Closings multiply as students scramble to protect credits

From a virtual tour of Trinity Christian College—captured just before the Illinois campus closed in May—to looming deadlines, new state rules, and federal plans to speed up takeovers, the pace of college closures is forcing students and institutions to react f

By the time the glass doors opened. the chapel at Trinity Christian College looked like something permanent—redbrick and limestone glowing at one end of a grassy quad. Lectures and receptions had been held there. Students had testified about their faith. Brass “leaves” listing names of past financial boosters were mounted along the way to the music department. the chaplain’s office and the recital hall.

This visit is not real.

It’s a virtual recreation, captured just before Trinity Christian College closed in May so students and alumni could remember the campus that is now being sold off to repay more than $26 million worth of debt and other liabilities.

“Instead of being wiped off the map, this is a way to honor the legacy” of the college, said Shalom Nwaokolo, who, with his wife, Ashley, is creating the permanent digital preservation of it.

Across higher education, that kind of remembrance—sentimental, careful, and increasingly common—is colliding with a harsher reality: closures are happening faster than many students and institutions can prepare for what comes after.

The fear isn’t just that campuses will shut down. It’s that learners will be left mid-degree, holding credits that may not transfer, paying for time they can’t fully recoup, and watching debt shift onto taxpayers while they try to recover what they spent.

The federal government is promising to streamline the process through which struggling colleges are taken over by healthier competitors. States are ramping up protections for consumers when campuses close anyway. and a proposal exists to do the same thing at the federal level. Lawsuits are multiplying, brought by students and employees against schools that closed. Institutions are also trying to find new sources of revenue.

In an attempt to protect students before a closure becomes final. twenty-two states require private higher education institutions to pay into “tuition recovery” funds. Typically. a percentage of tuition collected must be put aside in state accounts from which students could be compensated if the colleges close. While many of these funds were started to protect students at for-profit schools. nearly half have been extended to nonprofit degree-granting colleges.

“This is an opportunity for states to protect students in the event of these closures, because we’re probably going to see more of them,” said Preston Cooper, a senior fellow at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute who has called for the federal government to do the same thing.

Massachusetts offers a sharper example of what regulation looks like after students start to feel the threat in real time. Since 2014. 26 colleges in the state have shut down. and a 27th has announced that it will close at the end of this year. A state law now requires private colleges and universities to provide financial reports to anyone who wants to see them. Regulators have begun conducting annual reviews to determine and publicly disclose whether institutions are at imminent likelihood of failing.

At the federal level, officials at the U.S. Department of Education are pledging to speed up the process that can lead to mergers between healthier and troubled institutions. Officials say the current timeline is so long that one side or the other often gives up.

In court, the urgency has another face. Legal firms have started filing lawsuits on behalf of students. faculty and staff of colleges that have already closed. generally accusing them of fraud and breach of contract. Three class-action federal lawsuits have been brought against the University of the Arts in Philadelphia alone. which shut down abruptly in 2024.

The scale of the problem is large enough to be hard to ignore. More than 440 of the nation’s 1. 700 private. nonprofit four-year colleges and universities—about a quarter of the total—are at risk of closing or having to merge within the next 10 years. according to an estimate by the Huron Consulting Group. Of those. more than 120 are at the highest risk. based on their enrollment. assets. debt. cash on hand and other characteristics.

That estimate comes as the Education Department has begun publishing instructions for students about what to do if their college closes. “Try not to panic,” it advises.

For students, the problem is that “don’t panic” doesn’t stop the calendar from moving. Fewer than half of students at colleges that close continue their educations. according to the most comprehensive study of this. by the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association. Many of those who do continue lose credits they’ve already earned and paid for. and fewer than half ultimately earn degrees.

The 442 colleges Huron projects to be endangered have a collective enrollment of 670,000 students.

If a closure happens. federal loan relief exists—but the routes to it can feel like a tradeoff rather than a repair. Consumers whose colleges close can apply for federal loans to be forgiven through two existing routes: the Borrower Defense to Repayment and the Closed School Discharge programs. But that shifts the debt onto taxpayers. who have already had to cover billions of dollars in loans that will never be repaid.

That cost has fueled growing calls for institutions to put aside money for these expenses. Cooper said. “We do need to think about how students are protected. so when they have invested time and money in their degrees. they can get refunds and discharges of their college loans. and so those costs can be paid for by colleges rather than taxpayers.”.

In Cooper’s proposed federal version of state tuition recovery funds. schools’ contributions would be based on how much federal student loan money they receive. Institutions at higher risk would pay a larger fee. Cooper calculates that this would raise $9.5 billion over 12 years to cover the cost of loans that might be forgiven if the colleges close. Critics counter that such a fee would only further squeeze already cash-strapped colleges.

Some of the urgency also traces back to hesitation inside the institutions themselves. Brian Weinblatt. founder and principal of Higher Ed Consolidation Solutions—one of a growing number of firms that help imperiled schools fix their financial problems. merge or close—said many vulnerable colleges remain slow to take action.

“Almost every institution waits until it’s too late to engage in this process,” Weinblatt said.

Weinblatt said his firm has developed its own “merger runway index. ” a calculation of how much time a university or college has left before it has to merge or close. He argued that when schools wait too long. they become less attractive to merger partners because their enrollment has dwindled too much. they have too much deferred maintenance. and they have too much debt. He added that “People have been burying their heads in the sand, both administrators and trustees.”.

Even if a merger is decided, federal government red tape can make the process time-consuming. Weinblatt said the school with a stronger balance sheet may reach a point where it can’t continue subsidizing the struggling institution: “The school that’s in the better financial position says. ‘If it takes another year. we can’t keep subsidizing this other school that’s struggling. ’ ” he said.

At a conference at George Mason University. Nicholas Kent. under secretary for higher education. described the scale of what institutions face. “Depending on how you count them. we have 6. 000 institutions of higher education in this country. and not all of them are going to make it out of the next decade. ” Kent said. “And quite honestly, not all of them need to make it out of the next decade, or should. And the ones that do are going to be the ones that adapt in a variety of ways.”.

For some campuses, adaptation has already begun in practical ways that look far from classroom life. Agnes Scott College in Georgia started in June to rent out three historic homes it owns. Sweet Briar College in Virginia sells hydroponic lettuce grown in its greenhouses. The University of California, Davis, has launched a line of products from the olives it cultivates for research. The University of Alaska sells permits to harvest firewood from forests it owns.

New Mexico State University has licensed its brand for coffee, whiskey and tequila; Mississippi State University for cigars; and the University of Nevada, Reno, for beef jerky.

For the Nwaokolos, the work started as a way to preserve a campus that was already gone—or rather, being sold off as it is repaid. They see potential for a business doing that more broadly as colleges continue to close. Ashley Nwaokolo said, “It’s possible that other people will want this as well.”

They have built a platform for it. called Perduras—Spanish for “you endure.” Ashley said. “There’s so much life that happens at college. ” calling it “a crossroads of maturity” where “you have a community around you going through similar experiences.” She said that often creates “good memories and attachments to that college.”.

With digital re-creations, she said, “people can have some history to go back to.” And she asked a question that lands like a bruise: “What do you do for a homecoming when there’s no place to come home to?”

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