Over the past few weeks, I’ve been working hard at updates and edits for The Professor Is In 2.0. As I gather material for the updated version of the book, I’ve had to confront the truly horrendous updated statistics of academic decline.

For reasons related to the publishing industry, I been given a very hard and narrow cap on the amount of new material that can go into the book, so I’ll be sharing much of the info I gather here on the blog instead.  Right now I wanted to offer a 3-part series where I do a  “deeper dive” via blog posts for those wanting to learn more about the state of the state.

So let’s start with the stats– the numbers behind school closures, departmental slashes, and program shrinkage.

The Stats on School Closures

As you’ve likely heard (or read about, if you’re a frequent Chronicle reader like myself), U.S. colleges and universities are shuttering at record rates.

According to the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association, “Over 500 private, nonprofit four-year institutions have closed in the last 10 years, according to the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association. That is three times what it was in the decade prior. Rachel Burns, a senior policy analyst at SHEEO, estimates at least 1.25 million students were affected by these closures. (Many more for-profit institutions have closed in this period as well.)” (Source; emphasis added)

And according to the U.S. Dept. of Education, “161 institutions either closed, merged or otherwise lost Title IV status. At the same time, 62 institutions were added in the 2023–24 academic year, bringing the total net loss to 99 colleges and universities.” (Source)

Interestingly, the higher-ed sector did expand by way of two-year institutions converting to four-year status. In the 2023-24 year, 16 institutions changed over to a four-year model.

These numbers show us one way that the academy is shrinking—but there’s other ways too.

The Stats: Departmental, Program, and Employee Cuts

Consider how colleges and universities have drastically cut course offerings and even whole departments (in the liberal arts):

In 2024, cuts are a growing trend. The State University of New York at Potsdam fired seven tenured faculty members, discontinued 18 programs, and depleted further programs. One Chronicle article (written by a Potsdam philosophy professor) cites Potsdam’s $9-million annual operating deficit and fallen enrollment numbers as motivators for “realignment” and “restructuring”–euphemisms that conceal the slow gutting of humanities across U.S. campuses.

Another article details the summer cuts of 2024.

The list goes on and on. On the East Coast:

The Chronicle reported on the University of North Carolina at Asheville’s June 2024 decision to axe their 15-year old Religious Studies department, as well as their programs in philosophy, ancient Meditteranean studies, drama, French, and German. According to this Chronicle article, leadership blamed the cuts on low enrollment (which dropped by 25 percent over the last five years) and opted to eliminate programs with less majors to address the $6 million budget shortfall.

UNC-Greensboro similarly cut 20 programs this summer (from anthropology to physics), 11 graduate programs, and minors in Chinese, Russian, and Korean. Curiously enough, the university hired a higher-ed consulting firm to help the college cut costs (nothing like spending money to save money!), implemented rubrics for departments, and then cut departments (like anthropology) that were on track to meet rubric expectations. Smoke and mirrors.

And on the West Coast:

In August 2024, Inside Higher Ed covered Stanford University’s decision to fire all 23 of its creative writing lecturers. (This is particularly insidious because in 2023, these same lecturers organized to address low wages in the dept.)

The San Francisco Chronicle recently reported that eight California universities–including San Francisco State–have lost enrollment and have been urged to reduce course offerings and instructors to compensate.

San Francisco State has lost 25% of its undergraduate enrollment in just five years, down by more than 6,500 students, to 19,337 undergrads. Consequently, the campus is offering only three-quarters of the classes it did in 2019 — a loss of 1,080 courses — and employs 155 fewer nontenured instructors, known as lecturers.

OK, that was a lot. But even still, I’m hardly scratching the surface of closures and shrinkage throughout the U.S. higher ed landscape.

If you want to keep track of closed schools and programs, I highly recommend Bryan Alexander’s blog. Alexander is a prolific writer whose has been tallying trends in higher ed for most of 2024, with a focus on first, the impact of climate catastrophe on higher ed, and second, on the mass cutting of staff, programs and institutions. He keeps a monthly tally of closing institutions, which makes very hard reading.  Here is the most recent, from November 2024.

A representative excerpt:

1 Closing colleges and universities

Bard College at Simon’s Rock (private liberal arts college, Massachusetts) will close its campus, relocating to a new site next to the mothership Bard College in New York.  The reasons are two: first, “many years of declining enrollment revenue.”  Second,  “the competitive market of early college offerings around the country.”  The institution was a rare one, enrolling high school age students to involve them in post-secondary learning.

