A baseball Cinderella shines light on the growing number of colleges under financial pressure

Birmingham-Southern College, a small liberal arts school in Alabama, closed its doors for good on Friday due to financial troubles.

However, its baseball team held out a little longer, putting together a championship run that would make the Mighty Ducks proud – before being eliminated by Wisconsin-Whitewater yesterday in the NCAA DIII Baseball World Series quarterfinals.

A nod to overcoming adversity: While the team’s season ended with a loss, its path was filled with more twists and turns than an M. Night Shyamalan movie – including a lack of funding for expenses (cue: GoFundMe), one-third of the team getting food poisoning before a crucial game (they won anyway), and a come-from-behind victory in an elimination game over the weekend that culminated with Birmingham-Southern winning on a two-run walkoff homer.

Zoom out: Baseball aside, the financial pressures felt at Birmingham-Southern aren’t isolated. At least 57 public or nonprofit colleges have closed, merged, or announced closures or mergers since March 2020 – though warning signs, like declining enrollment and revenues, were present prior to the pandemic.

• ~1,360 colleges and universities have seen declines in first-year fall enrollment since 2009, including ~800 four-year institutions.
• ~30% of all four-year schools brought in less tuition revenue per student in 2017-18 than in 2009-10.

👀 Looking ahead… At least 200 small US colleges (enrollment < 5,000) currently show signs of being under strong financial pressure, according to a Bloomberg analysis of federal data.