The Shrinking Sector

July 27, 2015
  • Industry News

As enrollments tumble at for-profit colleges, the number of proprietary institutions is dwindling, too.

Data released by the Education Department's National Center for Education Statistics Thursday show that 3,436 for-profit colleges participated in federal financial aid programs in the just-ended academic year, down 2.6 percent, from 3,527 such institutions two years earlier, in the 2012-13 academic year.

For all the talk about the financial vulnerability of private nonprofit colleges in the wake of recent campus closures (and near closures), meanwhile, the number of such institutions actually increased marginally from 2012-13 to 2014-15, as seen in the table below. And the number of public colleges dipped by just under 1 percent.

Read more at Inside Higher Ed: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/07/24/number-profit-colleges-declines-enrollments-wither