Most Americans have an oddly distorted view of higher education. But that view has little to do with the financial reality facing most colleges and universities, hundreds of which are quietly sliding toward insolvency. When asked what comes to mind about universities, a national survey of more than 30,000 respondents most often cited liberal bias, antisemitism, and political activism. As one commentator put it, “graduates of a small cadre of elite universities disproportionately populate America’s leadership class and key institutions,” which helps explain why media narratives fixate on them. Another writer noted that “less than 1% of U.S. college students have attended an Ivy League university, yet these schools dominate employers, media and parents’ wishes. But why do we never hear of the other 99%?” This distortion matters. It gives the public a deeply unrealistic picture of higher education. Most colleges do not have billion‑dollar endowments, global prestige, or armies of activists marching on their quads. Their challenges are far more prosaic and far more urgent: rising costs, declining enrollment, shrinking budgets, and existential questions about survival. Because so much public attention is fixed on the Ivy League and its peers, it often misses the paradoxes confronting the majority of institutions — paradoxes that go to the heart of cost, debt, and sustainability. Why do tuition prices keep rising even as online learning becomes cheaper? Why do schools raise prices faster than inflation? Why, with the Bureau of Labor Statistics projecting 19 million annual job openings requiring a college education between now and 2033, are so many young people concluding that college isn’t worth it? And with $1.8 trillion in student loan debt — much of it held by students who borrowed five or six figures — we have to ask, are these loans helping or harming the very people they are meant to serve? These questions all point to a deeper question: What is the actual financial health of America’s colleges and universities? And how does that health shape everything from marketing and recruiting to pricing, faculty quality, and academic offerings? Most Americans, many legislators, and even many trustees do not have good answers. Opening the “black box” begins with understanding the financial realities of the sector — and how it arrived here. The Surprising Financial Fragility Of Hundreds Of America’s Universities wellesenterprises. Getty Images. There are 2,661 public and private four‑year colleges and universities in the United States, not counting trade schools or the nearly 1,500 community colleges. Roughly 80 four‑year institutions have closed since 2020 — a small number compared to the hundreds now under severe financial strain. Three major credit agencies have issued negative outlooks for higher education in 2026, citing declining enrollment, new limits on federal loan programs, and obstacles for international students.  The most widely accepted measure of institutional financial health is the Composite Financial Index (CFI), developed by KPMG and education finance experts. It evaluates net operating performance, reserves, return on net assets, and viability. A CFI of 3.0 or higher signals strength; 1.0 to 3.0 indicates caution; below 1.0 signals financial stress. A similar federal measure, the Financial Responsibility Composite Score (FRCS), is used for Title IV eligibility. There is no single public source listing CFIs for all four‑year institutions. FRCS data are incomplete and vocational schools are mixed in. To understand the landscape, one must aggregate accreditor reports, state dashboards, audited financial statements, IPEDS data, bond‑rating downgrades, enrollment trends, and tuition‑dependency ratios. When this is done — a task well suited to AI — the picture is stark: hundreds of institutions appear to have CFIs below 1.0, including some with tens of thousands of students. Most Americans have no idea what this means. A CFI below 1.0 signals that a school is struggling to cover its costs and may not be financially sustainable. In household terms, it is like living paycheck to paycheck with rising bills and no savings. These institutions are highly tuition‑dependent and often forced to cut programs, freeze wages, lay off staff, defer maintenance, reduce student services, and raise tuition simply to stay afloat. They typically have little or no endowment, high debt, and almost no financial cushion. What This Financial Stress Means For Students Brandon Bell/Getty Images The consequences for students are real and immediate. When resources are tight, institutions delay hiring, freeze salaries, or rely more heavily on adjunct instructors. Class sizes grow. Course offerings shrink. Faculty have less time for mentoring or research collaboration. Low‑CFI schools struggle to attract top faculty, who understandably prefer more stable institutions. Academic programs may be consolidated or eliminated, reducing the breadth of study. Support services such as advising, tutoring, counseling, and career placement may be scaled back. Facilities show signs of deferred maintenance — outdated labs, aging classrooms, underfunded libraries. Extracurriculars and campus life are pared down. Schools try to shield students from the worst effects, but financial fragility inevitably constrains the educational experience. For families, college is one of the largest investments they will ever make, second only to buying a home. Yet