Are Colleges Really on the Brink? - Commentary

Robert Kelchen, professor and head of the department of educational leadership and policy studies at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, writes:  It has now been 10 years since the late Harvard professor Clayton Christensen made his first famous public prediction that at least a quarter — if not half — of all colleges would close within the next 10 to 15 years. It has certainly been a rough decade for higher education, which has seen a sizable decline in enrollment and a global pandemic that I opined at that time would result in a spike in closures. But the industry has avoided a mass extinction event thanks to the resiliency (or stubbornness) of many small private colleges and well-timed support from the federal government.