David Brady
Staff Writer
Many small colleges and universities face financial stress as the 2025-26 academic year marks the final year before a demographic decline hits enrollment numbers. In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, birth rates plummeted. A shaky economy led to smaller families and this year those post-recession children make up the graduating class of 2026 that will soon ship off to college.
Several small schools, mostly clustered in the Northeast, have closed their doors for the last time as they faced rising debt burdens and a lack of cash from undergraduate tuition. Florida Southern, with a student population last year of 3,244, wanes in comparison to nearby universities such as the University of South Florida (USF), University of Tampa (UT), and University of Central Florida (UCF). How does it stand to fare in the face of this so-called “demographic cliff?”
Florida Southern has nothing to worry about, Dr. Jeremy Martin, President of the college, told The Southern in an interview. “One of the first things that is happier news for us of the Southeast, and particularly in Florida is . . . Florida is one of nine states in the country that actually projects increasing numbers of high school graduates,” he added, “The schools that are most at risk are the truly small institutions who have tried to maintain in the hundreds or in the low thousand enrollments.”
This so-called ‘enrollment cliff’ Dr. Jason Jewell, the Chief Academic Officer of the University System of Florida says, “it’s something that’s been on the radar of higher education administrators for about a decade.”
Florida, unlike many other states, expects to see an increase in high school graduates of as much as 10% in the next decade, Ian Hodgson of The Tampa Bay Times reports. This provides much needed relief to regional colleges and universities that would otherwise face the harsh financial conditions now facing northeast and midwestern schools.
This financial crunch, with a lack of tuition revenue, has left many schools with very few options: downsize or close down. The Penn State University system has closed seven of its campuses in, primarily, rural areas of the Key Stone state. West Virginia University shuttered dozens of programs and fired more than 140 faculty in the face of a $45 million budget shortfall. According to BestColleges, a student focused higher education advisor 80 small schools have already closed or plan to close their doors forever since March 2020.
This trend is compounded by a growing lack of confidence in higher education. According to a February 2024 Pew Research study, 43% of Americans have a negative view of higher education, pulled down by the 69% of self-described conservatives who have neutral or negative view. Many conservatives have felt that higher education has become increasingly politicized and hostile to them.
Other concerns arise from the impact of AI on the job market for many programs such as accounting, computer science, and even graphic design. Martin is not worried about the prospects for Florida Southern alumni on the job market, touting that “we’re particularly proud in the class of 2024 . . .99.1% are employed, a military commissioned officer, or in a graduate program [of] their choice.”
But Florida Southern exists in an incredibly competitive higher education market. “Out-of-state tuition at our state schools is lower than the in-state tuition at a number of other states in the country,” Jewell points out, “So we’re one of the very few systems where enrollment and applications are actually increasing.”
The College Board’s Trends in College Pricing and Student Aid ranks Florida as one of the lowest cost in-state and out-of-state tuition rates in the country. These lower tuition rates draw in students from across the country, meaning that smaller private colleges like Florida Southern have to compete with larger schools. “I think we have sort of a sweet spot, a Goldilocks spot, almost in higher education,” Martin emphasized, “where we’re never going to be the massive, give me your ID number anytime you talk to someone because they don’t know who your name is. We’re gonna be a human scale institution. The strength of Florida Southern when competing with schools like UCF, USF, and UT is the smaller, more intimate size, of Florida Southern.”
Jewell emphasized the need for small schools to set themselves apart to compete with these larger schools “If I were a consultant to administrators of small private schools right now, I would be encouraging them to be asking what is distinctive about you?”
For Florida Southern, Martin points out, what makes it unique is its location in a growing yet comfortable city like Lakeland and its Frank Lloyd Wright heritage that brings it over a hundred thousand visitors every year. He expresses we should always be aware of trends, “. . . but we should also always be leveraging the advantages we have to best serve students to prepare them for the careers that allow them to say, ‘I got a great education at Florida Southern.’”