the price keeps rising, and the debt required to finance it has soared. To most Americans, higher education remains a “black box”: judged by brand, price, and 3rd party rankings rather than by underlying financial health. Gallup polls show that public confidence in the importance of higher education has collapsed by roughly 40 percentage points since 2010. Understanding the sector’s financial underpinnings is essential — not only for policymakers but for families making life‑altering decisions. How Higher Education Reached This Point: Four Seismic Shifts Don and Melinda Crawford/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images The current crisis did not emerge overnight. Four major events and trends reshaped the landscape and pushed hundreds of institutions into financial jeopardy. The Rise Of Community Colleges Community colleges — originally “junior colleges” — expanded dramatically after the 1947 Truman Commission on Higher Education called for a national network of low‑cost, open‑access institutions. Combined with the GI Bill, this led to explosive growth: states added nearly one community college per week during the 1960s and 1970s. These institutions offered lower cost, open‑door admissions, flexible schedules, and access for nontraditional, first‑generation, and working students. Enrollment more than tripled between 1960 and 1980. More recently, community colleges have begun offering four‑year bachelor’s degrees, intensifying competition. Over 150 community colleges across 24 states now confer bachelor’s degrees directly, often in high‑demand fields like nursing, teaching, and IT. Many partner with state universities, allowing students to attend a local community college for four years and receive a diploma from a flagship institution — at a fraction of the cost. Community colleges now account for 32–35% of all college enrollment, and their value proposition is increasingly compelling. The Medicaid Squeeze On State Budgets For public institutions, the most consequential budgetary shift has been the rise of mandatory Medicaid spending. In 1980, states devoted an average of 9% of their budgets to Medicaid and 6% to higher education. By 2025, those numbers flipped to 31% and 3%. The Great Recession accelerated the trend. Between 2008 and 2010, many states slashed higher‑education funding by double digits. Overall funding fell by more than $6.6 billion between 2008 and 2018. Universities responded with layoffs and steep tuition hikes. The University of California raised tuition 30% in a single year. Michigan cut funding by 30%. Florida’s flagships raised tuition by double digits in consecutive years. The recession ended, but the tuition hikes did not. Financially stressed institutions have raised tuition nearly every year since 2010, while more stable schools averaged increases every two to three years. Public universities have raised tuition nearly 30% over the past decade; elite privates continue to push 4% annual increases. The Demographic Cliff The number of college‑aged students is projected to fall 15% between now and 2037, with even steeper declines in the West. Enrollment peaked at 21 million in 2010 and has since fallen to 19 million, with further declines expected through 2035. Most institutions built their campuses assuming a growing population of 18‑year‑olds. Instead, they now face a widening gap between supply (classroom seats and dorm beds) and demand. Residential campuses serving traditional‑age students are hit hardest. The Online Revolution Perhaps the most transformative force has been the democratization of knowledge. When people say that the cost of education has soared, they are not technically accurate. When considering education in the purest sense; it has actually plummeted. The cost of attending IHEs or obtaining credentials from them has certainly soared, but the best leading-edge information from the most credible sources is now largely available for free online.  Online learning has become a mainstream alternative: 10–11 million students take at least one online course, and more than 5 million study exclusively online. Growth is projected to continue at a 14% CAGR through 2032. Social media and smartphones have reshaped communication, marketing, and recruitment. But smaller institutions lack the staff, technology, and budgets to compete with well‑resourced universities or sophisticated online providers. Many hoped technology would level the playing field; instead, it widened the gap. The Result: A Bifurcated Higher Education System These four forces have produced a sector split into two diverging paths: Institutions competing on cost and convenience, often through online or hybrid models, transfer pathways, and local access. Institutions competing on selectivity and prestige, leveraging brand strength to maintain pricing power. Many schools cannot play either role effectively. They lack the scale, brand, or financial resilience to compete on prestige and selectiveness — and lack the technology, flexibility, locations, and/or cost structure to compete on convenience. Hundreds now sit in the middle, financially fragile and struggling to define their place in a rapidly changing landscape. * * * Greg Salsbury, Ph.D., serves on the Board of Advisors for STARRS.US., and is the former president of Western Colorado University. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Southern California, an M.A. from the University of Illinois, and an M.A. from the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at USC. John Kawauchi, MBA, is a former VP of Enrollment Management and Marketing of Western Colorado University and Lake Superior State University, after spending most of his career in Retirement Planning and Product Marketing in the Financial Services industry. He earned his MBA from the University of Chicago and a BS from Cornell University. The views expressed in this piece are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

