In case you missed it, Matt Reed at IHE wrote an excellent review of Demographics and the Demand for Higher Education, by Nathan Grawe last year (https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/confessions-community-college-dean/wake-call-0 ) that links to free-to-view, full-color figures at https://people.carleton.edu/~ngrawe/HEDI.htm
The very short summary for those who are vaguely aware, but aren't up on all the details includes:
* the number of 18-22 year-olds in the Midwest and Northeast have very steep declines of 15% and more in the next few years.
* the shift in enrollment is very likely to favor the elites and the best known. The good-enough regional institutions in the middle will likely lose out to excellent places slightly lowering their standards and the cheaper alternatives.
So . . . the shrinking demographics will result in institutional struggles and closures.
Or should I put it positively and say that the opportunity for institutional mergers is increasing?
I guess you're ripe for a merger if some of your staff and campus are useful to someone else, probably another nearby school in better shape. Otherwise...
Top administrators at my employer occasionally, by which I mean far too rarely, make remarks about changing demographics. And they do nothing productive about it. For example, we are told that there is no potential for enrollment growth on the full-time undergraduate end and we should develop programs for graduate and continuing ed students. Then the new programs are never marketed, not given resources, and eventually shut down because they "failed." And in the meantime costly, under-performing undergraduate programs continue to be supported.
Enrollment forecasts are very strong...in Texas and California.
I was in College Station, TX a couple years ago and there was massive apartment construction to accommodate the thousands of new students at TAMU. They probably absorbed the equivalent of four or five small New England colleges in one year.