How Do We Save Small Colleges?

What does the small college crisis mean for higher education at large?

According to Capstone Wealth Partners, our tiny liberal arts colleges are facing a serious crisis. For smaller colleges facilitating smaller student bodies, this crisis has been mounting for some years. Capstone points to closures at Green Mountain College, Mount Ida, Southern Vermont, and Newbury as examples of small college collapse under the weight of unmanageable financial strain. As costs climb, state-level funding shrinks, and recruitment competition escalates, smaller colleges have absorbed the brunt of the impact.

The emergence of COVID-19 only magnified the impact. And this should concern us, not just because small schools represent variety and opportunity, but also because these most vulnerable schools are the canary in the coal mine.

This crisis is coming for the entirety of the American post-secondary educational system, and the likelihood is that COVID-19 has only accelerated our approach to this inflection point. As Capstone points out, Today in the time of COVID-19, we know that it is not just the small liberal arts colleges facing cuts and closures. Ohio colleges like University of Akron are slashing academic and athletic programs and laying off staff. Ohio University is cutting staff. Even the mighty Stanford is facing cuts and increased use of their unrestricted endowment funds. Today in 2020, more colleges are in crisis than ever before.

The writing has been on the whiteboard for some time. NBC News points to trends a decade in the making:

• Annual enrollment declines for more more than 1,360 schools between 2009 and 2020;
• Lower tuition revenue per student in 2017-2018 than 2009-2010 at 30% of four-year schools;
• Lower state and local funding over the same period for 700 public schools; and shrinking endowments for 190 private colleges.

Taken together, says Hechinger Report, these trends have placed an estimated 500 colleges in the immediate financial crosshairs.

Obviously, this implicates some pretty huge challenges, some of which are beyond the reach of college administrators. Population experts have long forewarned of a coming retraction in higher education. Entirely beyond the question of cost versus reward, a declining birth rate has for years threatened to scale back the decades-long growth enjoyed across the higher education spectrum. Increased regulatory oversight has also thinned the once teeming herd of shady for-profit schools, which is obviously a good thing. These trends do indeed represent a type of market correction that can’t (or shouldn’t) be prevented.

But there are also preventable trends accelerating the contraction of the college market, and there are strategic ways to take these trends head-on. And the secret to doing so may actually be nestled in the heart of a small, beautiful, and financially strapped college. So many small schools that have subsisted as hidden gems for decades or longer have been tarnished by declining enrollment and shrinking government support. But if we can save these hidden gems, we may also find a roadmap forward for all of higher education in America.

Read on for a look at a few of the strategies that might actually save small colleges and, in doing so, perhaps point the way to saving American colleges in general.

Expand Online Offerings

As smaller colleges weigh the best use of limited resources, there is perhaps no better long-term investment than an expanded set of online course offerings. By implementing effective Learning Management Systems, providing effective instructor training and building out support services for online students, smaller colleges have a chance to dramatically expand the reach of courses and instructors.

In doing so, institutions that have been historically fueled by regional populations can now attract and serve students from an unlimited geographical expanse, and from a broader range of backgrounds. EdSurge points out that online programs open education to those who couldn’t attend otherwise. Nontraditional students now comprise nearly three-quarters of America’s college population. With many young adults working, caring for families, or traveling on the job, commuting to campus is not so easy and may even present real hardship, an impossible burden when you’re occupied with sometimes crushing demands at home or at work. As small colleges reach out to these new students, they might also turn threadbare balance sheets from red to black.

In other words, an expanded set of online offerings can readily translate into an expanded appeal to students with a more diverse set of personal, educational and professional needs.

Expand Career-Focused Options

In addition to improving online offerings, smaller colleges have a chance to fill the middle-ground between vocational institutions and traditional academic institutions. A growing population of adult learners is stimulating a rising interest in opportunities for technical, practical, and professional instruction. Smaller colleges are in a unique position to provide these assets in the context of a rich academic environment.

Moreover, suggests Inside Higher Ed this would place smaller schools in a prime position to help advance professional prospects for those from lower income backgrounds. Inside Higher Ed notes that there are tens of thousands of young people from lower-income and working-class families who could benefit greatly from—and in turn be a dynamic asset to—liberal arts colleges. Their inclusion would allow these colleges to become conduits for these neglected students to a world of creativity, entrepreneurship and civic engagement, along with immersion in bold ideas, complex questions and encounters with great works of literature, art, science and history.

These demographics are frequently overlooked by college recruiters. Small colleges have a chance to both bridge the opportunity gap and solidify their own enrollment numbers.

Coordination with Other Small Colleges

Because there are so many institutions vying for a dwindling number of enrollees, higher education has become an increasingly competitive sector. Marketing and recruitment—if not central to the academic mission of most schools—are indeed central to their business plans. Small colleges may benefit by shifting their perspective. To wit, Higher Ed Connects—an agency that helps small schools unify into more powerful coalitions—argues that survival may in fact depend on solidarity, asserting that The best approach for financially challenged private colleges is to promptly start the development of alliances with 5-15 additional private colleges. After all, it is the cost component of the financial challenges that is most readily addressed by the scale available in larger organizations.

By banding together and addressing collective challenges with the same organizational depth afforded larger institutions, Higher Ed Connects observes that smaller schools can more ably lower their costs and reduce tuition even while retaining the brands and identities that distinguish them in a crowded marketplace.

Improved Healthcare Infrastructure

While the COVID-19 pandemic has strained both healthcare systems and higher education, events over the last several years may also suggest opportunity for collaboration across the two sectors. And small colleges are in a unique position to facilitate this collaboration. The New England Board of Higher Education (NEBHE) makes the point that small, rural colleges—invariably those most aggressively hobbled by the pandemic—are also among the best suited environments for safe and effective stewardship under COVID conditions. Because smaller institutions can move more nimbly to adopt community-wide policy changes, such institutions have the potential to build safety and healthcare roadmaps that might be scaled to the needs of larger and more cumbersome college communities.

But in order to do so, says the NEBHE, small schools must find direct support and partnership from local health agencies and organizations. The NEBHE advises that Small colleges reopening in rural settings need a partnership with the nearest and best medical facility, ideally one with transport and easy access to larger health facilities. This will matter to the families of students who may think rural means absence of access to quality medical care. This includes access to meaningful mental health support, effective training for inclusiveness, and open lines of communication regarding often rapidly changing protocols, CDC guidelines, and campus policies. By making small colleges a major contributor on the frontlines of COVID prevention—and by more generally improving the capacity of small colleges to manage the health and wellness needs of their local populations—we can help to elevate their stature, their importance within the regions they serve, and consequently, their enrollment figures.

Transforming the Business Model

Ultimately, at the heart of each of the recommendations above, and driving this broader conversation, is the need for small colleges to transform as businesses. Many of the realities that have altered the college landscape are here to stay. The expanded online and professional offerings advised above, for instance, are warranted by long-term changes in the actual makeup of the college student population. These prime to be lasting changes, and institutional survival may depend on adapting accordingly.

But there’s more to it. In reality, college campuses are institutions with considerable resources—educators, laboratories, event spaces, residential spaces, and land. According to The New York Times, some schools are actually squeezing small amounts of money from such things as renting out their dorm rooms in the summers on Airbnb, catering weddings and licensing their logos for products including (in the case of 48 universities and colleges) caskets and urns. While some of these examples may feel pretty radical, small schools must be more open to alternative revenue streams so long as these don’t compromise the educational goals of the institution.