution’s part, perhaps through a climate change literacy program.
As with anything involving climate, or higher education, there are quality questions. How can we assure that such experiences are good and germane? How do supporting faculty and staff learning climate issues and their applications in these contexts? Institutions of all kinds – colleges, nonprofits, companies, governments – will have to do this carefully. Realistically, some might not.
I wrapped up this quick sketch with advice to the audience, recommending that everyone in the study abroad world not only get up to speed on climate change, but look ahead to changes in this topic. We might expect (for example) rising governmental or cultural pressure against flying. We should also anticipate developments in air travel technologies, such as the emergence of new jet fuels and the return of airships. Study abroad might take to the skies once more.
…and that was a lot to do in 15 minutes, but I managed in 14. “Like drinking from a firehose” observed the program’s moderator.
Afterwards, there was a good deal of interest from conference participants in conversation. I raised climate during question and answer periods for some other sessions, and presenters took the topic seriously. I got the impression that this was a topic either new to them, or one they hadn’t hashed through out loud. I hope my quick presentation was a useful contribution.
At a meta-level, I’ve been traveling a lot this summer, reaching locations on two continents via car, train, and aircraft. I’ve also done a series of virtual events. I am by no means satisfied with my own professional carbon footprint, and am working on it.
What do we know about people who take some college classes, then leave the institution without any kind of degree?
The National Student Clearinghouse Research Center just published new data on people who have some college, no credential (SCNC). It’s vital information for American higher ed. Here I’ll follow my usual practice of identifying what I see as key findings, then will add some reflections.
To start with, the number of people who once enrolled but never got a degree is immense: “today’s SCNC population is 41.9 million students, 36.8 million of whom are between the ages of 18 and 64.” That’s a nearly 3% increase since last year. For broader context, “[t]his represents 18.1 percent of the total United States population between 18 and 64 years old” or about 13% of everyone who lives in America.
In demographic terms, SCNC people are spread across all ages:
There is a skew older in terms of increase: “the rate of growth was considerably smaller for students currently aged 25-34 (+15,100, +0.1%) compared to the rest of the population, which saw increases ranging from 2.9 percent (for those aged 35-44) to 5.1 percent (for those aged 45-64). ”
More men than women are stopping out. The racial mix is more nonwhite than the rest of the student population: “Hispanic, Black, and Native American students are disproportionately represented among the overall SCNC population.”
There are strong differences by institutional type. For-profits saw the largest share of stop-out increases by far:
…followed by primarily online institutions (think Western Governors, SNHU, Liberty, etc.). Those are more likely to lose students, but at the same time these institutions are also more likely to attract them.
Where do students enroll when they return to higher education after an absence? Here community colleges play the biggest role:
And note that most students don’t return to the school they left: “In the 2022-23 academic year, nearly 63 percent of re-enrollees attended a different institution than the one they were previously enrolled at.” Setting aside externalities (see below) this is not a good commentary on the original campuses.
The number of re-enrollees is tiny:
In the 2022-23 academic year, more than 943,000 SCNC students re-enrolled in higher education and 134,800 formerly SCNC students earned their first credential. This is positive news for these students. However, our report suggests there is still much more work to be done. These students represent only a small fraction of the 36.8 million adults who make up the working age SCNC population.
So what does this mean for higher education and its future?
On the face of it, the phenomenon of tens of millions of people not attaining certifications looks like a massive failure for American colleges and universities. We often celebrate degrees for a range of reasons, including their powerful meaning on the job market. To the extent that we see academics as responsible for students’ educational experiences, this appears to be a clear assessment that American higher ed is doing wrong by a *lot* of students.
Yes, we can identify a positive or neutral aspect to this data. For some people, taking some classes without winning a degree is sufficient for their purposes. As an example, think of a person who just wants to improve their French language or computer coding skills; having done so, they see no need to go further. I think we are satisfied with that kind of limited continuing education. There are also cases whereby someone leaves higher education for unrelated reasons: a family crisis, a move out of the area, a new job. These external reasons can leave us off the hook.
Yet how many students exit our campuses short of a degree because of the way we structure their experience? There are so many points of failure: advising, in-class support, sheer bureaucracy, the cost and debt.
Moreover, American higher ed inherits two commitments to seeing students through more classes and certification. First is the idea of “college for all,” the concept that the more post-secondary experience we have, the better everyone is. Second is the economic sustainability issue. Since we effectively privatized colleges and universities, enrollment is key to keeping these institutions open. Setting aside the neutral and positive reasons noted above, this population nearly 42 million strong appears to be a huge recruitment target. As the Clearinghouse puts it, “Re-engaging those who stop out remains a persistent challenge and a priority for the forty states that have set ambitious postsecondary attainment goals.”
Since nearly two-thirds of students who left one school return to classes at a different institution, there’s clearly an opportunity for campuses to recruit from others. Inside Higher Ed’s article on the report focuses on this aspect. Another article thinks this is a great opportunity for community colleges.
