Notre Dame College of Ohio admin building
When Ohio Dominican University missed a bond payment in March, a national problem arrived on central Ohio's doorstep. The Columbus school, which saw enrollment fall 15% from 2021 to 2025, says it isn't discussing closing and is working to cut costs. We hope it succeeds. But a missed bond payment is the kind of warning that used to belong to faraway campuses, and it doesn't anymore.
The reckoning is well underway around the state. Lourdes University near Toledo will close this year after its enrollment fell by almost half in a decade; Notre Dame College in South Euclid shut down in 2024; Ursuline College in Pepper Pike avoided that fate only by merging with Pennsylvania's Gannon University; and even Kenyon has trimmed its faculty.
No single president is to blame. The number of American 18-year-olds is set to fall 13% by 2041, the bill coming due for a baby bust that began after 2008, and the share of graduates heading straight to college has already slid from 70% to 62%. Small, tuition-dependent colleges without deep endowments feel it first. One projection puts 442 private nonprofit colleges nationwide, enrolling 670,000 students, at risk of closing or merging within 10 years.
It isn't only an Ohio story, or only a small-college one. Syracuse University, a private research school of 22,000 students sitting on a $2.3 billion endowment, told faculty in June it will miss its fall enrollment target and run its first budget deficit in years, with its chancellor calling enrollment volatility the "new normal" even for strong, well-resourced schools. West Virginia University, a public flagship, cut 28 programs and 140 faculty positions in 2023 to close a $45 million hole. When schools of that size are shedding staff, the strain on Ohio's smaller campuses looks less like a run of local failures and more like the front edge of something national.
Ohio families should take the lesson plainly. A name on a glossy brochure is no longer a promise that the school will still be there at graduation. Before committing four years and tens of thousands of dollars, ask the unglamorous questions a school's marketing won't volunteer: how many students are actually enrolling, how much cash the place has on hand, and how much debt is riding on the books.
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