The other college debt crisis – Colleges are going broke

CNBC 07 December 2019

Small, private liberal arts colleges – a staple of American academia since before the founding of the republic – are colliding with new realities including changing demographics, ever-increasing demand for technical skills and competition with bigger and richer schools. The result, in many cases, is not pretty, writes Scott Cohn for CNBC.

Moody’s Investors Service estimates one in five small private colleges faces “fundamental stress” due to declining revenues, rising expenses and little pricing power when it comes to tuition. Analysts project 15 of the colleges will have closed in 2019 – the largest number in recent memory, and three times the rate just 10 years ago. And the trend shows no sign of letting up.

The closures are concentrated in the Northeast and Midwest, Moody’s associate managing director Susan Fitzgerald said, where the demographic pressures – including an ageing population – are the highest. They include Green Mountain College in Vermont, which closed at the end of the spring semester after 185 years. This spring also marked the end of Newbury College in Brookline, Massachusetts, which announced last December that it would be closing after 57 years.
Full report on the CNBC site

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