Experts say higher education is an industry in turmoil. The collateral damage is widespread — from hechingerreport.org by Jon Marcus
Colleges are closing at a pace equivalent to about one every three weeks, with more projected
AMHERST, Mass. — The parking lots are mostly vacant. Locked and dark, many of the buildings are lifeless but for dying plants in dusty pots. One of the few people visible is a white-bearded man on a riding mower, tending to an empty lawn as if by habit.
This is not a factory or office park abandoned by its tenants. It’s Hampshire College, a once-celebrated liberal arts school that will shut down in December. That makes it the latest in a steady stream of colleges that are closing or merging, at a rate that last year reached the equivalent of nearly one every three weeks.
“Everyone is shocked to hear that more than a quarter of our private colleges could be gone in the next decade,” said Peter Stokes, a managing director at Huron Consulting Group, which has projected that 442 of the nation’s 1,700 still-operating private, nonprofit universities and colleges are at risk of having to close or merge in the next 10 years. “We’re now talking about hundreds of other institutions being in a similar situation.”
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The State of Higher Ed 2026, in 4 Charts — from linked.com by Jeff Selingo
For nearly 60 years, higher ed had one answer to almost every strategic question: get bigger. Add programs, schools, enrollment, research labs, campuses, athletic teams, international students, online degrees.
That era is ending.
That’s the central argument running through this year’s State of Higher Education, my annual briefing for presidents, trustees, cabinets, and faculty leaders. Like last year’s inaugural deck, it borrows from Mary Meeker’s “Internet Trends”: heavy on charts, quick to scan, built for leadership teams to work through together.
The 2026 edition covers six areas: the business model, federal policy, research, AI, athletics, and governance. The question across all of them is what’s temporary and what’s structural. Each section ends with a page of opportunities for leaders.
Here are four charts from the briefing and what they tell us about what’s next…