Oct 21, 2019, 6:23 PM
(from the New York Times) College enrollment is down by more than 2.9 million since the last peak, in the fall of 2011, due to a decline in 18-year-olds and low unemployment among other reasons, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. More than 400 colleges and universities still had seats available for freshmen and transfer students after the traditional May 1 deadline to enroll for this fall, the National Association for College Admission Counseling reports. Moody’s projects that the pace of closings will soon reach 15 per year. “You have to be thinking beyond the current business model, whoever you are,” said Stephen Spinelli Jr., president of Babson College. “That’s what higher education is going to have to do if it’s going to survive.”
To meet these challenges, colleges are taking different approaches. The pace of mergers and acquisitions is predicted to pick up so quickly that the self-described first full-service university and college merger consulting firm, Higher Ed Consolidation Solutions, hung out its shingle in August. ... A very few colleges have taken yet another lesson from the business world and responded to decreased demand in the most dramatic way of all: by sharply lowering their prices. St. John’s College, which has 800 students on campuses in New Mexico and Maryland, reduced its tuition by $17,000 this fall, to $35,000. Applications went up, and the size of the entering class rose slightly. But some colleges that cut prices saw their numbers go down, not up. A few enjoyed a bump in applications in response to the attention, which quickly faded.
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