I would add to this: to the extent an institution is concerned about education more nonwhite people and/or men, recruiting from the SCNC population is aligned with that goal. It might also be an ethical imperative. As the report notes, “States and institutions could look to the Potential Completer population to help reach their re-engagement and attainment goals in equitable ways. Hispanic, Black, and Native students are well-represented in this group, which is almost twice as likely to complete credentials within two years of re-enrollment as their other SCNC peers.”
The Clearinghouse urges academics to take this problem seriously, and I can conclude with their advice:
Re-engaging with the SCNC population has broad benefits for states, institutions, and students. For states, seeing additional SCNC students earn credentials can help to increase the attainment levels of their workforces and make their economies more competitive. For institutions, SCNC students can help address enrollment shortfalls amid a shifting demographic landscape. Perhaps more importantly, helping SCNC students through completing their first credentials can advance institutional missions to drive social mobility for students of all backgrounds.
How are colleges and universities responding to financial and other pressures?
This year I’ve been tracking a series of institutional budget crises, spending cuts, layoffs, mergers, and campus closures. They seemed to spike in March (1, 2, 3) and continued in April. Now that May is over I can share what I observed in that month.
tl;dr version – closures, cuts, layoffs continued.
Today I’ll reuse the headers I set up in those previous posts, except for mergers, as I didn’t find any in May 2024.
1 Closing campuses
Eastern Gateway Community College (Ohio) (community college), founded in the 1960s, will close this October 31. Causes are a mix of a terminated online program, financial “irregularities” (federal search warrants, two leaders indicted in 2023), and running out of funds.
UArts has been in a fragile financial state, with many years of declining enrollments, declining revenues, and increasing expenses. We have worked hard this year alongside many of you to take steps that would secure the University’s sustainability. The progress we made together has been impressive. Unfortunately, however, we could not overcome the ultimate challenge we faced: with a cash position that has steadily weakened, we could not cover significant, unanticipated expenses.
I was struck by the next sentence: “The situation came to light very suddenly.” That suggests some communications problems, at least, within the institution. The president added that enrollment was a problem.
The Oriental College of Medicine (OCOM: private graduate school in Chinese medicine, in Oregon) will close, citing declining enrollment, among other factors. One of the latter is the local community:
The increase in crime, drug use, and people living unsheltered in Portland and, especially, in Old Town, due to the pandemic led to a steep decline in enrollment and gutted the college building’s value.
SCSU administrators recommended discontinuing 46 of the university’s 136 degree programs, including criminal justice, Spanish, gender and women’s studies, sociology, physics, environmental science and economics.
They also proposed cutting 50 of 85 minor degrees, including African American and American Indian studies. Fifty-seven faculty positions would be cut, or 13 percent of the total.
13% of the faculty to be cut. And why?
In an interview Monday evening, acting president Larry Lee said the cuts are necessary to address a structural budget deficit. The university lost $18 million last year and is projected to lose $5.5 million this year — a deficit made smaller by one-time state funding. Without it, SCSU’s net operating loss would have been $15 million, Lee said.
Notice that’s acting president Lee. The previous president left just days before the university announced these cuts.
Albright College (private liberal arts college, Pennsylvania) is offering its own queen sacrifice, “cut[ting] 29 current staff and faculty positions, in addition to 10 staff positions and 14 faculty positions left vacant from resignations and retirement.” That same report described the rationale solely as the campus being in a “challenging” time.
Interestingly, as with the case of St. Cloud, Albright’s president “stepped down” just before these cuts:
Fetrow has come under fire in recent months as students and faculty expressed concern over the school’s future, culminating in campus protests and growing calls for transparency.
Last month, the faculty of Albright held a vote of no-confidence in Fetrow and provost Karen Campbell, citing a lack of transparency regarding the school’s future and a lack of raises for faculty. [link in original; I removed bold font]
California State University-Monterey Bay (public university; Hispanic-serving institution) is making a series of cuts and related moves. Job cuts include “four management employees and 12 unionized staff.” 86 people took early retirement buy-outs. Other actions include “restructuring departments, eliminating open positions and increasing the student faculty ratio to 28 students per faculty member.” The reason? “a roughly $12 million structural deficit the university has been working to decrease over the past two academic years. That deficit has been reduced to $4 million.”
Columbia College Chicago (private, art-focused) is revamping its entire curriculum, including the core curriculum, in the face of a financial crisis. Higher Ed Dive estimates that process “will result in around a dozen faculty job losses.” On top of that, “Columbia is reviewing 28 academic programs of concern,’ and resulting cuts could lead to additional faculty layoffs.”
More on that financial crisis:
Tasked with assessing the college’s financial situation, Columbia President Kwang-Wu Kim, who is set to step down in July, found that the state of its finances met the threshold for an “adverse circumstance” under its policy guidelines, which allows for the termination of tenured faculty members.
“A failure to address this Adverse Circumstance swiftly and comprehensively could become an existential threat if the college does not act now,” Kim said in the report.
