Higher Education in Freefall — And Athletic Departments Are Feeling Every Tremor

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ATHLETIC ENTREPRENEUR
The Newsletter for the Business-Minded Sports Professional

FROM THE EDITOR

If you think the crisis hitting college athletic departments exists in isolation, think again. The institutions housing those departments — America’s colleges and universities — are experiencing one of the most alarming waves of closures, layoffs, and restructurings in modern history. And what happens to the institution happens to the athletic department. Every time a campus shuts down, a coaching staff loses jobs. Every time a university slashes its budget, athletics is one of the first places administrators look. You cannot understand the future of college sports without understanding what is happening to higher education right now. This is urgent. This is happening now. And it is accelerating.

THE NUMBERS YOU NEED TO KNOW

Higher education shed more than 9,000 jobs across 2025 alone. That figure, tracked by Inside Higher Ed, is openly acknowledged as an undercount because many personnel actions go unreported.

At least 16 colleges closed entirely in 2025. That followed 14 closures in 2023 and 28 in 2024. Over the past eight years, more than 100 American colleges have closed or merged.

A Federal Reserve study predicted 80 college closures over the next five years — roughly 16 per year. We are on pace to exceed that.

These are not just numbers. Every closure means coaches without jobs, student-athletes without programs, and communities without institutions that have anchored them for generations.

THE THREE FORCES DRIVING THE CRISIS

Force One: Federal Funding Is Being Gutted

The Trump administration terminated more than 1,100 NIH research grants in 2025, directly hitting universities that depend on federal research dollars to fund operations, staff salaries, and academic programs. The proposed cuts to NIH for fiscal year 2026 total $18 billion. Universities like Northwestern faced a $790 million federal funding freeze. The ripple effect into athletics is direct — when a university loses hundreds of millions in federal support, every department on campus is asked to cut, and athletic departments are rarely spared.

Force Two: Enrollment Is Collapsing

Between 2010 and 2021, the number of students at American higher learning institutions dropped by 15 percent. That trend is not reversing. A demographic cliff is now arriving — a projected 15 percent drop in college-age students beginning with the graduating class of 2026, lasting until approximately 2041. Some states will be hit far harder than others. Illinois is projected to see a 32 percent drop in high school graduates between 2023 and 2041. Fewer students means less tuition revenue. Less tuition revenue means budget cuts across every department, including athletics. Temple University alone lost approximately 10,000 students since 2017, creating a $200 million hole in its revenue.

Force Three: Closures and Restructurings Are Accelerating

Penn State voted to close seven of its commonwealth campuses by spring 2027, affecting more than 520 full-time employees. The University of Southern California laid off 974 employees by October 2025 — the single largest higher education layoff count of the academic year. Duke cut 599 positions. Stanford eliminated 363. Washington University in St. Louis cut 514. Michigan State eliminated 182. These are not small regional schools struggling in obscurity. These are flagship research universities making cuts at a scale that would have been unthinkable five years ago.

Martin University, Indiana’s only predominantly Black institution of higher learning, closed entirely. California College of the Arts is closing. At least 15 nonprofit colleges and universities shut down in 2025 alone.

Even the wealthiest schools are not immune. Yale announced budget cuts citing a new endowment tax, with its provost warning that layoffs may be necessary. Northeastern University trimmed jobs across the institution with little to no warning to staff.

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WHAT THIS MEANS FOR ATHLETIC DEPARTMENTS SPECIFICALLY

When a university is in financial distress, athletic departments face pressure from two directions simultaneously. First, the institution demands that athletics reduce its own budget as part of campus-wide cuts. Second, the revenue streams that athletic departments rely on — student fees, alumni donations, and institutional subsidies — all shrink when the university itself is struggling.

More than 415 collegiate sports programs have been cut, merged, or reclassified since May 2024. Swimming programs, tennis programs, wrestling programs, and track and field teams are disappearing at a pace that has alarmed Olympic development officials across the country.

The University of Oklahoma cut 5 percent of its athletic department staff. Indiana University eliminated 25 athletic department positions. Sonoma State shut down its entire athletics program — all 11 varsity sports — as part of emergency budget cuts driven by a 38 percent enrollment decline.

This is the environment athletic entrepreneurs, coaches, administrators, and student-athletes are operating in. The ground is shifting beneath every program in America.

THE QUESTION NOBODY IS ASKING LOUDLY ENOUGH

Here is what keeps analysts up at night. The institutions most at risk are not the ones making headlines today. They are the mid-size regional universities and small private colleges that quietly serve hundreds of thousands of student-athletes in non-revenue sports. When those schools close or gut their programs, those athletes do not transfer to Power Five schools. They simply stop competing.

The pipeline for Olympic sports, for coaches entering the profession, for athletic administrators building careers — all of it runs through the full ecosystem of American higher education. When that ecosystem contracts, the damage reaches further than most people in college sports are willing to admit.

READ MORE ON GSIP

We go deeper on the athletic department side of this crisis — the House v. NCAA settlement, the specific layoffs hitting coaching and support staffs, and which sports are most at risk — in our full analysis on the GSIP blog.

https://gsip.pro/blog/college-athletics-in-crisis

This is the context that story lives inside. The two pieces together tell the full picture.

FINAL WORD

The crisis in American higher education is not a background story. It is the central story for anyone who works in, invests in, or cares about college athletics. Institutions are closing. Budgets are being slashed. Federal support is shrinking. The demographic pipeline is narrowing. And the institutions that survive this period will look very different from the ones we knew.

Athletic entrepreneurs need to be paying attention. The opportunities and the risks are both enormous. We will keep tracking this closely.

Until next issue,
The Athletic Entrepreneur Editorial Team

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Authors Note:

Yesterday was a 400 push-up day, with another 200 squats layered in between work blocks.

Plan is simple: match it today. Same workload, same output.

Logged 18 hours of screen time yesterday—today will likely mirror it. 

Hope you’re getting it in.

Anywhere. Anytime.