As the article details, it hasn't just begun, it's been underway for years already.  Part of it is simple demographics, the falling birthrate started back in the 90s, so that translates to fewer college age students each year now.  Many other reasons though, not the least of which is that for many students, a college degree didn't lead to a high paying career, it merely began their working life with a big pile of debt.

In fact in many ways the expansion of universities in the 60s was a failed experiment right from the beginning and just served to devalue the sheepskin and lower the quality of the degree.  For prpfit schools in the business of putting warm bodies in the classroom seats accepted many students thoroughly unprepared for college level work.

The top public and private universities will survive a while longer, although the Trumpenator is making their lives difficult too and their operations will shrink in size.  University education will once again be available mainly to the elite and a few statistical outliers, bright bulbs that periodically turn up among the poor.  Of course now if they're immigrant kids, they'll probably get deported.

The great collapse of US higher education has begun

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2025/4/24/the-great-collapse-of-us-higher-education-has-begun

RE