Higher education headed for a shakeout, analysts warn

The Hechinger Report 14 September 2013

Facing sceptical customers, declining enrolments, an antiquated financial model that is haemorrhaging money, and new kinds of low-cost competition, some American universities and colleges may be going the way of the music and journalism industries, writes Jon Marcus for the The Hechinger Report.

Their predicament has become so bad that financial analysts, regulators and bond-rating agencies are beginning to warn that many colleges and universities could close. “A growing percentage of our colleges and universities are in real financial trouble,” the financial consulting firm Bain & Company concluded in a report – a third of them, to be exact, according to Bain, which found that these institutions’ operating costs are rising faster than revenues and investment returns can cover them.

More than 150 colleges and universities got failing scores on an annual test of their financial stability by the US Department of Education in results, released this year, that date from 2011.
Full report on The Hechinger Report site

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