Concerns about the small private college are rife among those who study the higher-education market, and the full impact of demographic decline has yet to set in. If one takes the Great Recession era as the baseline, 10 states will have at least 20 percent fewer high-school graduates in the pipeline by 2030. And in his 2018 book Demographics and the Demand for Higher Education, Nathan D. Grawe weighs many factors and concludes that “demographics really is destiny”: raw population numbers are what matter most in predicting future demand for postsecondary education. To learn more, read “Private Colleges in Peril” by Stephen Eide.

—Education Next