The president cited falling enrollment, which is down 36% since 2013, with a student headcount of 6,529 in fall 2023. He also pointed to dwindling reserves and projected deficits of over $30 million annually in the years ahead if it takes no action on its budget. Fiscal 2024 has a projected $37.9 deficit.
Again, another president leaving around job cut announcements.
Northland College (private, Wisconsin) (which I wrote about in April) cut nine professors, or about 15% of the total, according to my estimate. Northland made the cuts based on “program needs, tenure and seniority amid a revamp of the college’s curriculum.” A key institutional note: “Leading the recommendation process was the college’s faculty ad hoc committee on financial exigency, which consulted with program directors and Northland officials.”
The reason? Financial crisis. Here’s the Wikipedia narrative:
In the spring of 2024, the college’s administrators publicly declared that the college was experiencing severe financial distress. In their call for donations, they declared that the college lacked the funding to remain open beyond the current academic year.[5] In the accompanying press release, administrators said that $12 million was required to keep the institution running.[6] On the day after the original fundraising deadline on April 3, the college declared financial exigency and delayed the deadline by two weeks. By that point, the college had raised US$1,500,000 from 900 donors.[7] On May 1st, the college officially announced that it would remain open under a restructured model to be implemented in the Fall 2024 semester.[8]
Don’t miss that declaration of financial exigency. The term gives administration much more latitude to act, including axing tenured faculty members.
St. Catherine University (private, Catholic; Minnesota) laid off 11 staff. They include “six staff positions with the closure of its early childhood center and another five in various other units.” They didn’t cut faculty, but:
St. Catherine said the employment of “a few” faculty members ended when their temporary contracts lapsed, but asserted it did not terminate or choose not to renew any contracts. It also said “a number of” faculty retired this year and others have left for new jobs.
The reasons are a mix of finance and enrollment, typically:
The institution posted an operating deficit of $19 million for the fiscal year that ended May 2023 after racking up a $9.5 million deficit the year before, according to its latest financials. Total revenues decreased by about $6.5 million year to year year while expenses rose by $3 million. Tuition revenue, specifically, fell 7.7% from fiscal 2022 to fiscal 2023.
St. Catherine had 3,577 students in fall 2022, down 24.3% from 2017 and about a third from 2010 levels, according to federal data.
In addition, courts charged a former St. Kate’s dean with embezzling nearly half a million dollars. “Not helping financial matters,” as Higher Ed Dive puts it.
Columbus State Community College (Ohio) is cutting 14 positions. According to a cited statement, none of those people were instructors, so presumably they are – were – some kinds of staff. They are also reviewing searches for open positions. The rationale? “Administrators say the college is running on a $6.8 million dollar budget short fall for fiscal year 2024. They point to several factors, including lower-than-expected enrollment.”
3 Budget crises, programs cut, not laying off people yet
Alverno College (private, Catholic, women’s college; Wisconsin) is preparing layoffs. “[W]ithin the next two months, it anticipates recommending to its Board of Trustees program changes and a reduction of its faculty and staff ‘to safeguard our financial sustainability.'”
This could be a prelude to cuts. As the official FAQ notes: “Involuntary layoffs and non-reappointments could occur in the future and could include people who are eligible for this Program.”
The president of the University of New Orleans (public research university) asked departments to cut their respective budgets by 15%. No word on job cuts, but the president “said she believes UNO can make cuts without impacting student experience while maintaining the university’s goal of providing a student-centered research facility.”
Drake University (private university, Iowa) will cut three academic programs as part of an effort to balance its budget. The programs are an East Asian studies minor, a graduate certificate program in evidence-based healthcare, and a religion major. Note that closing these problems is the flip side of starting others, namely “an artificial intelligence major, cybersecurity minor and accelerated nursing program.”
“In light of our current student population size, university administrators, faculty and staff have evaluated program offerings, operations and employment budget lines… In order to achieve budget alignment, we have selectively reduced the size of our teaching staff for the next academic year.”
One more story: the Higher Learning Commission accreditor is reportedly “working to more quickly identify signals of a college in distress.” It sounds like HLC is doing some important research on this score.
What can we learn or deduce from these stories?
I’ve written about this kind of thing for years and don’t want to repeat myself too much, so today I’ll add only a few notes:
I think it’s clear that the queen sacrifice strategy continues to be one at least some administrations find useful in financial crises.
None of these institutions are among the post-secondary elite. Their names will often be unfamiliar. They don’t have grand endowments to draw upon, nor national reputations to use in requesting gifts. This will reduce media coverage and academic attention, which is massively unfair.
I note that some of these stories involve presidents exiting. I’d really like to learn more about this kind of thing. How often does a president refuse to make cuts, and their board kicks them out as a result, hiring someone to wield the ax?
I am curious that one campus cited the FAFSA debacle as a reason. How many other institutions view their enrollment woes in this light?
