What Drove the Drop? For-Profit Colleges and the Decline in College Advertising
Stephanie Riegg Cellini and Leonard Restrepo
June 2026
Colleges in the United States have cut their commercial advertising spending in recent years. Between 2014 and 2022, expenditures on commercial advertising (e.g., television, radio, outdoor ads, websites display ads, and social media) dropped by half, and most of the decline was attributable to cuts in advertising spending by the for-profit sector. In our first brief in this PEER Center series on college advertising, we documented these time trends in college advertising. In this brief, we begin to explore how, why, and which institutions contributed most to the decline, and how advertising patterns differ by sector.
We find that for-profit institutions far outspend institutions in other sectors: Institutions in the for-profit sector spend about four times more on commercial advertising than private nonprofit institutions, and 13 times more than public institutions. The average for-profit college spent about $176 per student in 2022, compared with just $59 and $14 per student for nonprofit and public institutions, respectively. These differences are not driven by the size of the institution: For-profits of all sizes far out-spend public and nonprofit institutions on a per-student basis.
