Category Archives: economics

More academic cuts: May 2024 edition

Posted on June 2, 2024 by Bryan Alexander

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.  … Continue reading →

Posted in economics, horizon scanning | Tagged | 11 Comments

When will the first college or university charge six figures per year? A 2024 update

Posted on May 13, 2024 by Bryan Alexander

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 … Continue reading →

Posted in economics | 8 Comments

Academic cuts, mergers, and closures from April

Posted on April 29, 2024 by Bryan Alexander

April has brought more academic cuts, mergers and closures.  I noted examples of this trend in last month (1, 2, 3) but as they used to say on radio, the hits keep coming.  A Hechinger Report article claimed one institutional … Continue reading →

Posted in economics | 5 Comments

March is the cruelest month: more academic cuts and closures

Posted on March 28, 2024 by Bryan Alexander

Some days I feel like I’m live-blogging my new book across a bunch of web browser tabs.  That is, I’m working on Peak Higher Education in several web browsers across three machines, with tabs open to Google Docs, an RSS … Continue reading →

Posted in economics | 4 Comments

John Oliver’s student loan crisis update

Posted on March 24, 2024 by Bryan Alexander

Nearly a decade ago the comedian John Oliver took on student loans on his remarkably pedagogical show.  It was a good, bracing overview of the problem as it stood then. This week Oliver returned to the theme.  I wanted to … Continue reading →

Posted in economics | 7 Comments

More academic cuts in early 2024

Posted on March 20, 2024 by Bryan Alexander

On March 1st I posted about a series of colleges and universities closing and merging, along with cuts to academic programs, faculty, and staff. The post attracted some attention.  Publicly, people commented on the blog, commented on the Medium version, … Continue reading →

Posted in economics | Tagged | 7 Comments

Starting 2024 with all kinds of academic cuts

Posted on March 1, 2024 by Bryan Alexander

In this new year of 2024, which colleges and universities are cutting academic programs and jobs? For a month I’ve been working on this post, accumulating information about different examples, but the instances have been coming in faster than I’ve … Continue reading →

Posted in economics | Tagged | 15 Comments

Some student loan holders begin payment, while others do not

Posted on December 19, 2023 by Bryan Alexander

Earlier this year the Biden administration ended a series of student loan repayment pauses and restarted the debt payment process.  How is it going so far? According to the Department of Education, 60% of debt holders have resumed or started … Continue reading →

Posted in economics | 1 Comment

How high will today’s largest endowments grow by 2055?

Posted on September 10, 2023 by Bryan Alexander

How might the richest American colleges and universities develop in the future? I’ve been looking at this small yet superinfluential slice of higher education for a while.  For example, since 2018 I’ve been trying to forecast when the most expensive … Continue reading →

Posted in economics, future of education | Leave a comment

When will the first university or college charge $100,000 per year?

Posted on May 12, 2023 by Bryan Alexander

When will the first American college or university charge $100,000 or more to attend? What might that mean for higher education? I first asked this question back in 2018.  I wanted to use that psychologically important six figure price as … Continue reading →

Posted in economics, future of education, higher education | Tagged | 17 Comments