Pssst — wanna buy a college campus?
There’s a sudden market in abandoned campuses, an outgrowth of the accelerating rate of colleges closing in the face of falling enrollment, rising debt and other problems.
More than 440 of the nation’s private, nonprofit four-year colleges and universities are now at risk, based on enrollment trends, debt and other measures, according to projections by Huron Consulting Group. That’s a quarter of the total.
Among the most endangered: small, rural and religiously affiliated institutions.
And how to dispose of the real estate is among the least of the challenges facing shuttering campuses and the students they serve.
Fewer than half of students at colleges that close continue their educations, according to a study by the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association. Of those who do, only half go on to earn degrees. Some 670,000 students are enrolled at those colleges and universities that the Huron analysis found to be in trouble.
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There are several reasons colleges are closing.
A decline in the birthrate that began around the Great Recession means there will be 15 percent fewer 18-year-olds per year through 2039 than there are now. That’s on top of a drop in the number of students on campus that began in 2011; college and university enrollment is already down by about 2 million since that time.
Among that falling number of high school graduates, the proportion going straight to college has also dropped, from a peak of 70 percent to about 60 percent. That was in 2023, the most recent year for which the figure is available.
International students, who universities and colleges recruited to help fill that gap, have stopped coming, too, in the face of tightened visa rules and higher costs. That is forcing cuts to programs, services and staffing for domestic students. And new limits on federal loans for graduate and professional school could reduce demand for programs that provide universities with badly needed revenue.
While times may be tough for colleges, there’s good news for prospective students. As demand falls, acceptance rates are going up; the median acceptance rate to bachelor’s degree-granting colleges and universities rose by at least 7.6 percentage points from 2012 to 2022.
Related: More than a quarter of private colleges are at risk of closing, new projection shows
Some institutions are admitting students who haven’t even applied, waiving application fees and offering financial aid to prospects just for visiting.
Still, the accomplishment of getting into college — and doing it at a discount — can be hollow if the college doesn’t stay in operation long enough to get students to graduation. So lawmakers are responding to the industry’s decline by adding or proposing new consumer protections.
In Massachusetts, for example, where 27 colleges have shut down or announced they will shut down since 2014, a state law now requires private colleges and universities to provide financial reports to anyone who wants to see them. Those schools at imminent likelihood of closing are named publicly.
Related: Threats of more closings have colleges and students worrying about how to save themselves
Twenty-two states make private higher education institutions pay into “tuition recovery” funds for students to be compensated if they close. There’s a proposal to add a similar provision at the federal level, where policymakers are also promising to streamline the process by which troubled colleges can be merged with healthier competitors instead of going out of business.
If that doesn’t work, one company has a backup plan to memorialize closed colleges, at least for the nostalgia value: by creating virtual tours of campuses that close.
The first such virtual-reality tour will be of Trinity Christian College, in Palos Heights, Illinois, which closed in May.
“Instead of being wiped off the map, this is a way to honor the legacy” of defunct colleges, said Shalom Nwaokolo, who co-runs the company. That way, added his wife and business partner, Ashley, “people can have some history to go back to.”
Contact writer Jon Marcus at 212-678-7556, jmarcus@hechingerreport.org or jpm.82 on Signal.
This story about colleges closing was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our higher education newsletter.