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Expert Predicts up to 25 Percent of American Colleges Will Close in Next Two Decades
[LI] For years now, there have been warnings that the higher education bubble was going to burst. While we have witnessed the closure of many small schools this year already, one researcher at Harvard who studies higher education says the worst is yet to come.
Michael Horn, who studies and writes about colleges, suggests the rising cost of tuition and the economic downturn of 2008, among other factors, have created a perfect storm.
From CBS This Morning:
Expert predicts 25% of colleges will "fail" in the next 20 years
For the first time in 185 years, there will be no fall semester at Green Mountain College in western Vermont. The college, which closed this year, isn’t alone: Southern Vermont College, the College of St. Joseph, and Atlantic Union College, among others, have shuttered their doors, too.
The schools fell victim to trends in higher education ‐ trends that lead one expert to believe that more schools will soon follow.
"I think 25% of schools will fail in the next two decades," said Michael Horn, who studies education at Harvard University. "They’re going to close, they’re going to merge, some will declare some form of bankruptcy to reinvent themselves. It’s going to be brutal across American higher education."
Part of the problem, Horn explained, is that families had fewer kids after the 2008 recession, meaning that there will be fewer high school graduates and fewer college students. "Fundamentally, these schools’ business models are just breaking at the seams," he said.
The video report begins with the story of the recent closure of Green Mountain College in Vermont. When Robert Allen took over as president of the school in 2016, he knew almost immediately that it was too late to save it:
Posted by: Besoeker 2019-09-04 |