The ongoing legal battle between Hunter Biden and Lunden Roberts over their seven-year-old daughter, Navy Joan, has reached a new level of friction in an Arkansas court. The dispute centers on allegations that Biden has “ghosted” the child and failed to fulfill the unique terms of a 2023 settlement agreement. Lunden Roberts recently filed to reopen the child support case, labeling Biden “classless” for cutting off all contact with Navy Joan in 2024. In response, Biden’s legal team submitted a blunt filing asserting that his lack of communication does not constitute a violation of the law. His lawyer argued that because the court order does not explicitly mandate him to speak to or visit the child, his silence is not punishable by contempt. This follows a brief period where the two had reportedly begun building a foundation through scheduled calls. A central pillar of their 2023 agreement was Biden’s commitment to provide Navy Joan with 30 of his original paintings or the proceeds from their sale. At the time, Biden’s art was valued as high as $500,000 per piece. Roberts claims Biden has failed to hand over the art, while Biden’s defense maintains that because the settlement did not establish a specific deadline, he is not currently in breach of the order. Meanwhile, the market value of his work has reportedly plummeted since Joe Biden left the White House. Roberts cited a stark contrast between Navy Joan’s upbringing and that of Hunter’s other children. Her filings point to the Biden family’s exclusive lifestyle—specifically a 2025 Thanksgiving gathering in Nantucket—noting that Navy Joan is the only grandchild excluded from such family activities. Roberts argues that while the court cannot force Biden to be a “good dad,” it can ensure the child receives the same level of financial support as her half-siblings. The relationship began in 2017, and Navy Joan was born in 2018. Although Hunter Biden initially claimed he had no memory of Roberts and denied paternity, a 2019 DNA test confirmed he was the father. Despite this, he famously omitted Navy Joan from his 2021 memoir and successfully fought to prevent her from using the “Biden” last name.

A man posing as an FBI agent walked into the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn on Wednesday night in an attempt to spring suspected assassin Luigi Mangione from jail, according to a criminal complaint. The suspect, 36-year-old Mark Anderson of Minnesota, was charged on Thursday with impersonating a federal agent. Anderson allegedly illegally approached the jail’s intake area and told authorities at the jail that he had an order “signed by a judge” to free an inmate. While the criminal complaint does not specify who Anderson was allegedly attempting to free, law enforcement sources told ABC News and the New York Post that it was Mangione. Anderson told officials that he had weapons in his bag, and when officials searched the bag, they found a pizza cutter and a barbecue fork, according to the criminal complaint. When asked to provide his credentials, Anderson handed officials his Minnesota driver’s license, the complaint stated. Anderson reportedly moved to New York City recently and was working at a pizza parlor. The Minnesota man was scheduled to appear in court on Thursday afternoon. U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York Mangione is being held in the Metropolitan Detention Center as his trial unfolds. The 27-year-old University of Pennsylvania graduate is charged with the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, who was gunned down on a New York City street on December 4, 2024. Mangione has been charged at the state and federal levels, with his federal murder charge opening up the door to the death penalty if he is convicted. Mangione has pleaded not guilty to the state and federal murder charges. The suspected assassin has attracted fans, who have called for him to be released. Some of Mangione’s supporters have used the murder of Thompson to condemn the U.S. health care system and to call for other health care executives to be killed. The Mangione fans, some of them wearing costumes of Luigi from Super Mario, have flocked together outside of the courthouse in New York City when the suspected killer was due in court. Mangione is due back in court for his federal case on Friday as the judge considers whether the death penalty can remain on the table. The accused killer’s attorney’s wants the judge to prevent the prosecution from using items found in Mangione’s backpack when he was arrested as evidence. The lawyers argue that Altoona, Pennsylvania, police illegally searched Mangione’s backpack when they arrested him. Among the items found in Mangione’s backpack were a gun, a loaded magazine, and a notebook that allegedly described Mangione’s plan to “whack” the health care CEO “at the annual parasitic bean-counter convention.” U.S. District Judge Margaret Garnett said last week that Mangione’s federal trial will start on September 8.