Note the importance of curricular overhaul in many of these stories. Changing what’s taught and, perhaps more importantly, reflecting on how many instructors and staff are involved in offerings various programs, can be a straight line to reductions as well as new hires.
Note, too, that for most of these institutions the financial problems are chronic. Enrollment declines stretch over years. One semester’s cuts don’t always solve the fiscal problem.
Final observation: I’ve cited a lot of statistics here. I’ve pointed to many institutional structures. But these are all also human stories, concerning people whose careers are damaged, whose livelihoods are endangered. These are narratives of personal blight. We cannot lose site of this essential truth.
I’ll stop here. Please let me know if I missed any incidents. And I welcome the stories of any individuals or groups impacted in these sorry events.
How can we travel without contributing to global warming?
I’ve been considering this problem for a while at the institutional and macro levels, as I researched climate change and higher education’s future. I’ve also mulled it for myself, thinking of how to decarbonize my professional travel, mostly recently in 2022. Since then I’ve made some changes and also hit some obstacles, and want to share where things have ended up today.
Two quick introductory notes: first, for context, I live in Manassas, Virginia, right near Washington, DC. I have traveled extensively for professional reasons, heading to locations to give presentations, lead workshops, facilitate or be in meetings, work conferences, conduct research, and so on. This has led me throughout the United States and to every continent except Antarctica. I am also a very busy person who does a lot of work online, which means I need to travel quickly and/or with opportunities to work.
Second, some people have told me not to bother analyzing and redesigning my travel, the main argument being I’m just one person with a statistically infinitesimal impact on the globe. This is true on the face of it, but I’m otherwise unconvinced. The obvious counterargument is that the climate crisis is a civilization-wide thing, an all of the above, all hands on deck kind of event. Everyone gets to participate and should. Moreover, and perhaps vainly, I hope I can stir some discussion with this work, and perhaps even convince others to decarbonize.
The problem is complicated, so I’ve broken it down into three levels of increasing difficulty.
DALL-E imagines decarbonized travel.
1 The local situation is quite doable
Walking doesn’t get me to most places, as we live in a residential district. There is a shopping cluster about one mile away, complete with basic grocery store, drugstore, urgent care, and public library branch, so that’s doable on foot, depending on weather. The town of Manassas proper is about an hour’s walk each way.
So I bike, and that’s fine. My current range is about 5-6 miles out since I restarted biking a couple of years ago. I can carry some stuff in panniers and a backpack, which lets me do a good number of errands involving moving objects to and fro: groceries, our gym, library book club, medications, a bookstore, some clothes shops, medical clinics, two post offices, the DMV, even the nearest hospital. I wear bone conducting headphones so I can listen to podcasts and ebooks while hearing the immediate environment – i.e., listening for cars.
Yet none of this is professional travel. Ranging further afield for that purpose requires a mix of bike, trains, and some cars. Virginia’s commuter rail line actually ends 3 miles from our house, and there’s another station in town just 2.5 miles away, so I can easily bike to that and ride into Washington, DC. The only problem is that the VRE has extremely limited hours, basically brief early morning and later afternoon slots, and those only on Monday-Friday. This is an issue when my schedule doesn’t fit; for example, many of my Georgetown classes are evening ones.
Washington’s famous Metro is another option, and works brilliantly except for one problem. In my experience it’s pretty reliable and low cost. Best of all, I can do work while I’m riding. The problem is that the nearest station is about 22 miles away. It’s a two hour+ bike ride through some difficult roads.
That’s beyond my biking abilities so far, but I’m working on it, pushing myself to extend my range. If I can make it work, it might yield a new problem in terms of spending 4-5 hours on the road for each Metro trip, basically adding a commute to a commute. I can get a little work done on the bike, but only through listening to podcasts and audiobooks. In the meantime I have to drive or Uber to the Vienna station. From there it’s good.
How does this work professionally? For one, Washington is a magnet for meetings, due to its importance. Throughout the year I head into town to meet with clients, some of whom even have a DC office for this kind of thing. For another, I can reach other transportation mechanisms this way. Let me explain…
2 The medium-scale situation is challenging
In many ways trains are the among the least bad carbon generators in the transportation world. They don’t spew as much CO2 into the air as jets do. Per person they can have a smaller impact than cars.
Unfortunately, I live in the United States. The reason this is a problem is because our national passenger rail provider, Amtrak, is… not great. For reasons of time I’ll skip over how and why this came to pass, and instead sketch the present situation.
To start with, its coverage is quite limited for the sheer size of the United States. Consider this official map:
You quickly see big swathes unserved, including entire states. Some of the routes are strange, too. For example, to travel from New York City to Detroit requires a ride which skips right past the entire state of Michigan, heads west and north to Chicago, then switches back to reach Detroit from the other side. As a result we have to build in significant car travel to train rides, which returns us to the carbon problem.
Then there’s the ride quality issue. I don’t mean comfort. I do enjoy having electrical outlets and a far easier boarding process than airports provide. What is an issue is timing and reliability. Most of these trains are *slow*. They also often experience delays. I’ve had four-six hour trains delayed by 1, 2, 3+ hours.
