Pssst — wanna buy a college campus?

There’s a sudden market in abandoned campuses, an outgrowth of the accelerating rate of colleges closing in the face of falling enrollment, rising debt and other problems.

More than 440 of the nation’s private, nonprofit four-year colleges and universities are now at risk, based on enrollment trends, debt and other measures, according to projections by Huron Consulting Group. That’s a quarter of the total.

Among the most endangered: small, rural and religiously affiliated institutions.

And how to dispose of the real estate is among the least of the challenges facing shuttering campuses and the students they serve.

Fewer than half of students at colleges that close continue their educations, according to a study by the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association. Of those who do, only half go on to earn degrees. Some 670,000 students are enrolled at those colleges and universities that the Huron analysis found to be in trouble.

There are several reasons colleges are closing.

A decline in the birthrate that began around the Great Recession means there will be 15 percent fewer 18-year-olds per year through 2039 than there are now. That’s on top of a drop in the number of students on campus that began in 2011; college and university enrollment is already down by about 2 million since that time.

Among that falling number of high school graduates, the proportion going straight to college has also dropped, from a peak of 70 percent to just under 63 percent in 2024, the most recent year for which the figure is available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

International students, who universities and colleges recruited to help fill that gap, have stopped coming, too, in the face of tightened visa rules and higher costs. That is forcing cuts to programs, services and staffing for domestic students. And new limits on federal loans for graduate and professional school could reduce demand for programs that provide universities with badly needed revenue.

Read the full article about the pace of college closings by Jon Marcus at The Hechinger Report.