There’s no other way to say that. American universities in the United States have known it since the 1960s. The closure and integration of universities, which began 15 years ago, is sure to increase over the next few years.
University enrollment peaked in 2010, but has since declined consistently as university costs, the Covid-19 pandemic and other trends have reduced students from participation in higher education institutions. However, with the recent crackdown on university campuses, anti-DEI climates, and the persecution of US government foreign students, American universities are truly opposed to the tsunami. The trickle of the agency at closure or margins is almost guaranteed to turn into a flood between the end and end of the 2020s.
Sonoma State University (aka Sonoma, California) is one of the newest universities facing budget cuts. Despite the Sonoma County Court decision, which temporarily holds university plans, Sonoma remains facing a $24 million budget shortfall. Even if the order is held beyond May 1, Sonoma will be able to work in good faith negotiations with staff, faculty and students. Specifically, the departments of art history, economics, geology, philosophy, theater/dance, women’s and gender studies are primarily located in the chopping block of Sonoma, the state of liberal arts and social sciences.
However, the most vast reduction in the last decade occurred at West Virginia University in 2023. That August, West Virginia announced it had suffered a $45 million budget deficit after a six-year campaign to increase registrations. 169 teacher positions. However, after weeks of student protest, the number reached 28 majors (nearly a fifth of undergraduate majors) and 143 faculty members (down 13.5%). The sudden shift to austerity has led to a steady stream of faculty and administrators resigning or resigning from retirement acquisitions to leave West Virginia. Again, undergraduate liberal arts majors and small academic graduate programs were the main targets of reductions.
Stories like what’s happening in Sonoma and already happening in West Virginia are part of a bigger and worse trend. The gradual increase in female university enrolments over the past 50 years has led to a more dramatic decline in the number of men attending college, especially among white men. Since 1970, men have only accounted for only 58% of undergraduate enrollees to around 40% as of the early 2020s. 71% of the decline in university attendance since 2010 is consistent with a decline in men as students in higher education. Perhaps sexism, which has been disguised as indifferent to higher education in the wake of a dominant student body, is at least part of an explanation for this sudden decline in enrollment.
However, other institutions of higher education are getting worse. Clarion University, Pennsylvania, University of California, Pennsylvania, St. Rose University in New York, and Independent University in Utah. These are one of 76 universities that have either closed the door or merged with other higher education institutions in the United States, affecting the lives of tens of thousands of students and thousands of faculty members. Almost all of these institutions cite budget shortages and reduced registrations as reasons for their end of misery or merger.
Nationally, the number of students attending US universities has dropped from the peak of 18.1 million students in 2010 to 15.4 million in 2021. As of this past fall, enrollment rose to 15.9 million students, up 4.5%, but not enough to halt the currents of closure, austerity and integration.
According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia’s Financial Stress Test Model for American Higher Education Institutions, 80 U.S. universities and universities were able to permanently close by the end of 2025-26. They are based on “passing off the upcoming demographic cliff (or 15% reduction in registration)” to “based on worst-case scenario forecasts (ing).” Demographics also foresee an imminent decline in the number of university enrollment starting this fall, a result of the economic distress that began the Great Recession of the late 2000s.
Then there is the persecution of students at foreign universities by Trump 2.0 and his administration. The recent crackdown on academic freedom under former President Joe Biden, with faculty and student protesters at Palestinian Parent University, and Republican governors like Greg Abbott of Texas and Ron DeSantis of Florida, key racial theories and Days escalated under President Donald Trump. The Trump administration has revoked visas for more than 1,700 foreign teachers and students, revoked visas for many others, and tempted and tempted many other political stances that are primarily seen as contrary to the interests of the administration, threatening one area of sustainable growth in higher education. Neither Alireza Doroudi, Rumeysa Ozturk or Mahmoud Khalil nor hundreds of other victims of this fraud committed any crime under US law. It’s a criminal act unless you go to a funeral, write a surgery, or exercise your first amendment right to protest.
From 2023 to 2024, over 1.1 million international students attended US universities at undergraduate, graduate school and specialized levels. However, we are almost certain that the Trump administration threatens, arrests and deports dozens of foreign students and academics, resulting in a decline in the number of international students from the Middle East and South Asia enrollments next year. Also, students from China could be reduced as a result of the ongoing tariff battle between the two countries. A quarter of all foreign students in the US are from China.
The collapse of U.S. higher education was almost inevitable after decades of universities hired an army of part-time professors in place of full-time, tenurestream instructors and researchers, and university presidents who run campuses like commercial companies. Despite Harvard recently providing the Trump administration’s opposition to university oppression, the top-down hierarchy and impossible workforce have led to a higher education response to the US completely helpless conservative and far-right movement. To this, conservative assumptions in the liberal arts field expand the expansion of people and the world’s knowledge, not what they really mean, as “immorality,” “indoctrination,” and “ribat.” There was also decades of overemphasis on STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics). Trump’s Project 2025 The possibility that Gurus privatizes the federal student loan program will be the straw that broke the back of U.S. higher education at this point.
The liberal arts sector will in particular continue to consolidate, and university administrators will continue to find reasons to throw them away as a measure of cost savings. An unprecedented number of senior faculty members will be retired, early retirement or fired. Non-tenure faculty and junior staff simply lose their jobs, often in the higher education environment of the United States. Above all, students at any institution other than the top 136 elite universities and at top 50 flagship public universities and universities can’t afford to buy a university and tens of thousands of people will not be able to complete their degrees. American higher education is more than just staring at Abyss. I’ve already fallen into that.
The views expressed in this article are the authors themselves and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.