When the very best train only scores 75% on time and a bunch are under 50%, this is an issue.
The reasons for this awful quality problem are well known. Freight trains often muscle passengers out of the way, hogging lines and slowing traffic. The train ecosystem is a complex one with many essential parts; America’s refusal to take infrastructure support seriously means that engines, cars, rails, and other parts fail more than they should. And climate change is now making things worse, as tracks can become too hot for smooth travel.
As a result, this is a major problem for business travel. I can’t just pop across several states for a meeting. Instead I have to allocate at least two full days for travel, there and back. Worse, riding trains isn’t a great working experience. Amtrak’s WiFi is laughable, so we can use hotspots (either phone or separate hardware), but cell phone coverage is patchy along train lines. My current practice is to have a stack of ebooks and pdfs on my laptop for reading when the internet just stops working. And to avoid video meetings and even phone calls.
Worse, there’s a range problem. Let me explain:
3 Long range travel is unsolved
In my work I travel across the United States, as said earlier. Surely I could take Amtrak across this broad nation, right?
Wrong. Let’s start with the problems mentioned before, of slow speeds, frequent delays, and an iffy working environment. These are multiplied once we look at traveling not hundreds but thousands of miles. To pick a very long trip, Amtrak posts a schedule for traveling from Washington to Los Angeles of 67-88 hours. DC to San Francisco? 77-78, involving three separate trains and two bus rides. That’s the posted timeline; the reality of delays means even longer rides still.
Worse, we hit the problem of missed connections. Air travelers are all too familiar with challenging layovers. Amtrak somehow manages to make this worse. If the first leg of a trip falls behind schedule, and we’ve seen that this is likely, then it’s easy to miss the second. Unlike air travel, American passenger trains have very few runs, meaning a broken connection can add another day to your trip.
I’ve experienced this myself too many times. One DC-to-Ohio trip routed through New York City and had a two hour layover. My first train started off late, then hit another delay, and then another. Conductors assured me I’d be fine, but when I leaped out of the door at Penn Station the second train had already departed. Amtrak staff baldly told me I blew it and had to wait 24 hours for another chance. (I ended up having to take a plane, since my client needed me there the next morning.) For another example, I nearly booked a DC-to-Maine train, only to find a 16 minute connection in Boston. Not only was that layover comically short and easily broken, but switching between trains involved a more than 1 mile run between two different stations. For business travel, I think the only way to handle this realistically is to add in an extra day of travel each way. Which is not good.
Worse, from a purely climate perspective, Amtrak outside of the eastern seaboard tends to run on diesel, rather than electrical power. So this decarbonizing effort ends up recarbonizing.
My conclusion now is to take trains as far as they practically go, which means a chunk of the United States’ eastern region. That means not taking trains for long distance.
How else can we travel long distance?
I’ve been starting to look into ships and haven’t had much luck so far. Crossing the Caribbean, the Atlantic, or even the Pacific isn’t easy. Passenger ships are slow, expensive, have uneven internet access. Cruise ships might be more comfortable but are CO2 nightmares. Freighters might be better on this score, but lose out on comfort and, again, connectivity.
Hybrid and electric vehicles would follow the classic American love of cars. The country is designed for that. I also have a personal reason to consider road trips, which I don’t feel ready to divulge at this moment. Yet the time is immense in driving across this huge country, and doing work while driving is basically a nonstarter.
Which brings us to air travel. This seems to be the only way I can reach destinations beyond the United States and eastern Canada. Yet it is a CO2-spewing machine. So what to do?
Carbon offsets have been one solution since the 1990s. They involve paying someone to promise to sequester CO2 in a safe location to balance out someone else’s emission of the same. It’s a tradeoff based in market logic, so very much a post-Cold War kind of plan. It has a lot of adherents, including a large number of non- and for-profits purporting to set aside that carbon. I’ve been to conferences where vendors have offered to purchase attendees’ measures of travel-generated CO2.
Offsets have not turned out well in practice. The market is not well regulated or even supervised, allowing for all kinds of mistakes and scams. Sequestered carbon is vulnerable to not being sequestered – i.e., someone can set aside a splendid forest, only for it to suffer a fire. CO2 storage may be located in marginalized communities. Then there’s the moral risk of people happily flying around the world, consciences assuaged by offsets, as the climate crisis worsens, when instead we should be reducing emissions at top speed.
At the very least we have the issue of trying to determine the best, or least problematic, offset. In a market lacking transparency, standards, and regulation, this is a significant lift.
Perhaps there’s an alternative to offsets. I could fly, then ask my hosts to donate money to good groups working on climate change. Doing so would also take some research. It might be tricky to convince clients to help fund certain groups, especially if they seem politically unpalatable. (Think about asking a state institution to support Greenpeace, or a private campus with significant oil industry investments to give to Scientist Rebellion.) Such donations leave the CO2 on the table – or, more precisely, lofted into the atmosphere.