Is this a closure or just a move?  The official statement sounds final for the Mass. campus and its staff, but other accounts (for example) emphasize relocation.

2 Mergers

Dakota County Technical College (public technical college; Minnesota) and Inver Hills Community College (public community college; Minnesota) are considering merging. Why merge?  At least one local authority (“Scott Olson, chancellor of Minnesota State”) cites declining enrollment.  Another goal is to save dollars: “the merger would likely save about $500,000 per year.”

Those savings would, most likely, come from job reductions, given that the majority of most academic institutions’ spending goes to people.  Inside Higher Ed cites one faculty member’s concerns: “Laura Funke, an English instructor at Inver Hills, told the Star Tribune [that] faculty are tense about issues such as potential layoffs, closing of programs and seniority.”

They seem to be 9-10 miles apart.

Interestingly, the two schools are already sharing some resources: “The two institutions, only nine miles apart, already jointly employ 64 employees and have shared a president since 2015.”  There are also local and recent examples of mergers:

In northeastern Minnesota, five small colleges — Hibbing Community College, Itasca Community College, Mesabi Range College, Rainy River Community College and Vermilion Community College — joined forces in 2022 to become Minnesota North College.

Its president, Michael Raich, said “unnecessary duplication” was happening before the merger, such as the creation of individual budgets and financial aid reports, and data collection.

The California State University Maritime Academy (“Cal Maritime”) (public university; California) and California Polytechnic State University (“Cal Poly”) (ditto) will merge, according to a vote of the CSU system. The reason is that Cal Maritime has suffered a major enrollment decline, with regular financial impacts, including “an operating fund deficit in four out of the past five years, including $82,903 in the 2023-24 year and $883,610 the year before.”

More:

Between 2017 and 2022, fall headcount at Cal Maritime dropped 22.1% to 849 students, according to federal data. Meanwhile, enrollment at Cal Poly — by far the larger of the two — has hovered around 22,000 students over the same period.

The “increasingly urgent” financial and operational problems at Cal Maritime created a “dire, binary choice,” the officials noted in their report. That choice being: “integrate the two institutions or initiate immediate steps for the closure of the Maritime Academy.

If and when this succeeds, the total number of campuses in the CSU system drops by one, from 23 to 22.

3 Campuses cutting programs and jobs

Elizabethtown College (private; Pennsylvania) will cut several programs and with them 13 full-time faculty members.  The programs include “fine arts major, sociology major and minor as well as the Spanish and Spanish education majors.”   The reason?  Financial distress: “In its June 2023 tax filings, Elizabethtown College reported $93.1 million in revenue and $107 million in expenses. Its losses nearly tripled in the 2022-23 fiscal year over the 2021-22 fiscal year from $5,494,743 to $14,169,094.”   The student paper interviewed cut instructors.  (This is another queen sacrifice, my term for when an institution cuts faculty in a bid to survive; the phrase is from chess.)

Saint Augustine’s University (historically black Christian; North Carolina) is cutting one half of its faculty and staff, along with some unnamed programs.  The reason?  Financial crisis:

Saint Augustine’s posted a $6.4 million total operating deficit for the fiscal year that ended this July and racked up a nearly $9.1 million deficit the year before, according to its latest financials.

Among its many fiscal challenges, net tuition and fee revenue fell by roughly half to $7.9 million between 2022 and 2024. Revenue declines have forced the university to grapple with multimillion-dollar deficits even as operating expenses fell from $42.1 million in 2022 to $27.3 million in 2024.

The university will also lease some of its land.  SAU has been struggling for years.  (This is an immense queen sacrifice.)

Pay particular attention to his concept of the Queen Sacrifice, his term for when institutions take  desperate steps such as firing of firing tenured faculty in a last ditch effort to stay open.

His findings are troubling but illuminating–a must-follow for any academic wanting to keep in the know of trends in higher ed.

As Alexander says, “it’s important to document this part of the reality of higher education, especially if it’s little discussed. It’s evidence for the future.”

In Part II, I’ll take a closer look at the causes of these trends–what university leadership attribute it to, and what faculty members are saying. Stay tuned.