American colleges and universities face a big challenge: enrollments are plummeting. “Demographically there are fewer 18-year-olds in the United States than there were, say, 10 years ago," Lee Gardner says. "With the number of projected 18-year-olds who are going to graduate high school and go on to college, that number is even worse.”
The enrollment cliff spells trouble for all higher education institutions – but particularly for small colleges. “There an immediate impact on revenue, on your biggest revenue source which is the net tuition the students pay," Linda Oubré says. "Things like room and board, that is very high margin, was impacted because LA County said you can’t have people on campus.”
