Higher Ed: Uncertain Future | The financial reckoning facing colleges and universities

Decades ago, the message was clear: Earning a college degree was the best pathway to financial success.

Today, the future of higher education has never been more uncertain. Enrollment has declined, schools are cutting staff and programs, and institutions are even closing.

It’s a far cry from 2010, when college enrollment in the United States hit an all-time high. Roughly 21.2 million students filled campuses, among them an influx of adults seeking new degrees post-recession. Expansion projects also brought bigger buildings, technology, and programs.

This was the heyday of higher ed, but things have changed.

“We actually started this project before the pandemic. I think we began it in late 2019.”

3News reached out to Sarah Butrymowicz, investigations editor with nonprofit education news site The Hechinger Report. In 2020, its series "Colleges in Crisis" detailed the financial stress facing a growing number of schools. Early signs pointed to a pair of factors: a declining birth rate and cuts in funding.

"We actually started this project before the pandemic — I think we began it in late 2019," Butrymowicz remembered. "Particularly in places like the Midwest, you have fewer teens graduating from high school — just fewer teens overall — that can go enroll in college, and a lot of states cut higher ed funding during the recession and hadn't restored it to pre-recession levels. So we knew that there were a lot of institutions that were struggling."

As the pandemic began and colleges sent students home, The Hechinger Report created a financial fitness tracker, the purpose being to assess the fiscal health of public and nonprofit schools.

The tracker took public data and applied it to four different metrics: enrollment, retention, average tuition, and endowment/costs. Out of 2,662 schools included, more than 500 showed warning signs in two or more metrics.

"And they were not evenly distributed throughout the country," Butrymowicz explained. "Ohio had the highest number in our sampling."

The tracker identified 36 Ohio schools with red flags four years ago. Today, college financial issues are a part of our state's reality, with Baldwin Wallace University, Notre Dame College, Lake Erie College, Lakeland Community College, and Miami University all in the news recently over their budget struggles.

As a whole, the forecast for higher education isn't good, as schools compete over a shrinking pool of students.

Danielle Wiggins reports. --

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