Here’s my current set of options for travel beyond basic train range:
Fly. Argue that the good work I do outweighs the carbon cost. I don’t know how to quantify the former sensibly.
Fly. Spend a good amount of time researching offsets and pick the least bad one, such as Gold Standard. Build that cost into my fees.
Fly. Select a good and effective climate action group, then build donations to it into my fees.
Refuse to fly. Instead, do video, either synchronous or prerecorded, depending on time zones.
Honestly, #4 strikes me as the most ethical option at this moment. It takes the climate crisis the most seriously and I am seriously considering it. It’s an extreme position, and so entrails risk. It could burn bridges. It might also be a major blow to my work, as many paid engagements have required air travel. Virtual engagements have yet to make up the difference. But I can double down on them and perhaps, seen as an alternative to high carbon emissions, people will accept them. Who else is doing this? Is there a name for it?
“At this moment”: the situation is changing. These options might be temporary.
4 Looking ahead
There has been tremendous research and development in decarbonization. Solar power has become a world-winner, as Bill McKibben keeps reminding us. Hybrid and straight up electric vehicles have become consumer vehicles, although the US-China Cold War 2.0 seems to make that both easier and harder at the same time. Shouldn’t we expect more transportation progress?
Another DALL-E decarbonization vision.
Americans trains seem, alas, stuck. Improving and expanding Amtrak would be a massive, massive undertaking, requiring huge cash investments, obtaining permissions for thousands of miles of track, switching out trains, and more. Politically this has reliably proven a failure. President Biden, a long-time Amtrak rider, apparently tried to do something along these lines, but lost the chance in negotiations. Making Amtrak more viable sounds like at best a long term strategy.
There’s a lot of work going on to decarbonize air travel. People are working on alternative fuels, lighter batteries for electric planes, solar-power aircraft, and new fuselage designs including “shark skin.” These are all in the earliest stages for now, and we should expect years before they roll out.
As a Kim Stanley Robinson fan I love the idea of airships, if they can become consumer-accessible and also internet-equipped. This hasn’t transpired, sadly, and I’m not sure if the helium supply problem will block this.
For working while traveling, there are various reasons for poor connectivity to exist in the United States, starting with financial incentives and continuing with ISPs being fundamentally disinterested in expanding access. Perhaps trains will contract with Starlink to improve access coverage. Maybe cell phone network reach and speeds will incrementally improve enough to spill over onto railroad lines.
How might offsets get better? We could see parallels from other fields. A trusted, third-party source might appear which vets offset quality. International agreement could set up standards or even certification.
Back on the car front, I’m curious about when self-driving hybrids or EVs become available. Riding one of those vehicles from, say, Washington DC to South Dakota might be appealing. Being freed up from having to be at the wheel most or all of the time lets me get work done (I’ve found better cell phone coverage on roads than rails) and being hybrid/EV could reduce the CO2 footprint.
Looking ahead in other areas, will people in the academic space change their attitudes? For example, how willing will clients be to pay for offsets or climate action groups? Right now I can see the former being popular, but perhaps colleges, universities, governments, companies, nonprofits, etc. will turn against them unless quality improves. For the latter, will some groups become popular in the academic space? How many are prepared to do blended/hybrid meetings in a competent, or even excellent way?
For another example, will such entities become interested in chaining several events together in order to minimize travel? Already we have the precedent of professional associations co-locating events back to back when they have a common audience. Many people use conferences to stage meetings. Perhaps we can expand to have, say, a week of meetings.
Or will academics and the academically-adjacent become more accepting of virtual events? Perhaps I can lean into this, calling for, and helping establish a top level standard for synchronous video.
At a bigger, more civilizational level, will we become accustomed to lower levels of travel? Some visions of the Anthropocene see us as a more localized species, visiting neighbors but going farther afield less often. Perhaps in-person events will become more rare and thereby more special, reserved not for annual conferences or ordinary meetings but for the extraordinary gathering.
That’s where things stand for me. What do you think? How are you considering your own travel in light of climate change?
Greetings from the road. This post is a bit sketchy, as I’ve been riding Amtrak for nearly 10 hours through multiple delays and seriously spotty internet access.
Some nice views, though.
Let me pose one of my standard questions. How is American higher education enrollment changing?
This week we have new enrollment data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. It contains some unusually good news. It is, as the report’s lead commented to me, “surprisingly good.” I’ll summarize and reflect on it here.
The key tl;dr finding: after a decade of enrollment decline, spring 2024 numbers actually rose. They ascended by 2.5% and showed improvement across the board.
1 Summarizing findings
By sector, community colleges experienced the most growth, and owe most of that to dual enrollments (teaching high school students), which grew by 10%; high school students at community colleges accounted for nearly one third of the total post-secondary enrollment rise. Vocational/technical programs also played a major role.
