Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, higher education, particularly at public and/or smaller institutions, faced serious challenges, including declining enrollments, increased costs, expanding alternatives, and decreasing confidence in the value of investing in current higher education models. The pandemic and accompanying economic depression have only exacerbated these threats, striking at traditional colleges’ core operating model, making higher education less affordable for the record number of families sinking into economic distress, decimating state budgets and thereby threatening necessary continued public support for higher education institutions, all while further driving families and individuals toward alternative service-delivery models and providers.Continue Reading

Challenges to the viability of the US higher education model have grown significantly during the last 5 years. Demographic change especially in the Northeast and the upper Midwest has resulted in enrollment declines that pose serious challenges to the viability of many small private and regional state-supported institutions. The price of obtaining a college degree along with mounting educational debt has caused many potential students and their parents to question the value of an undergraduate degree.Continue Reading