College mergers: so hot rn

What happens when you give a university president a Dr. Suess book? One college, two college, new college.

This past June, Boston-based Northeastern University took over the operation of Mills College, a 170-year-old women’s school located near Silicon Valley that was at risk of closing its doors due to $21 million in liabilities.

🎓➕🎓 That’s not all: The previous month, St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia absorbed the crosstown University of the Sciences, and Boston College announced plans to merge with Pine Manor College.

🤔 What’s going on?... As Chee-eee-eese would say, running a school ain’t easy. Colleges may merge for several different reasons: to broaden their enrollment base, diversify programs, expand facilities, create efficiencies of scale – or simply to avoid shutting down over financial issues (as you’ll find out in a sec, “brand-name” universities are thriving. Less-prestigious schools, not so much).

• There have been 95 instances of two colleges merging together over the past four years, compared to 78 mergers over the 18 years before that, per data compiled by consulting group EY Parthenon.
• All told, 95% of mergers occur between universities with less than 5,000 students, and some 80% involve schools located in the same state.

+Dive deeper: There are currently ~1.4 million fewer college students than before the pandemic began, but applications to America’s most selective schools keep increasing in the face of unprecedented competition.