This is of interest to me for a few reasons: First, we've had a few announcements about well-known colleges closing in the last two years (some later rescinded or modified); second, colleges always close; and third, we've been hearing pundits predict this trend for 20 years.
So, how to do this? There is no perfect way, of course. But I downloaded the data of all US institutions in 2009 and 2019 from IPEDS and did a bit of analysis. It's not perfect.
Some of these places have changed names and gotten a new ID (Jefferson Davis CC in Alabama), e.g.
Others have merged into bigger institutions, it appears (Lambuth, as as example). Some were branch campuses. But I think it's safe to say that there are no colleges who closed that I could have missed, at least among colleges that have to report to IPEDS.
If public colleges or universities close, it's probably for different reasons than if a private institution shuts down. So, I looked (for now) at four-year-or-higher private institutions that were in IPEDS in 2009 but NOT in 2019.
Guess how many.
177. Here they are, sorted by state postal code:
Alabama through Iowa:
Illinois through Maine:
Michigan through New Jersey:
New York through South Carolina:
And finally, Tennessee through West Virginia:
Those institutions don't compose the Who's Who of famous colleges and universities; I've been working in higher ed for almost 40 years, and I did not recognized most of those names.
That doesn't make their loss any less tragic or concerning, especially for the students, alumni, faculty, staff, and towns where those places were located. It does mean that less established, smaller, and more poorly funded IHEs are probably most vulnerable.
So, the future will be interesting in light of COVID and the economy and state and federal support and demographics and the economy and politics. And to put it in context, this earlier thread I did:
If the smallest 825 institutions in the US close, it's about 3/4 of 1% of all college students affected. Not great, but counting college closings is not the best measure.
We're one of those curious points in history when being way up in applications could be a bad thing, and being way down could be a good thing.
Get ready for another year of "we really can't tell" in Enrollment Management and admissions:
Let's say you're a solid, mid-market college in a large city. Increasing apps could be a hedge for students who think they may have to stay closer to home.
If, by next March, we've contained COVID-19 or developed a vaccine, you become last choice.
Let's say you're a flagship or land grant, and you see apps up at this point. This could be those students normally headed out-of-state or to private colleges. You're a hedge against high tuition.
Thread: The NY Post decided to write an article about the new book by @jselingo
I am no New York expert but I don't get a good impression from the Post most times I read an article there.
But I thought this might be an exception. It's not.
First problem: They don't
More than 50 is technically accurate. But it's probably actually more like 1500. Still, of course, the reality is that it only matters at 50 at most, and--no offense intended--University of Toledo is probably not one of them.
Thread: The privileged need to be worried about *something* related to college admissions. And as it's become increasingly clear that they might not have a chance to take the SAT/ACT, or to only take it once, there's something new.
This doesn't mean, of course, "What will replace the SAT at 1500 colleges and universities." That answer is easy: Nothing will. Because it's not necessary.
Thread: My love of the Freshman Migration data, coupled with heavy smoke outside, coupled with the question "How can you go back to requiring the SAT when it's mostly going away in California" kept me busy this weekend.
After about three hours of trying to figure out a way to get around the Tableau restriction against using a table calculations in an LOD, I just created a table and exported to Excel and re-imported it as it was. It worked.
Here is a map of the 546 colleges outside of California that show Cali as one of their top five feeder states. That's about 30K students. The size of the indicator shows the number of freshmen from California; the digit shows the rank. A 2 means it's the second biggest feeder