Closed Universities
Since 2016, dozens of private universities have shut their doors permanently, often without much warning to students, faculty, or their surrounding communities. This interactive map visually documents the scope of this crisis, showing the geographic distribution and escalation of closures over time. Each pin represents a private university that has closed, color-coded by year to illustrate how closures have accelerated—especially following the COVID-19 pandemic and amid mounting financial pressures.
What makes this map more than a retrospective is its purpose: to help predict the future.
This project performs a kind of “university postmortem,” analyzing the characteristics of schools that have already failed—factors like financial instability, poor market position, and academic inefficiencies. These insights are being used to develop a predictive model that estimates which private institutions may be at risk in the coming years.
By identifying patterns in these closures, we aim to equip university leaders, policymakers, and students with data-driven warnings, and ideally, with strategies to avoid becoming another pin on the map.
Closed Private Universities (2016–2023)
This interactive map visualizes the geographic spread of private university closures across the U.S. since 2016. The color of each pin corresponds to the year of closure—darker colors indicate more recent shutdowns. Use this map to explore the growing impact of the higher education crisis.