Higher Ed Fault Lines
Colleges dependent on international tuition face sharp strain as visa restrictions reduce enrollments. At Central Missouri, nearly half the expected graduate students never arrived, destabilizing a budget already reliant on overseas demand. International students, who often pay two or three times domestic tuition, have long subsidized scholarships for American peers. Their absence now drives tuition hikes and cuts. The University of Baltimore, meanwhile, has seen enrollment fall nearly 50% in a decade, forcing consolidation of majors and layoffs to close a structural deficit. Both cases highlight the growing fragility of higher education, where closures once rare are becoming more common, echoing concerns I raised earlier.
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Giovanni Paolo Panini, Ruins of the Roman Forum, mid-18th century. Public domain.