When Less is More

Two articles on the Inside Higher Ed website illustrate the likely future of higher education in the United States apart from the elite Ivy League institutions and near-Ivies. The first, about a plan by the University of Kansas to drop 42 academic programs, including a bachelor-level degree in the humanities, illustrates the future for many disciplines and majors amid the economics of public higher education. The second, also in Inside Higher Ed, is about a move by Trinity University in San Antonio to downshift from its former status as a top Master’s university to become a Baccalaureate Arts & Sciences institution alongside other liberal arts colleges.

This move is extraordinary because one rarely sees an institution downshifting in response to the pressures of change on enrollment. Normally, we see schools turn themselves inside out trying to recover what they wish to be rather than accept what they are, given the forces of demography and market. This trend will likely intensify as the number of high school graduates continues to drop in the United States. 

Much of the independent and international school world sits even closer to shifting demography than their higher education colleagues. In some cases, the issue is about changing composition (e.g., fewer Anglophone expats and more of everything else in international schools) and at other times about declining numbers of school-age children (e.g., Philadelphia, St. Louis, and many other parts of the USA). We find too few schools willing to face what Jim Collins memorably calls “the brutal facts.” Demography is destiny for day schools—boarding schools and universities, too, if they face facts—but we keep meeting governing board members who seem to think that markets are infinitely expandable and growth possible if only the head of school would do the right things. Shrinkage or a narrowing of focus may be the right way to survive/thrive as a nonprofit institution, even if that strategy would fail to satisfy investors in a private company.