Can Small, Struggling Colleges Survive? - Commentary

Robert Kelchen, professor and head of the department of educational leadership and policy studies at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, writes: This is crunch time for the budgets of small private colleges, as leadership begins to get a sense of what fall enrollment will look like following this spring’s FAFSA fiasco. As of mid-May, only 41.5 percent of high-school seniors had completed the FAFSA, compared to 50 percent in 2023. Some colleges won’t survive: Wells College, in New York, Fontbonne University, in Missouri, and Birmingham-Southern College, in Alabama, have already announced their impending closures. More closures are likely to be announced in the coming weeks as optimistic enrollment and fund-raising projections meet the cold reality of empty bank accounts.