Regulating bodies must pay closer attention to college and university financial health, a new report from a liberal think tank finds.
When Mount Ida College — a small, private college just outside Boston — announced in 2018 that it would close, students were left scrambling.
The teach-out plans put in place did not cover all programs. Many students in good standing who were automatically admitted to the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth couldn’t make the 70-plus-mile drive to campus each day. Students with loans received little information about discharges and were only directed to their loan servicer.
A new report from the left-leaning think tank New America examines what happened at Mount Ida and 11 other colleges that recently closed. The report, “Anticipating and Managing Precipitous College Closures,” presents ways to reduce the number of colleges that shutter without warning.
Between the 2008-09 and 2016-17 academic years, more than 300 colleges in the United States shut their doors, according to the report. Some closures are inevitable, the report assumes, and as the new coronavirus continues to inflict its toll on college finances, experts agree that more colleges will be forced to close in coming years.