The headlines don’t make for pretty reading. College enrollments are down and tuition revenue has dropped, plunging many universities into the red, despite increasing their prices. Syracuse University’s Chancellor, J. Michael Haynie, may have been responding to concerns about his institution’s specific situation when he said it was “a reminder that the way we have always done things is no longer adequate or enough”, but it’s a sentiment that could be applied to the sector as a whole.
Students are the ones who will suffer: as the Hechinger Report noted, the choices made to keep colleges afloat can affect everything from the cost of meal plans increasing to library hours and academic advising staff decreasing. Ultimately, the result is a negative impact on a learning experience that students will be paying for into their 60s.
