Moody’s Investors Service upgraded the outlook for the higher education sector, overall, in 2015, increasing it from negative to stable for the first time in two years. But with its change came a caveat: that regional public universities and small private colleges will continue to struggle.
Moody’s expects the number of closures and mergers in higher ed to triple and double, respectively, by 2017. In the decade from 2004 to 2014, about five four-year nonprofit public or private colleges closed each year and two to three of them merged.
