Syracuse And The Bigger Problems Of Higher Ed

Syracuse University has been in the news lately, starting last spring:

Syracuse University will eliminate 93 academic programs identified as having low or no enrollment, the private New York institution announced Wednesday.

But unlike many colleges making cuts, Syracuse is not doing so out of financial necessity, according to Lois Agnew, the university’s provost and chief academic officer.

But according to the Wall Street Journal, the cuts are in fact due to financial necessity:

This school year, which began Aug. 24, enrollment fell short, sending the school into a 1.5% budget shortfall.

Syracuse also added nearly half a billion in debt to build desperately needed new dorms, which brought on a bond market reprimand. And it recently cut programs it said weren’t popular.

A national brand-name institution with a $2.5 billion endowment and a storied 150-year tradition is suddenly beginning to flail.

But the problems aren't unique to Syracuse:

Fewer young people are enrolling in college, as the country reconsiders the value of a university education. Tuition that has outpaced inflation for decades has saddled students with high debt and yielded uneven returns on careers. The current tough job market, squeezed by the rise of artificial intelligence, has added to the anxiety.

There could be even fewer students in the future—as the birthrate falls, the number of 18- to 24-year-olds in the U.S. is set to decline.

The first institutions to feel these headwinds have been lesser-known colleges with nominal endowments. That has led to a surge of mergers and closings among small private schools. But the cracks in the business model of higher education are now prompting a realignment much further up the food chain.

. . . At the same time, the Trump administration’s disruption of billions of dollars in federal research grants has thrown a question mark over Syracuse’s nearly $200 million research budget. And Trump’s continued pressure on student visas is disincentivizing international enrollment—a revenue stream on which Syracuse depends.

Left unmentioned is the questionable value of the product itself, leaving aside whether it carries with it the assurance of a white-collar career. I've discussed here the stories about the high percentages of students who cheat on exams and papers with AI, but this deflects attention from the pre-digital age of analog plagiarism from sources like Cliff's Notes, where the percentages were just as high -- and this in turn leaves aside the problem of professors wno plagiarize, often highly prestigious ones.

On the other hand, the Journal does bring up another issue I've noted here, the increasing luxury of student accommodations, which by the way increases the cost of college overall:

Through the 1990s and early 2000s, universities spent billions upgrading facilities in an arms race to attract affluent students who carefully weighed where to enroll based on the quality of dorms and amenities, such as lazy rivers and climbing walls.

Syracuse fell behind. It hasn’t opened a new dorm since 2009, and years of reviews showed students wanted more housing near the main campus. The school outlined a plan to modernize student-housing a decade ago when finances were stable.

In 2025, it borrowed $458 million to build new dorms near its main campus. The risk was exacerbated because the school has a relatively small endowment for a university of its size.

In fact, universities are competing for the most affluent market share, which includes the foreign students who pay full freight:

Northeastern, BU and NYU have seen application numbers surge and the percentage of applicants admitted plummet—a measure of selectivity that boosts a school’s prestige and ability to draw more students willing and able to pay full sticker price.

The three enroll 40% or more of undergraduates paying the full price, compared with just 21% at Syracuse, according to 2023-24 data from the National Center for Education Statistics, the most recent available.

As a result, Syracuse’s competitors can concentrate their financial-aid budgets on a smaller percentage of students, while Syracuse has to spread its allotment over a broader pool. That means that for students who get some sort of financial aid, Syracuse costs thousands more than its competitors.

Wait a moment. The schools that gain in prestige can be more selective, which means they can admit more students wealthy enough to pay full fare, and they can attract these students with luxury accommodations -- but they insist on being able to implement DEI? Isn't this incongruous? But here's another data point I ran across in preparing tbis post:

First, before you dive into it, take a guess about the percentage of adults in the US, aged 35-54 with a bachelor's degree or higher. Got a guess? If you have a college degree, you probably said something like fifty or sixty percent, based on my sampling of twenty people or so. If you didn't, your guess is probably much lower, usually ten or fifteen percent. There's a lesson there, in itself.

The answer: 38%. You're probably surprised, either way.

Now, what was it in 1940? Got an guess in your head? The answer: Just under 5%. Yes. You read that right.

What is higher ed supposed to be doing, and is it doing it? If my wife and I had children or grandchildren, from our current perspective, I think a better use of household education money would be to put the kids in Catholic K-12 schools and let college more or less take care of itself.