STL:
Birth rates have steadily declined since the Great Recession in 2008, a cohort that will start graduating high school next year. At the same time, tuition and operating costs have skyrocketed. And with rising doubts among Americans about the value of higher education, more campus closures are “inevitable and probably necessary,” McCarter said.
Nationwide, undergraduate enrollment increased slightly this year to 15.3 million but is still down nearly 1 million students from fall 2019, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. And colleges that were already struggling before the pandemic are now running out of federal relief funds.
Fontbonne joins a growing list of private liberal arts colleges that have collapsed under financial pressures in recent years, including Lincoln College and MacMurray College in Illinois.
The Scholarship Foundation of St. Louisreleased a watchlist in March of 37 Midwestern colleges in danger of closing due to “significant financial distress” in the past five years.
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Choose life. Notes and links on abortion,