Higher education meets high finance - The Hustle

The High-Level This Week: There are 4,000 universities in the United States that generate over $650 billion in revenue and educated 20 million people annually. A perfect storm involving declining revenues and state funding are putting many of these universities at risk of bankruptcy. Many will not survive. Is this the end of University Inc in the U... See more

Declines in enrollment are life-threatening for most universities, as tuition is the primary source of revenue for most universities. Edmit, a college planning tool for parents and high school seniors, examined financial trends at 937 private universities. The company conservatively estimated the Covid-19 impact as tuition losses of 10 percent in 2... See more

We’ll see a culling among universities. Just as retail closures are accelerating from 9,500 stores in 2019 to more than 15,000 in 2020, we’re going to see dozens, maybe hundreds, of universities not reopen. In academia, we have been preying on the hopes and prayers of the middle class, offering parents the chance to check an instinctive box, giving... See more

Over 50% of the universities in the United States expect enrollment to decline by over 5% in Fall 2020 compared to Fall 2019. Similarly the Federal Student Aid program (FAFSA) has seen FAFSA renewals for returning students decline by nearly 5% (about 350,000 fewer students) for the academic year 2020-2021 compared to last year.