How Many Colleges Really Close Each Year?

Robert Kelche

September 3, 2024n 

College closures are getting quite a bit of attention right now—and for good reason. When a college closes suddenly, students are much less likely to complete their studies and employees have a difficult time finding comparable jobs. And the uptick in the number of college closures in the last year or two has been obvious to nearly everyone in higher education.

But how many colleges really close each year? The Wall Street Journal recently led off a story with a statement that more than 500 four-year private nonprofit colleges closed in the last decade, and Inside Higher Ed covered a National Center for Education Statistics report that highlighted that nearly 100 colleges closed in the 2023-24 academic year.

While I greatly appreciate Higher Ed Dive’s running list of college closures, the two more definitive sources for college closures come from the U.S. Department of Education’s Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) and Postsecondary Education Participants System (PEPS). However, both of these sources need to be interpreted with caution due to how data are reported. I discuss my recommendation for using IPEDS and PEPS below, and see this spreadsheet for the data that I refer to throughout the piece.

CONTINUE READING