Quarter of US colleges could close in the coming years, university president warns of major transformation

A university president is warning that up to a quarter of colleges and universities in the United States could close in the coming years.

Arthur Levine, president of Brandeis University in Massachusetts, said during a recent conversation at the American Enterprise Institute that he expects between 20–25% of American colleges and universities to shutter their doors.  

“Basically, what’s happening is that higher education is undergoing a transformation,” Levine said.

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“Our whole society is undergoing a transformation,” he added. “We’re watching what was a national analog industrial economy become a global digital knowledge economy. And the consequence of that, in terms of higher education, is that we’re seeing demographic change, economic change, technological change, global change, now political change. And what’s going to happen is that 20 to 25%, as you know, of all colleges are going to close.”

Levine said he expects many community colleges and regional universities to shift heavily to online instruction, while wealthier institutions may be able to delay major changes.

“Traditional higher education as we know it – research universities, residential colleges – are where the transformation is going to occur,” Levine said. “It’s only occurred once before, during the Industrial Revolution, when tiny, little church-related colleges became universities, and technical schools, and land grant colleges, and community colleges, and research institutes, and graduate schools, and all the rest. And this time, what I essentially said to our faculty was, we’re going to see the same pattern of change we’ve always seen.” 

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Some of the factors Levine contributed to colleges facing problems include higher education being too expensive, as well as their reluctance to change, and changing too slowly.

He continued, “If something is very, very expensive, it ought to be worth your paying for it. There ought to be outcomes that are worth the price that you pay. In 1842, the president of Brown said, ‘I can’t even give this stuff away.’ It’s the nature of the beast. It’s not the first time. When the world changes, every social institution gets left behind, including higher education, and they scramble to catch up. Some spend a very long time trying to catch up, some never catch up.”