Best known schools most likely to close over next 10 years

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Occidental

Agree. Oxy was $30 million in debt to Covid and has never recovered. Last year’s freshman enrollment dropped by a shocking 15%, for some reason, and couldn’t even be saved by waitlist candidates. https://www.theoccidentalnews.com/news/2025/11/05/college-adjusts-spending-and-admissions-tactics-in-the-wake-of-enrollment-decline/2916071. That may be because it’s selectivity is already high at 45%, has a shockingly low yield at 4% (College Vine) and less than 15% of alums donate. The school reacted by curtailing faculty spending, stop faculty hiring of replacements and brought in an admissions specialist who decided the best way to deal with the yield problem was to offer “Occidental commitment scholarships” if $15k to those ED students who accepted. But that costs money that the school doesn’t have. It’s also now reaching into the endowment (with board’s permission) to make up the 15% loss in full pay students. So when a school says they give a lot of merit, beware. Oxy’s doing it to drive up its yield numbers (and its $96k a year to boot!). Avoid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Occidental

Agree. Oxy was $30 million in debt to Covid and has never recovered. Last year’s freshman enrollment dropped by a shocking 15%, for some reason, and couldn’t even be saved by waitlist candidates. https://www.theoccidentalnews.com/news/2025/11/05/college-adjusts-spending-and-admissions-tactics-in-the-wake-of-enrollment-decline/2916071. That may be because it’s selectivity is already high at 45%, has a shockingly low yield at 4% (College Vine) and less than 15% of alums donate. The school reacted by curtailing faculty spending, stop faculty hiring of replacements and brought in an admissions specialist who decided the best way to deal with the yield problem was to offer “Occidental commitment scholarships” if $15k to those ED students who accepted. But that costs money that the school doesn’t have. It’s also now reaching into the endowment (with board’s permission) to make up the 15% loss in full pay students. So when a school says they give a lot of merit, beware. Oxy’s doing it to drive up its yield numbers (and its $96k a year to boot!). Avoid.

I’m surprised by their decline in student population (15% is a lot!), but it doesn’t look like they’ve run any deficits via their 990.

https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/951667177

[Anonymous]

I did not know that about Occidental. A similar thing has occurred at Xavier University. A college enrollment officer does not want to see a death spiral.

[Anonymous]

I'm worried about:

College of Wooster
Drew
Lycoming
Albright
Keuka
Allegheny
Knox
Wartburg (Change the name! I could never send my child to a school with this name. It's got to affect their enrollment.)

And I say this with sadness, because I think small colleges have so much to offer, and we will all be worse off when there are fewer of them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Occidental

Agree. Oxy was $30 million in debt to Covid and has never recovered. Last year’s freshman enrollment dropped by a shocking 15%, for some reason, and couldn’t even be saved by waitlist candidates. https://www.theoccidentalnews.com/news/2025/11/05/college-adjusts-spending-and-admissions-tactics-in-the-wake-of-enrollment-decline/2916071. That may be because it’s selectivity is already high at 45%, has a shockingly low yield at 4% (College Vine) and less than 15% of alums donate. The school reacted by curtailing faculty spending, stop faculty hiring of replacements and brought in an admissions specialist who decided the best way to deal with the yield problem was to offer “Occidental commitment scholarships” if $15k to those ED students who accepted. But that costs money that the school doesn’t have. It’s also now reaching into the endowment (with board’s permission) to make up the 15% loss in full pay students. So when a school says they give a lot of merit, beware. Oxy’s doing it to drive up its yield numbers (and its $96k a year to boot!). Avoid.

I’m surprised by their decline in student population (15% is a lot!), but it doesn’t look like they’ve run any deficits via their 990.

https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/951667177

Their endowment is less than a billion. They are not making it through the 2030s

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Allegheny College
Earlham College
Beloit College
Cornell College
Lake Forest College
Juniata College
Wittenberg University
Bethany College

I didn’t know Beloit was struggling so much. Only 100 students in the next class.

Where did you get Juniata? I’m curious because DC seriously considered it. It’s a great little school. I didn’t see any red flags.

Juniata has a small endowment and is tiny and rural, so it's fragile, but they reported a 9% increase in enrollment this year. That's the opposite of what most rural LAC's are experiencing, and it bodes well.

[Anonymous]

Small Catholic colleges in states with declining Catholic population and a lot of higher ed choices, like Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, etc. Schools like Anna Maria, LaSalle, Immaculata. These are places that had a mission of educating working class commuter students but over time raised tuition and started chasing middle class kids with “merit” money instead, and started running massive deficits.

[Anonymous]

University of Chicago. Duh.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:University of Chicago. Duh.

We get it that your dc got rejected

[Anonymous]

Sad but agree with Earlham. Their enrollment is way down.

[Anonymous]

Sad. I always thought of many of those colleges that are in trouble now were nurturing places filled with nice people (compared to many of the top ranked schools) and had great outcomes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Small Catholic colleges in states with declining Catholic population and a lot of higher ed choices, like Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, etc. Schools like Anna Maria, LaSalle, Immaculata. These are places that had a mission of educating working class commuter students but over time raised tuition and started chasing middle class kids with “merit” money instead, and started running massive deficits.

Not just small Catholic colleges, but all kinds of religious schools. I think of Lutheran schools in the Upper Midwest or evangelical type schools in the South.

[Anonymous]

1. Please don't joke around on this topic. I know it is fun to take pot shots at schools you don't like but please grow up.

2. It almost becomes a competition among similar schools in a geographic area. If one closes, nearby schools absorb the remaining students from that school so it can give them a bit of a boost.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Emerson is doing fine.

Not really. Emerson had budget cuts and layoffs last year due to decreasing enrollment and revenue challenges.

https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2025/08/22/emerson-college-reportedly-lays-off-30-staff-members/

[Anonymous]

Beloit alum and parent here. Beloit actually has over 300 students in their next class. The College is really innovating on the traditional liberal arts. Good things going on there!