All degree types rose. Bachelors’ went up 2.3%. Associates’ degree jumped 4.5%, which is twice the increase we saw in fall 2023. Certificates increased by 3.5%. Graduate enrollment rose by 3.0%.
All regions of American higher education enjoyed growth, even the northeast, which has suffered enrollment pressures harder than others.
In terms of fields of study, familiar patterns maintained. The health professions rose 3.4% in four years institutions and by 4.4% in community colleges. In the lead for growth: “Computer and Information Sciences logged another year of high growth (+9.9%, +57,000 at four-year institutions).“ In terms of total students, business (which includes marketing and finance) was the biggest population and grew by 3.2% over spring 2023. In contrast, education shrank by the smallest amount, 0.1%.
In demographic terms, women and men both increased, and the ratio of roughly 60%-40% continued. The Clearinghouse didn’t have race breakdowns this time, but did identify that historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) enrollment grew by 3.5%, all in the undergrad population.
2 Reflecting
Why does this matter? One professor told me enrollment only counts for bean counters, so I should quickly explain. The overwhelming majority of American colleges and universities depend primarily on student revenue for their budgets. Tuition, room and board, plus fees keep the doors open, generally. Shrinking enrollment is a problem, obviously and simply; expanding classes, on the other hand, are financial good news.
So what does the new data portent? Clearly this is a big break in a long-running trend of enrollment decline. We saw the first glimmer of an upward direction finallt in fall 2023, but this week’s numbers are higher still.
What caused this reversal? I asked director Shapiro to speculate about the reasons for spring 2024’s growth. After demurring that his focus was on providing data, he thought we could find some changes in student attitudes, which seemed more focused on economic ROI (return on investment), shorter terms of study (hence the health of associates’ and certificates), plus attention to career focused programs. If this is right, it’s an important explanation, as it describes only parts of higher ed being healthy, at least in terms of student numbers.
Just to hammer that point home: the engine behind overall enrollment growth is community colleges, the most marginal, least resourced swathe of higher education. They’re the ones which get by far the least media attention.
The relative success of short term credentials: perhaps we’ll see four-year institutions do more on this score, pushing for additional certificates and microcredentials.
Now, is this the start of another longer term rise, like the long boom which started in the 1980s? Should we expect the next few years to see enrollment build up, before the demographic cliff smacks into us? I’m skeptical, starting from the FAFSA debacle, which looks likely to depress classes to some degree. I’d add the general demographic pattern, low unemployment (for now). and the darkening cultural attitude towards colleges and universities, which I’ve written and spoken about.
One element I haven’t seen much discussion on is international students. American academia has relied on this population for decades. Canada’s decision to seriously cut international students, combined with Australia considering same and Britain not doing well on this front suggests an opening for United States campuses. Unless Trump returns.
I am curious how state governments will react. How many legislators will hold back funding, being able to claim their public universities are economically healthier?
One more point: enrollment is still before pre-COVID numbers, and far below the peak of 2012-2013. It’s going to take a *lot* of enrollment growth to return to peak, millions of students for year upon year. I think that’s unlikely. We’re still in my peak higher ed model, at least for some years.
That’s not 400 little Tiktoks, by the way. Nearly every one of those recordings is about one hour of discussion, conversation, argument, connection: solid, extensive, content.
I know 400 is just an integer, but it strikes me – as the Forum’s creator, producer, host, interlocutor, fund-raiser, and cat-herder – as an indicator of a huge amount of live video work involving tens of thousands of people and a galaxy of ideas. It sometimes dizzies me to think we started in February 2016, and how far back in the past that is from May 2024. We’ve been doing these weekly sessions ever since.
I am so grateful to everyone who has made the Forum succeed: the hundreds of great and brave guests. The more than 10,000 participants. The excellent Wessom Radomsky. Our supporters, like NYSERNet. And Steve Gottlieb plus his whole Shindig crew. My heartfelt thanks to all of you.
Second, I’ve joined a new podcast. Sofanauts is about technology, science fiction, and the future, and it’s a lot of fun. The host is Tony C. Smith, creator of the famous Starship Sofa science fiction podcast, the first podcast to ever win a Hugo award (in 2007).
In every show Tony and I go through a mix of science news stories and science fiction, looking for signs of the future. I bring in my futures work to tease out implications and possibilities. Yet it’s not an academic podcast. Instead, Tony is a delight, a genial host making for a rollicking, wild conversation each time.
Please give us a listen, and feel free to suggest stories (fiction or non) for us to consider.
That’s all for now. Back to tracking this train, finishing a Substack, writing a chapter, and planning tomorrow morning’s panel…
When will the first American college or university charge $100,000 or more to attend? What might that mean for higher education?
I first posed this question, a little wryly, back in 2018. My intent six years ago was to scope out a symbolic marker, a milestone in higher education finance. It was an extreme idea, given that the overwhelming majority of campuses wouldn’t charge anything like that amount, and because the widespread practice of tuition discounting meant a lot of students at those most pricy institutions wouldn’t pay that amount. Besides, there’s nothing objectively different about charging $100K over 99K over 98; these are increments, margins. Yet the eye-popping six figure amount has the virtue of drawing a bead on the economics of elite campuses. Considering it might also reveal something of how our culture responds to them.
