Future of Division III

[DagarmanSpartan]

It makes sense though. The closest D1/2 institution to them is 361 miles away. Seems not viable long term

This is a lot like when schools cut majors and then you look and it's like "Well, there's only 10 students enrolled in the major"

It's not the one-off that is concerning, it's the trend. Lots of D1 sports teams are disappearing, and it's going to happen a lot more. Personally, I think if you are not in the Power 4, you should get out of D1. It just makes no sense anymore. You aren't playing the same game, on the same field. Go create a level that makes sense for all those schools and stop hoping and dreaming you are going to hit it big in football and basketball.

And I might even go further than that.

My undergrad (Case Western Reserve U.) is Division III (UAA for all but football; PAC for football only).

But I have a law degree from the University of Houston, which is P4 (Big 12).

The only thing is, the Big 12 and ACC are pretty significantly behind in TV revenues compared to the "P2" (B1G and SEC).

It remains to be seen how much longer the Big 12 and ACC will be able to stay in the "power" conference game.

I can't rule out a "P2" breakaway at some point.

I do actually have a Master's degree from a B1G school (Illinois), but given that that degree has never made me any money, I'm not nearly as loyal to that alma mater.

[Kuiper]

Linfield Students, Faculty Push Back on Proposed University Budget Cuts

Entire degree programs and numerous faculty positions within Linfield University's College of Arts and Sciences are on the chopping block as administrators at the private liberal arts school consider different ways to offset a nearly $5 million budget deficit.

Majors in literature, philosophy, physics and international relations are among the subjects under threat of elimination in a proposal presented to Linfield faculty and shared with OPB this week. The university is looking to shed 27 faculty positions, with the majority of those positions coming from the arts and sciences departments.

Linfield has an undergraduate enrollment of about 1,700 students, spread across three major divisions: the College of Arts and Sciences, School of Nursing and School of Business.

Linfield is no stranger to restructuring cuts. The school let go of 35 staff members last year due to budget constraints. And in 2019, Linfield leaders announced plans to eliminate up to 25 tenured positions in order to shore up the university's finances.

Now, after years of operating in the red, university administrators are discussing how to bring its budget deficit to zero by June 2026, said Linfield University spokesperson Scott Nelson in an emailed statement.

[Kuiper]

Middlebury is an example of a school where the budget and endowment are strong as it relates to the core mission, but they have gotten overextended with commitments and acquisitions that went well beyond that core.

Middlebury Faculty, Staff, and Students Stage Walkout in Protest of Budget Cuts

Middlebury College faculty, staff and students staged a schoolwide walkout and teach-in on the Old Chapel green on Thursday morning in response to the college's plan for making budget cuts to address a projected $14.1 million deficit this fiscal year.

***

In the budget plan announcement, the leadership wrote that $8.7 million of the total deficit was the result of low enrollment at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, a satellite campus in California housing various graduate, joint-degree and certificate programs focused on multilingual and cross-cultural education.

Mittell said Middlebury College has invested large sums into the institute over 20 years since acquiring the campus in 2005. He called it an "albatross" for Middlebury College that is sinking finances and morale.

The rest of the deficit, amounting to $5.4 million, was tethered to decreased tuition revenue at the summer language schools, the Bread Loaf school and study abroad schools, as well as health care costs, "increased costs for some budgetary items unrelated to salaries or employee benefits, as well as interest and depreciation."

[Ron Boerger]

Seems like if they need to cut costs they should do it at the locations that are losing money instead of sticking it to the staff at the main campus, but that would make too much sense.

[Gray Fox]

Union College is short on international students.  Draws on endowment.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/personalfinance/union-college-falls-short-on-enrollment-with-big-loss-of-international-students/ar-AA1ER7C6?ocid=BingNewsVerp&cvid=ea4ac2717ef149dedd94d169722f644e&ei=12

[IC798891]

Union College is short on international students.  Draws on endowment.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/personalfinance/union-college-falls-short-on-enrollment-with-big-loss-of-international-students/ar-AA1ER7C6?ocid=BingNewsVerp&cvid=ea4ac2717ef149dedd94d169722f644e&ei=12

Per their admissions website, as of 5/12/25, the incoming class has 500 students.

