Noah Smith, Columnist

America’s Great College Boom Is Winding Down

The for-profit sector is collapsing, a possible omen of things to come for public and nonprofit schools.

April 18, 2019 at 11:00 AM UTC

Noah Smith is a former Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He was an assistant professor of finance at Stony Brook University, and he blogs at Noahpinion.

Not such a good thing comes to an end.
Photographer: Chris Goodney/Bloomberg

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The for-profit college industry is collapsing. The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that during the past five years, more than 1,200 college campuses have been closed — an average of about 20 every month. Of those that shut, 88 percent were for-profit, and their students amounted to 85 percent of those affected by the closures:

Enrollment at four-year for-profit colleges is in free fall, dropping 13.7 percent from fall 2014 to fall 2015, 14.5 percent the following year, and 7.1 percent the year after that.