It might hasten closings, but it isn’t going to be a factor for a school that isn’t already in trouble.
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How could I tell if a college is prone to closing or not? Especially a small liberal arts one?
I’d start with enrollment trends. Also I’d research - any layoffs, etc. you don’t want to see huge enrollment declines.
Endowment size. Moody’s or S&P or Fitch ratings might be another thing to look at.
And if you have concerns list names here. No one knows but folks can give their best guess.
U of Arts was tough. They said it was due to lost accreditation.
While the rating agencies came late in downgrades, the school already had a junk rating prior.
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I remember a study years ago that identified enrollments below 1,000 as a common denominator for colleges that closed.
I would also look for sustained enrollment declines even among larger institutions.
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So this can even happen to large universities? How do I know a school I’m applying to is safe or not 
I’d assume state schools and T20s are safe
Top 500 is probably safe.
Larger publics might merge, but don’t often close because they are buttressed by state funding. However, state branch campuses, like in Wisconsin or Pennsylvania, are not immune. Smaller private colleges that are predominantly dependent on tuition dollars are typically the most vulnerable.
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I’d deem flagships and regionals as safe although there have been a few shuttered or merged regional schools. But state support is good. They’ve definitely trimmed programs though - even at flagships.
Top 20 and top LACs are unlikely to have funding issues although that doesn’t mean they also don’t find areas to trim.
In the end these are businesses. Revenues have to exceed expenses for them to prosper.
The top schools have endowments to overcome shortfalls.
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I don’t. The student should get the same amount of federal aid from any school, so if the Pell grant is going to be $5000, it should be that at every school. Some schools also use the FAFSA numbers to make institutional grants, but the school can do that with or without the exact FAFSA numbers.
So say School A costs $20k and the student is to get $5k as a Pell grant and school would also give a $2k SEOG. School could also give another $4k as a school need grant.
School B might not be willing to estimate any rewards until FAFSA processes, but the awards should be the same, or close(SEOG can vary, or the school’s grants can). The student might get impatient and just go to school A, the the funding shouldn’t be different, and School A can’t distribute federal aid until the FAFSA processes.
Is there any benefit to applying to a branch? I know some of my friends are because of proximity to home but other than that is it an easier transfer to a main campus?
I’ll keep this in mind
Would this include general LACs?
What about religious schools?
I would build a list of schools that interest you, not your friends.
You are an individual with your own grades, test score, budget, interests, and desires.
I’ll add. Build your list. If you have stability concerns you can inquire from there.
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Declining retention rates are another clue. When a college has trouble attracting enough students for their entering classes, the response is to take applicants with lower metrics. If you go too low, you start taking students who might not be ready for college or need additional support and those students are at greater risk of dropping out.
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I feel so bad for these students. Everyone should be told the warning signs before they apply 
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Some religious schools have buildings owned and operated by an order that have long been paid off so there is no bond on them (as there might be on a public school), and sometimes faculty and staff are paid by a different order/department, so the operating budget is a little different. My friend was president of a jesuit university, and earned about $300k so that’s what the books showed. But he gave almost all of that back to the order, so what was the net to the budget?
Of course there aren’t nearly as many Religious teaching or staffing schools as there used to be.
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Here are a couple of posts that talk about some tools that I would use to investigate a school’s sustainability. No one measure by itself would be a vetoing factor. But the more flags that are raised, the more concerned I would likely to be.
And post #867 in this thread discusses a cool tool that @LionsTigersAndBears shared with the community.
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It includes colleges ranked 25 and higher (40…) in the USNWR “Regional universities” category and most private colleges from the “regional colleges” list. Any from the "national universities"and “national LACs” are generally safe, although of course they can change some things (curriculum, mergers…)
Thank you!
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There have been a few articles talking about an enrollment cliff coming in 2025. This based on analysis of high school numbers. It is the year in which there will be a significant decline in college applications/enrolments. This is the result of a long-term decline in birth rates etc… So it isn’t getting better.
FAFSA applications dropped significantly and while the fiasco is partly the reason, it is part of a trend.
You also have the factor that perception of higher education is substantially less favorable than years ago and a trend to “I’d rather have a job” out of high school than spending money on higher ed.
Let’s not underestimate the fact there is a whole group of students who went through “covid” in university and had miserable experiences. This doesn’t help the perception of higher ed.
And, of course, financial mismanagement, does occur as well.
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Just a note that Brandeis has already been in the news for cutting programs, albeit at the graduate level: Proposed cuts to music PhD programs at Brandeis spark grief — and outrage | WBUR News
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Another factor is the rise of predatory for-profit colleges. There are good for-profit colleges but in the early 2000s many for-profits were purposefully enrolling students who were not ready for college with big promises of easy degrees and great jobs.
Those students often struggled and dropped out with no degree but a lot of debt. These colleges didn’t care because they collected their tuition. All it takes is one family member having a experience like this to sour a large number of people on higher education.
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“Outrage” is the most over used term these days. And the reaction at Brandeis is why so few colleges trim programs until it is too late.
Face it folks, the loss of two doctoral programs in music is not going to cause the end of civilization as we know it.
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