I'm not sure what Union's melt rate is (or if that 500 is already taking it into account) but if the goal is 560, that's a pretty big miss already. If that doesn't include summer melt...

Also, the sort of unspoken thing is that those changes they're making in response (No raises, cutting back on retirement contributions). That's the stuff that drains the life from people who support an institution. I speak as someone whose own college dealt with it, and is finally emerging from it. It is not easy to endure.

Hang in there the best you can, those of you who are affiliated with Union

[Ron Boerger]

International students usually have a much lower discount rate - losing a bunch can certainly impact the bottom line.  Gonna see a lot of this, unfortunately, with the current climate (and not temperature-related) in the US.

[IC798891]

This is actually what makes me more concerned for Union

https://www.timesunion.com/education/article/union-college-facing-hard-choices-looks-19496701.php

Union College is considering changes to its academic programs in an effort to attract more applicants and improve the college's bottom line. But the first step of the process was met with vehement opposition from the faculty, who last week rejected a recommendation to start a curriculum task force.

This seems like the kind of internal resistance to necessary change you don't want.

[Kuiper]

International students usually have a much lower discount rate - losing a bunch can certainly impact the bottom line.  Gonna see a lot of this, unfortunately, with the current climate (and not temperature-related) in the US.

The coming demographic cliff and a drop in international students will only accelerate the death spiral of some schools

A paper from researchers from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia created a model that estimates that an abrupt 15% decline in students (from a 2019 baseline) between 2025-2029, which is the worst case scenario, would lead to the closure of 80+ schools. If the decline is more gradual, as a Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education  report predicts, the FRB researchers predicted an 8.1% increase in closures, roughly representing 5 additional closures per year.  Either way, the WICHE report states that 2025 is the high water mark for graduates and it's likely to be downhill from here for the next 15 years:

The total number of high school graduates is expected to peak in 2025 and then decline
steadily through 2041. The projected decreases in the number of graduates are primarily
driven by the continuing declines in the number of births 18 years earlier.

International students might be one way to backfill the decline in the number of U.S. students reaching age 18, but according to one report based on data from the Student and Exchange Visitor Information Systems, there was an 11% drop in international students between March 2024 and March 2025, leading to a net decline of 130,000 students and an estimated $4 billion aggregate loss of revenue for universities.  Moreover, that report was based on data before the crackdown on visas, the pulling of research grants and other gov't funding (a killer for students in the sciences particularly), and major campaigns in the UK, Australia, and Canada to attract int'l students, particularly from places like India and China.  A Boston College professor predicts that this is not just a cyclical fluctuation, but rather a global reshuffling of the place of American universities.  A lot of the decline and the causes affect Masters and Doctoral programs more than undergrad programs, but there is a trickle down effect and the fragile financial health of some liberal arts colleges makes even a small drop matter more than in the large research universities.

[Ron Boerger]

My bet would be that the combination of fewer internationals, the demographic cliff, and the increasing perception that college isn't all that will lead to more than 80+ schools closing, especially if that's counting from 2019. 

[Ron Boerger]

A long read on the financial issues at Guilford College, which according to the article faces a loss of accreditation if it doesn't balance its budget by June 30th.  The school has seen a 40% decline in enrollment over the last eight years while expenses declined only 1%.  Among many other issues, the school is in default of agreements to maintain  net operating revenues of at least 1.25 times higher than annual debt service payments and the primary bondholder could demand immediate repayment of $60M in debt at any time.  The bank has agreed not to seek repayment at this time while the school works with an independent consultant to address the situation; if the work fails, the bonds could become callable. 

