You know you’ve heard the death knell for sometime: Colleges are closing at an alarming rate, and it’s only going to get worse. But are they? And will it?

To the second part, I recall the words of Mark Twain, who once said, “I was gratified to be able to answer promptly. I said I don’t know.” But to the first part, let’s take a look at the data, with the evergreen caveat that past history is no indication of future performance.

I looked at all the four-year, private, not-for-profit institutions in the US that were Title IV eligible in the 2013 IPEDS data set, as I think this is what people really mean when they talk about college closings; public universities seldom close, and for-profit colleges do frequently, many after short lifespans. Then I looked at how many of those institutions reported zero enrollment in 2023.

This is not a perfect way to count, as one big university still in existence didn’t report Fall, 2023 IPEDS data on enrollment (yet). I removed them, but there may be others in a similar situation. And some of these institutions (like Robert Morris in Chicago) technically closed, but merged with, or was absorbed by, Roosevelt University around the corner, in the instance of Robert Morris.

But over that ten-year span, the total number of institutions is about 208 (several of them branches of Baker College), representing a total of about 160,000 students: Fewer than the total enrollment of Western Governor’s University, which enrolled 185,000 students in Fall of 2023. This does not, of course, offer any comfort to the students, faculty, or communities who were profoundly affected by these closings, but it does perhaps provide some texture to the discussion.

Clustering them, you see that most of the colleges enrolled under 500 students in 2013, while most students affected went to larger colleges, with Concordia of Portland being the largest at 5,428 in 2013.

President Kennedy once said (incorrectly) that the Chinese symbols for “crisis” translate into “Dangerous Opportunity.) Mistranslation aside, the lesson is a good one. There are still over 350 institutions with 2013 enrollments of under 500 that were still open in 2023, and 200 more with enrollment between 500 and 1,000.

Here’s to 2033.