Shuttering Universities Around the World: Space and Place Lost in Higher Education

• In Event: Beyond the Ivory Tower: Urbanism and Higher Education

Proposal

After decades of global expansion, higher education sectors around the world have seen retractions through austerity to programs or even closures of universities. In Europe, political pressures have forced institutions to shutter or make massive cuts, such as the closure of Central European University in Hungary. In East Asia, Japan and South Korea have been struggling with growth in recent years due to oversaturation and low birth rates. South Korea has taken steps to close underperforming universities, while Japan has already seen a dozen institutions shuttered recently. The trend of closing universities is most acute in the US, where roughly one college closes each week.

Much of the highly cited academic literature on closed or closing colleges comes from quantitative studies (Kelchen, 2020; 2025; Burns et al., 2023). While this quantitative work helps to contextualize why colleges closed, qualitative research provides nuances into the human experiences of the closures. The geography of this type of research has also been mostly limited to the US or UK (Leaney & Mwale, 2021).

The purpose of this study was to understand the experiences of closed colleges in terms of urbanism of campuses and surrounding communities. Furthermore, the study highlights which countries and sectors have been experiencing closed or closing universities through media reports, taking note of location type and rationale. For the ethnographic data, the researcher visited 49 closed or closing university campuses in the US, interviewing leaders, community members, and other stakeholders.
Four key questions arose from the findings of the ethnographic exploration in the US:

Can the mission continue?
What will happen to the campus?
How to maintain community connections?
Who will memorialize the history?

In some cases, such as Upsala College or Pittsburgh Tech, the missions simply disappeared forever. But other institutions found salvation through a merger or acquisition, such as Mills College and Northeastern. Although even with these kinds of partnerships, it means losing some identity. Other campus spaces lived on as K-12 institutions, still educating students, like Medaille University in Buffalo, NY. Others survive by becoming charitable organizations, such as Montecito College that became a foundation that funds women's education in the St. Louis region. In extreme cases, old campuses get completely bulldozed, like Coleman University in San Diego. Usually, parts of the campuses can find new adaptive reuse, such as Trinity Lutheran College becoming the Funko HQ Store. However, each of these cases is highly contextualized, with rural spaces being more difficult to find a new use. There are cases where closed colleges get stuck in limbo for years, festering the local surrounding community.

Globally, higher education is more than just human capitalistic metrics like enrollment rates and degree conferrals. Instead, higher education is itself culture, customs, and communities. When universities close, the areas around them also suffer a loss known as de-studentification. More universities around the world will face closure due to the global Demographic Cliff and other societal difficulties. Future researchers in CIES should consider qualitative studies on closures as they hit sectors across the world.

Author

• Ryan Allen, Soka University of America