The path forward is complicated by two sets of stakeholders:  those who believe the Quaker-affiliated church should take an approach focused on Quaker values, "with a flattened hierarchy and emphasis on a deliberative approach", and those who take a more more typical business focus, selling or monetizing excess land owned by the school, cutting costs and the like. 

For the tax year ending June 30, 2023, the school lost over $11M on revenues of nearly $62M and had liabilities of nearly $82M offset by assets of $205M.  The most recent audit from 2024 shows significant deficiency in internal controls, but also showed a suprisingly high $17+M (realized and unrealized) return on a $76.7M investment portfolio, of which the school used nearly $10M for operations. 

[DagarmanSpartan]

Ya know, for all this talk about a "demographic cliff," it doesn't seem to be affecting all schools equally.

Take Case Western Reserve U. for example.  Its undergrad applications keep going up and up.

2021: 29,084
2022: 33,232
2023: 38,701
2024: 39,039

When exactly is this "cliff" supposed to hit?

[Kuiper]

Ya know, for all this talk about a "demographic cliff," it doesn't seem to be affecting all schools equally.

Take Case Western Reserve U. for example.  Its undergrad applications keep going up and up.

2021: 29,084
2022: 33,232
2023: 38,701
2024: 39,039

When exactly is this "cliff" supposed to hit?

As the reports and quotes cited in my post above state, 2025 is supposed to be the highwater mark for 18 year-old high school graduates and it will go down from there (possibly abruptly, but more likely gradually) until 2041.  So, the demographic cliff hasn't hit yet and this year was actually very difficult for applicants for elite colleges. The current talk about it is because it is inevitably coming as researchers have been watching the decline in the student population in elementary and high schools work its way through the system for years.  Whether it is gradual or abrupt is less about demographics and more about what % of high school grads go to college, and there are a variety of factors like the pandemic, increasing cost of higher education and other things, the job market, and declining federal and state support, that affect that %. 

Much of the enrollment shortfalls we've seen thus far are among schools in the northeast and midwest that don't draw nationally and are suffering from a loss of college-age population specific to those regions because of out-migration, not from a demographic cliff.  Case Western, like much of DIII schools, is definitely in an area of declining population over the years (I can attest to that as a native of Cleveland who left), but it has been able to draw nationally and to capitalize on the shift in student interest from humanities to STEM.  Plus, it has been reasonably generous with merit aid.  Application numbers are not really relevant to any of that though.  The common app and better outreach have helped many schools increase applications (more applications per student), but the other factors have helped Case's yield.  The more attractive/elite the school, the less likely even the demographic cliff will affect it. 

[DagarmanSpartan]

Well, in the 30+ years since I graduated, Cleveland certainly has seen a population decline, but CWRU a huge application and enrollment INCREASE, owing to things like a) bigger out of state recruiting; when I entered, more than 60% of undergrads were from Ohio; today, only like 18% are, and b) as you said, the popularity and marketability of undergraduate degrees in fields for which CWRU has curricular strength, such as Engineering, Business, and Nursing.

Likewise, any demographic cliff that is been building in recent years hasn't affected either our applicant pool or our yield..........YET.

That said, I read somewhere that the biggest drops in higher education that might result from any demographic cliff will most likely occur at the two year college and trade school levels.  Four year colleges will be far less affected, with only some small, relatively non-prestigious colleges and for profit colleges being hit especially hard; most other four year colleges will only experience minimal effects.

Four year colleges and graduate schools with better than average prestige will likely feel no effects.

Can't say for sure if that prediction will come true, but I think that a result such as that is plausible.

[Ron Boerger]

Applications != admissions, and we now see students applying to dozens of colleges which use the same standardized application process.  Quality colleges like Case will draw even more applicants.

Case's actual enrollment in Fall 2023 per NCES was 6,166 undergraduate students, and a freshman class of 1575. 

In 2024, my alma mater saw over 12,500 applications for a class of 670, up from 11,425 in 2023.

The people at universities responsible for turning acceptances into admissions, managing that yield to ensure the school has enough students but not more than it can handle, have a daunting job.