Interesting.
I can’t comment further in this particular thread, but I’m having a difficult time understanding the why.
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Because the administration couldn’t legally figure out a way to exempt just Hillsdale from the OBBBA endowment tax, so they went with all schools less than 3,000 tuition paying undergrads.
This is a decent summary:
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Article from the WSJ today about another small college facing dwindling enrollment numbers. Gift link:
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I have heard such lovely things about St. Michael’s too - and my 25 was so interested in their long-standing student-run Fire service, and you can get a small school atmosphere and do 3/2 engineering with UVM, which was really a nice (normally I don’t like 3/2 but you are in same town, so feels different!), but I couldn’t get over their dropping enrollment - it is really a hard hard challenge. They even have so much going for them (great location in Burlington, etc., etc.) and loyal alums and parents….
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A metacomment, but I think it’s useful new context for all the discussion here: In 2025, per-student state funding of public colleges fell for the first time since 2012.
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I first heard about St. Mike’s from a couple of posters here on CC (@ububumble and @CTCape, I believe), and it seems to offer a lot for its students.
I do find it frustrating when newspapers try to compare the admission and yield rates at the country’s most rejective schools with those of “regular” schools. Schools that are in financially strong and sustainable positions will also have much higher admit rates and lower yields than the highest-demand schools, and their admit/yield rates are not always very different from those of schools that are fearing for their future.
But below are some more general quotes from the article that I thought were particularly pertinent to this thread.
More than 40% of students play a team sport, and … athletes are among the most likely to stay at the campus through graduation.
Though this thread has had discussions about the percentage of athletes at a school before, I don’t think the point has been made that the athletes are the ones who are likeliest to stay for all 4-years.
Plumb championed a new emergency services major that has drawn wide student interest.
It’s interesting, though perhaps not unusual, that a very career-driven major would be so popular at a liberal arts college. Perhaps it’s reinforcement for those who view one of the main purposes of a college education as preparation for a career, or maybe it’s a more interesting major than something like biology for those who have pre-med intentions.
The northeast U.S…. reported shrinking birthrates ahead of the rest of the country. The region faces a steeper fall ahead—17% fewer high-school graduates by 2041 compared with 2023, according to the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education.
This helps to drive the demographic cliff discussion home. If the pool of students decreases by 17%, and more kids are choosing to forego college with fears about ROI and AI, then that definitely portends shifts in the college landscape, including hitting more schools that are known to people on CC.
Shrinking enrollment at 442 private nonprofit colleges—out of 1,700 nationwide—is placing them at significant risk of closing or merging in the next decade…Small and rural colleges…are especially vulnerable.
Not surprising, but still sad. So many students say they want a city/urban experience…though oftentimes they’re thinking of expensive cities when they say this, and I don’t know if they understand the implications that much of “city” life will be unaffordable for them, and that a school in a community where it’s a big economic driver can mean a lot of opportunities and catering to the college-aged population that won’t exist in big cities.
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State funding may have fallen for the first time since 2011, but that misses the point that nearly half of all states are still funding their higher ed at levels lower than prior to 2008 (emphasis added):
Many states also continue funding higher education at a lower level than prior to the 2008 Great Recession. Twenty-four states have not yet recovered from the Great Recession (meaning their education appropriations per FTE in 2025 remain below 2008 levels). Arizona (47.4% below), Louisiana (37.1% below), and Iowa (29.2% below) are furthest from recovery.
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I liked this quote too. I knew there were data supporting athletes having relatively high grad rates. The other important observation is that those 40% of athletes are literally keeping the lights on at St. Michael’s and some other smaller schools…without those athletes things would be more dire, (obviously!)…hence the investment in the locker rooms. But I bet spending that money was still a tough sell to some internal constituencies at the school.
It is just a perfect storm hitting many of the small colleges…consumer focus on ROI, preference for urban campuses, declining number of HS grads, declining number of males going to college, reduced state and fed education investment.
Schools are going to have to innovate. I expect we will see some more movement to three year/90 credit degrees. We’ve seen some schools create senior (age 50/55+) housing on campuses (I’m pretty sure some links in this thread on that.) Who knows what else, but they better get moving.
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It’s my understanding that athletes’ families are generally wealthier than the average since it takes money/time/resources to create a competitive college athlete. Is this datapoint simply a correlation of wealthy students tend to be able to stay in college?
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Could be. I’m not exactly sure the wealthy athlete connection holds in small non selective colleges, but maybe.
OTOH at the type of school I was talking about (small, struggling schools) athletes are getting the same [large]discount that all the other students are. With that said, I would agree that regardless what a given student is paying for college, students with relatively lower monetary pressures have higher grad rates.
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Not a closing, apparently: According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, Evergreen State College in Washington has said that its Tacoma campus will remain open, contra rumors to the contrary.
The link goes to a paywalled site, but it’s just a short blurb anyway. Here’s the text:
A lot can happen during spring break. For a public liberal-arts college in Washington, the downtime between terms allowed unfounded rumors of the institution’s demise to spread. False news of the closure of Evergreen State College’s campus in Tacoma apparently originated from since-deleted Facebook posts, The News Tribune reported. The college’s president took the unusual step of having to tell the newspaper that the Tacoma campus “is a critical part” of the institution, and that it wasn’t going anywhere.
The college, which has multiple campuses, has had several years of recent enrollment growth, though it hasn’t made up for a steeper decline from where the institution was a decade ago. It’s also managing financial pressure; it faces a budget deficit of as much as $4.1 million, according to The Olympian.
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State by state, NH, VT, and AZ are the lowest, while IL, NM, and AK are the highest.
AZ is probably helped by population geography, while AK is probably hurt by population geography.
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It follows that it is unsurprising that, comparatively speaking, Vermont’s public-college tuition is very high while New Mexico’s and Alaska’s are very low. (I don’t know the others on the list off the top of my head.)
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The full report PDF has tables comparing state funding, financial aid, and net tuition by state.
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I’d be an early buy in to senior housing at St. Mike’s!
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https://www.npr.org/2026/04/13/nx-s1-5777582/many-private-colleges-at-risk-of-closing
More than a quarter of private colleges are at risk of closing, a new projection shows
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That page says that “A new estimate projects that 442 of the nation’s 1,700 private, nonprofit four-year colleges and universities, with a combined 670,000 students, are at risk of closing or having to merge within the next 10 years.” That suggests an average enrollment of 1,516 at those colleges – on the small side, but not tiny.
Sterling College, which is prominently mentioned in the page, has an enrollment of 40 (down from a peak of 120) and is closing at the end of this semester.
In fairness, that’s more or less been the case for years, decades really.
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When you see some of the tuitions being charged - the desperation that is out there - not surprising.
People love these schools charging $20K - $40K - whether need or merit or both - that’s not sustainable when you have a small endowment and their costs are way higher.
We even see big names being strained - like AU, Clark, and Brandeis.
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Agreed. The US has had too many college seats for awhile now.
This is the money statement from that article, from a Huron exec:
“We have too many seats. We have too many classrooms,” Peter Stokes, a managing director at Huron, said of U.S. colleges and universities. “So over the coming five to 10 years, this shakeout is going to take place.”
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