The Dangers of Closing Colleges

Level 3: Advanced Concepts

Welcome back! If you are in the process of selecting a college to attend, or selecting which colleges you will apply to, you may have a long list of considerations:

• The social life

• Financial aid packages

• Coursework

While all of these matter, one of the most understated factors in making a college decision is the risk the college will close.

Some of you may think that it is unlikely to happen to you. But between 2015 and 2019, over 100,000 students have been displaced due to college closures. College closures are only expected to accelerate as demographic changes continue to occur.

While this is more common among for-profit institutions than non-profit institutions, non-profits are also impacted.

What does that mean to you?

1. Difficulty of Transfer

When a college shuts down, it often results in students simply dropping out. Some colleges arrange a “teach out” agreement with other colleges or universities, where another college will take transfer students have them finish their degree.

Sometimes, that is not possible, and a college or university will simply shut down. When that happens, students are often scrambling to try to find a college to accept their credits.

Statistics show that in that situation, approximately 60% of students will choose to just drop out. That is an alarmingly high number of college dropouts. As the college closure rate increases, you will find more and more students in this situation.

2. Extended Timeframe to Graduate

Even if you can successfully transfer to another college if the initial college closes, there are still challenges that impact graduation timelines.

First, many colleges will not accept transfer credits from another college. That means students may have to start over completely. Even if they do not, there is a restriction on the number of credits that can be transferred. For example, if a college puts a credit transfer limit of one year, a student that was a junior will now find themselves a sophomore.

On top of that, there may be additional graduation requirements. For example, a student may attend a college with no “common core” requirements (e.g., foreign language requirement) while transferring to a college that does have a common core requirement. In that situation, not only do you need to continue with degree requirements, you may also need to take additional requirements, extending the graduation timeline.

3. Post-graduate Prospects

Attending grad school is a challenge, but coming from a closed university makes it even worse.

If your college has closed, if you do not have all of your documentation, you may have trouble securing all of the necessary application components to apply to grad school. There also is no one to reach out to if there are questions about you or your application.

That can make submitting applications difficult and put you at a distinct disadvantage, especially in a test-optional environment.

4. Job-Search Difficulty

Fair or unfair, applicants will be judged by the college that they attended. This is even worse for students that apply from colleges that have closed down.

Charlotte School of Law presents an interesting use case. Six months after graduation, only 23% of students had a job that required a law degree post-closure. Nearly 40% of students had NO job after graduation.

In our conversations with law firms, many hiring partners had an aversion to hiring from the law school, based purely on reputation.

This is not limited to just the legal profession. Many employers have actively taken a stance that they are less interested in hiring someone who has a degree from a college that no longer exists.

Key note: this was the case for candidates with little to no experience. The more experienced you are and further removed you are from college, the less important this is.

5. Lack of Professional Network

One of the most underrated aspects of the college is the professional network you gain by virtue of being an alumnus. The alumni network provides a built in social network and professional network to help find opportunities.

A college that has closed stops creating that alumni network. As time goes on, you lose an avenue for creating professional connections that are available to others.

This may seem counterintuitive - aren’t alumni going to be willing to help? Yes, but think about how alumni networks typically work.

When you graduate from college, you typically move into a given town or city. In that situation, most connections for alumni are tied to either their job or to their location.

In either situation, the network relies on new people joining. If you suddenly stop adding new people into the network, the network will grow stale and eventually begin to die as people either leave the job or the area.

Conclusion:

The risks associated with attending a college that closes down are high. But for many reading this, you will ask:

How do I identify if a college or university in danger of closing?

Next week, we will discuss some of the key signs of a college or program that is in danger of being shutdown.