The pace of nonprofit university and college closures and mergers is accelerating due primarily to deepening debt caused by evaporating tuitional enrollment. Financial analysts and rating agencies have been suggesting for years that even well-established brands with exceedingly high tuition dependency are increasingly at risk as they double-down on their (expensive) full-time residential experience.
I'll suggest yet again that tuition dependent privates with strong professional & continuing education divisions have at their disposal a means of creating alterative revenue streams not tied to the traditional enrollment numbers driving closures and mergers. A quick non-rigorous review of the shrinking concentration of mid-tier privates indicates that those universities with well-resourced PCE units demonstrate to the market, analysts and rating agencies a type of institutional resilience necessary to adapt to the dramatic changes sweeping higher ed (see Villanova, Case Western, Wake Forest, and Lehigh as exemplars).
Mid-tier privates at financial risk should be aggressively leaning into and elevating their PCE division's role as a central element of their long-term strategic and financial planning. This means giving PCE leadership a role in enrollment and budget-planning rather than treating their units as self-funding side operation. Use the market-facing data PCE units have historically depended on to inform decisions that traditional undergraduate enrollment management is slow to consider. Build-out flexible degree pathways offered by the PCE unit into the university's most market-sensitive degrees (stackable certificates into bachelor's or master's completion, accelerated bachelor's-to-master's tracks for working adults). Use your PCE unit as recruiting funnel and retention tool. Invest in your PCE division now and position your shaky mid-tier tuition dependent private university with a genuine asset.
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