Moody's: Smaller College Closures to Triple - Kellie Woodhouse, Inside Higher Ed

Closure rates of small colleges and universities will triple in the coming years, and mergers will double. Those are the predictions of a Moody’s Investor Service report released Friday that highlights a persistent inability among small colleges to increase revenue, which could lead as many as 15 institutions a year to shut their doors for good by 2017. The main struggle for many small colleges -- which are defined by Moody’s as private colleges with operating revenue below $100 million and public colleges below $200 million -- is declining enrollment. Moody’s predicts that struggling public institutions are more likely to merge into a larger system than close, in part because of the political difficulty of closing a publicly funded institution. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/09/28/moodys-predicts-college-closures-triple-2017