BY GERARD O’SULLIVAN with BRIAN C. MITCHELL, co-author Twelve small colleges have closed in Massachusetts in the past five years. They have begun to address the issue, but it’s time for elected state officials to make changes that protect college and university students from the disruptive effects of catastrophic closure. The Governor, Attorney General…
BY BRIAN C. MITCHELL Swirling around the debates over the high sticker price of higher education is a deeper conversation about the broken financial model that most colleges and universities continue to use to pay their bills. While the largest universities have more options based on the scale of their endowment, fundraising prowess, and research…
BY BRIAN C. MITCHELL Every solution offered by a college or university faces a pending crisis in a different way. Wealthy institutions have the resources to weather challenges by kicking the can down the road, often for decades. That’s why it is significant that Harvard University last week issued a warning about its financial constraints…
BY BRIAN C. MITCHELL A hotly debated topic making the rounds in higher education now is whether American colleges and universities – public and private – face a round of mergers and acquisitions over the next several years. There are a number of reasons that the discussion of this topic had gained momentum. Tuition discount…
BY BRIAN C. MITCHELL Earlier this month, Jeff Selingo wrote in The Washington Post about the coming era of consolidation among colleges and universities. Mr. Selingo based many of his comments on findings from a study by Parthenon-EY Education to which he also contributed. The study concluded that more than 800 American colleges exhibit factors that call into…