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Expert predicts 25% of colleges will fail in the next 20 years

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Re: Expert predicts 25% of colleges will fail in the next 20 years

#2
This could be very, very bad, if it does in fact start to happen with any regularity.

If you have a bunch of colleges go out of business you suddenly have a scenario where degrees from those institutions are either potentially seen as invalid as they can't be verified and/or you have degree mills going "Nnnnnoiiiicccceeee, you want a college degree? Pick from one of these hundred colleges and we will send you aged printed transcripts and a perfect replica of their diploma" and then you suddenly have tens of thousands, or millions, of people with degrees that are fake but can't be proven to be.

Many employers would probably just refuse to acknowledge degrees from those institutions or at least considerably discount their value compared to an applicant that has a degree from a university that hasn't shuttered. Worse, you'd have people still paying for loans for degrees that can't be verified.

Re: Expert predicts 25% of colleges will fail in the next 20 years

#4
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Re: Expert predicts 25% of colleges will fail in the next 20 years

#5

This could be very, very bad, if it does in fact start to happen with any regularity. If you have a bunch of colleges go out of business you suddenly have a scenario where degrees from those institutions are either potentially seen as invalid as they can't be verified and/or you have degree mills going "Nnnnnoiiiicccceeee, you want a college degree? Pick from one of these hundred colleges and we will send you aged pr…

Colleges themselves are not the only institutions keeping records about students. For instance, you can send people your transcripts and proofs of graduation through https://studentclearinghouse.org/, a nonprofit

Re: Expert predicts 25% of colleges will fail in the next 20 years

#6

This could be very, very bad, if it does in fact start to happen with any regularity. If you have a bunch of colleges go out of business you suddenly have a scenario where degrees from those institutions are either potentially seen as invalid as they can't be verified and/or you have degree mills going "Nnnnnoiiiicccceeee, you want a college degree? Pick from one of these hundred colleges and we will send you aged pr…

If the degree was from an accredited college it should be fine.

Re: Expert predicts 25% of colleges will fail in the next 20 years

#7
You wanted to commoditize higher ed and demand people have degrees just to essentially survive, yet you've defunded higher ed. This is exactly how a market functions. Consumers no longer have the time nor money to waste on degrees which are poor returns on investments, either because they came from a college no one had ever heard of, or because the skillset that the degree endowed is not in-demand. Really this is just the market reacting so I don't feel like its a huge surprise. (I guess the article kind of expressed this sentiment already, but I feel its worth reiterating).

Re: Expert predicts 25% of colleges will fail in the next 20 years

#10
I'm not sure we have any reason to believe this. There are two reasons given:

1. families had fewer kids after the 2008 recession.

2. Alternative forms of education.

The latter will be good news, if it does displaced old colleges. The former, which is waaay earlier in the article and therefore probably the more important cause (in the opinion of this article) could be swung at any moment by a change in immigration, welfare, or regulatory policies on state (for the latter two) or Federal levels.

I don't see much reason to take this prediction seriously. Are private investments or bonds of some kind in these institutions tanking?

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