This Thin Slice of Academe Educates 1 in 5 Undergrads

Just this year, more than a dozen colleges have either shut down or announced that closure is nigh. Many of them share a common trait: enrollment of around 1,000 students or less.

On the other end of the spectrum are tiny colleges’ populous counterparts. Their student bodies, some the size of small cities, usually but don’t always offer some key advantages to maintaining fiscal stability.

For one, they’re able to take advantage of economies of scale, and with diversified revenue sources, they aren’t heavily reliant on tuition dollars. Plus, nearly all of them have the kinds of reputations that translate into hefty applicant pools every year.

Of course there are big colleges, and then there are big colleges. According to a Chronicle analysis of federal data, 102 public and private four-year, degree-granting colleges had at least 20,000 undergraduates in the fall of 2022. The largest of the group was Southern New Hampshire University, the online-education behemoth, with 140,865 undergraduates.

Just over half of the colleges in this group had undergraduate enrollment between 20,000 and 30,000 students. The total enrollment for all 102 institutions in the fall of 2022 was 3.3 million students, or about 20 percent of the nation’s total undergraduate enrollment.

Most of the big colleges, of course, were public research institutions. However, seven private institutions — including New York University and the University of Southern California — were among the ranks.

What else does the data tell us about these large institutions? Let’s take a look:

Note: This analysis looks at public and private four-year, degree-granting institutions in the United States that were eligible to participate in Title IV federal financial-aid programs, enrolled at least 20,000 undergraduates in the fall of 2022, and had a Carnegie classification of baccalaureate, master’s, or doctoral.