I blogged this idea, like I said, back in 2018, and have followed it up fairly regularly ever since, as in 2021, 2022, and 2023. I roughly forecast the most expensive universities crossing over the $100,000/annum barrier around the 2026-2027 academic year. Last year’s inflation adjusted my speculation a bit, nudging the crossover to 2025-26 for at least one university.
How do things stand now?
Here are the published prices for the most expensive American colleges and universities, for the upcoming (2024-2025) academic year, ranked from most expensive downwards. These are undergraduate prices, not graduate ones, which tend to be higher. They also do not reflect higher fees charged to international students, which also tend to be higher. I’m using official figures as published on campus websites.
Let’s start with the colleges and universities charging more than $90,000 for total cost of attendance:
A note for the record: that’s around two dozen (at least) American colleges and universities with sticker prices of more than $90,000 per year right now.
Just behind those is another tier of campuses charging in the upper $80K range:
Moving on, and based on the other figures, what might we expect from the next several years?
Let’s do some basic, first order extrapolation. We can assume that campus operating expenses will rise. Consumer inflation now stands at 3.5% over the past year, according to official figures. In previous posts I used a rough 4% increase for institutional price rises. I upped that number to 5% last year, based on what I saw of price rises. Using that number, the leading campus – USC – would charge $99,986.25 in 2025-2026, or just about as close to the 100K mark as one can get. Using the same basic formula, Northwestern would set its price at $99,621.90, Colorado College $99,609.30, Vanderbilt $98,753.55, and so on. Academic year 2026-2027 would see USC crack the boundary at $104, 985.56, along with Northwestern at $104,603, Colorado College at $104,589.77, and Vanderbilt $103,691.23.
Like I said, that’s a very simple extrapolation. I’ve smooshed together a lot of variables. For example, note how expensive medical costs are as part of total cost of attendance. Those will likely rise much faster than consumer inflation, especially if allied health continues to have problems attracting staffing. Politically attuned readers will recognize some of the first- and second-tier campuses have been in the spotlight due to Gaza protests. Their administrations might find donations weakening, and thereby feel the need to raise prices at a faster pace in order to keep their finances healthy.
As I’ve said before, breaching the six figure barrier might prove to be a symbolic step too far for some of these colleges and universities. They might fear looking too greedy or expensive and take steps to hold the line at $99,999. Alternatively, administrations might decide that the symbol either doesn’t matter – it’s just another number – or that they can benefit from the perception of offering an elite, de luxe service. One might seek to be the first one the year after next, taking up a kind of leadership role.
And after that? Perhaps we will grow accustomed to the six figure bracket, much as we accepted campuses charging above $90,000 without much complaint. Fees of $104,000 and up will simply express value. Alternatively, six figures will become the new lazy river, a much-cited figure, then a cliche, symbolizing academic greed, waste, fecklessness, or whichever other feature the speaker wishes to evoke.
…and then we’re heading to a new milestone: campuses posting a total cost of attendance of $150,000 per year.
Let me offer a coda to this update. After posting about the idea for years, it seems that the thing has drawn some attention, possibly because we’re drawing close to the six figure boundary. Last month Josh Moody wrote a fine article for Inside Higher Ed. The piece includes commentary by me, along with links to my blog posts, as well as discussions with Sandy Baum and Julian Treves. Moody covered a lot of ground.
The New York Times then followed up (gift link) and I admit to being ambivalent about the piece. On the positive side Ron Lieber focused on Vanderbilt University, digging deeply and getting a good mix of data and campus feedback. I was glad to see economists Robert Archibald (a fine Future Trends Forum guest) and David Feldman cited.
On the other hand… the Inside Higher Ed piece appeared April 3rd. The Times published their article two days later, on April 5th, then updated it several days later, on the 8th. There’s no mention of Josh Moody’s article, which is easily discoverable by search. IHE is also one of the two leading higher ed journals, widely known to everyone in the field.
By 2025, the University of Chicago’s sticker price is predicted to pass the $100,000 mark, which would make it the first U.S. college where attendance costs six figures, according to new analysis by The Hechinger Report, an education-news outlet. The analysis suggests at least a handful of other U.S. colleges will follow suit soon after Chicago hits that milestone, including California’s Harvey Mudd College, New York City’s Columbia University, and Texas’s Southern Methodist University.
And given the way American higher education has been going, it likely won’t be long after that before six-figure prices are common among selective colleges and universities.
Further, and as you might expect, I am a bit irked that the Times piece didn’t mention my series of posts on the topic, as quick Googling brings them up. In short, I wish the NYT had recognized that other people had been working on this topic, some of us for years.
To frame my quick talk, recall my old question: how can higher education best respond to the climate crisis?
