GettyThere was history underfoot at Vermont’s Marlboro College. Tucked away in the Green Mountains, the nonprofit institution founded at the end of World War II held its first graduation in 1948. At least a dozen independent, regional colleges are on the brink of collapse—mostly in the northeast—and all buckling from the one-two punch of dwindling enrollment and mounting debt. The 2019 Forbes review of U.S. colleges’ financial soundness, headlined “Dawn Of The Dead,” painted a stark reality for America’s educators: Huge swaths of the country’s independent small colleges now face a “merge or perish” reality. (The average tuition sticker price is up more than 10% at private four-year colleges since 2013.)

Source: Forbes October 09, 2020 12:00 UTC