A judge sentenced a man to prison on Thursday for falsely claiming to have shot Charlie Kirk moments after the conservative activist was assassinated. George Zinn, 71, was sentenced to 15 years in prison after pleading guilty on three counts: one third-degree felony charge of obstruction of justice and two second-degree felony charges of sexual exploitation of a minor, according to The Salt Lake Tribune. Zinn will serve his sentences for all charges concurrently, with the longest term for the sexual exploitation charges – one to 15 years. A parole board will ultimately decide how long Zinn will serve in prison. Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, was shot and killed during a college event in Utah on September 10. In the chaos immediately following the shot that killed Kirk, Zinn falsely claimed to have shot the conservative commentator. The Utah County Sheriff’s Office said Zinn began to yell, “I shot him, now shoot me,” according to ABC4. As Zinn continued to claim he shot Kirk, law enforcement asked Zinn for the murder weapon. Zinn responded: “I am not going to tell you where [the gun] is. I shot him, now shoot me.” Zinn was immediately detained and searched. Law enforcement found child sexual abuse materials on his phone during the search. The 71-year-old said in a statement before the court on Thursday that the material on his phone was from a “chatroom dialogue with photos that are public access.” “I wish the court to know I am not and will never be a danger to children or their parents,” said Zinn. Zinn’s outburst on September 10 distracted law enforcement in the critical moments after the shooting as they were attempting to track down the killer. Law enforcement later determined that Zinn was not the shooter and, late the next day, arrested Tyler Robinson. Robinson has been charged with seven counts related to Kirk’s murder and may face the death penalty if found guilty. Robinson’s legal process is ongoing, and his defense team recently claimed that the Utah County Attorney’s Office has a conflict of interest in the case due to a Utah County prosecutor’s daughter being present at Utah Valley University when the assassination took place. The prosecution says the family member saw nothing direct and a conflict of interest has not been established. They’ve also accused the defense of stall tactics. Judge Tony Graf said that there’s not sufficient evidence yet to warrant the expulsion of the office, but has allowed Robinson’s team to begin examining witnesses in relation to the supposed conflict of interest. Additionally, Judge Graf blocked a pool video camera from showing Robinson after his defense team complained that shots of the accused speaking with his legal team could potentially be seen by lip readers and unfairly impact the trial. Amanda Prestigiacomo contributed to this story.

San Jose State University was hit with a Title IX violation by the United States Department of Education after an investigation found that the school’s women’s volleyball team kept a male player on its roster from 2022 to 2024. The university is now saying it’s “reviewing” the Education Department’s findings. In a statement to Fox News, San Jose State University said: “San Jose State, a member of the California State University system, received notification from the federal Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights regarding its investigation into athletics participation on our past women’s volleyball teams. The Department informed the University of the outcome of its investigation and its findings. The University is in the process of reviewing the Department’s findings and proposed resolution agreement. We remain committed to providing a safe, respectful, and inclusive educational environment for all students while complying with applicable laws and regulations.” The statement comes after the Department of Education concluded its investigation into the school on Wednesday. “The U.S. Department of Education’s (ED) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) found that San José State University (SJSU) violated Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 (Title IX),” the department said in a statement. “OCR concluded that SJSU’s policies allowing males to compete in women’s sports and access female-only facilities deny women equal educational opportunities and benefits.” Blaire Fleming is a male who played on the women’s volleyball team at San Jose State. Fleming played both indoor and beach volleyball. Fleming’s background became news after multiple outlets reported SJSU allegedly tried to hide Fleming’s sex from teammates, coaches, and opponents. The Office of Civil Rights said that the cover-up forced female athletes on San Jose’s volleyball team to share locker rooms and hotel rooms with a male. In addition to the privacy concerns, there were also alarming safety concerns. The investigation alleges that Fleming spiked the ball so hard that it knocked women on the opposing team to the ground. During one season, seven all-women’s teams from other universities forfeited their competitions, accepting a loss rather than competing against a male. When Fleming’s sex was made known to Brooke Slusser, the teammate of Fleming filed a lawsuit against the school and the NCAA for not informing her or her teammates that Fleming was a male. An assistant coach was suspended and not re-contracted after she filed a Title IX complaint over the school’s handling of the male player. RELATED: NCAA Volleyball Player Says Coaches Repeatedly Assigned Her To Room With Trans Player At His Request Title IX prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in education programs or activities receiving federal financial assistance. United States Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said she will hold San Jose State accountable. “San José State University caused significant harm to female athletes by allowing a male to compete on the women’s volleyball team— and when female athletes spoke out, SJSU retaliated,” McMahon said. As a result of the university’s noncompliance, the Department of Education is requiring a list of actions to be taken, including a public statement from SJSU saying the university will adopt biology-based definitions of the words “male” and “female.”  The school will also acknowledge that the sex of a human, male or female, is unchangeable, and send an apology to players who were on the volleyball and beach volleyball teams with Fleming and any players who refused to compete against Fleming. In the apology, the university has to express sincere regret for placing female athletes in that position. San Jose State University has 10 days to comply or risk “imminent enforcement action.” “We will not relent until SJSU is held to account for these abuses and commits to upholding Title IX to protect future athletes from the same indignities,” Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kimberly Richey said.