The state of higher education today could be summed up by a line from Hamlet: “When sorrows come, they come not single spies but in battalions.”
The litany of challenges is, by now, familiar. Demographers have sounded the alarm on shrinking high-school graduating classes, a particularly acute problem in the Midwest and Northeast. Middle-skill industries themselves are providing specialized training, with new academic competition from corporations and cultural agencies in the form of short-term credentials. Layered on top of all that is federal and state disinvestment and rising costs. Already about one college is closing or merging every week. We project that about 20 to 25 percent of institutions will merge or close within the next several years.
