How Much Has Covid Cost Colleges? $183 Billion — from chronicle.com by Paul N. Friga
Excerpt:
How bad is it? To answer that, my colleagues and I sought to go beyond surveys. We conducted an extensive review of publicly announced revenue and budget news from the top 400 universities in U.S. News & World Report, as well as its top 100 liberal-arts colleges, drawing from news released from March through December. We were able to obtain data from 107 of those institutions (21 percent). The results are dire. Our research suggests that we are experiencing the biggest financial losses our sector has ever faced. The institutions we tracked averaged an estimated 14-percent aggregate decline in revenues across fiscal years 2020 and 2021, and further losses loom as drops in enrollment, tuition freezes, and Covid-related expenses continue.
What do these cuts and losses add up to? We estimate the impact as follows: $85 billion in lost revenues, $24 billion for Covid-related expenses, and $74 billion in anticipated future decreases in state funding. That adds up to a whopping $183 billion.
Also see:
- 65 Percent of Colleges Raised Less in 2020 Than 2019, Survey Finds — from philanthropy.com by Emily Haynes
- Donations to colleges stayed flat at $50B in fiscal 2020 — from highereddive.com by Natalie Schwartz