About the report
Behind The State of Higher Education
About this report · by Jeffrey Selingo
For nearly 60 years, higher education had one answer to almost every strategic question: get bigger. Add academic programs and schools, research labs, campuses, athletic teams, international students, and online degrees. Comprehensive was the aspiration; the sector spent six decades pursuing it. That era is ending.
One in seven colleges lost money cumulatively over the past decade. International graduate enrollment fell 12% in fall 2025. Access to government-backed student loans is tightening, and so, too, are federal grants. The familiar engines of growth are weakening just as institutions need them most in an uncertain era in which technology is threatening to reshape the very meaning of a college degree. The economist Carlota Perez has described technological revolutions as periods of disruption followed by the possibility of broader prosperity. The question is where we sit in that cycle. Are today’s anxieties just the turbulence before a “golden age,” when the benefits of technology spread more widely? Or is AI beginning another cycle of disruption, with new models of education challenging established institutions and their economics? We cannot yet know. Either possibility calls into question the assumptions on which universities have built their strategies for decades.
The challenge for leaders is that these risks arrive together and compound. Declining numbers of high school graduates intensify enrollment competition. Geopolitical shifts can drain tuition revenue and the supply of graduate researchers at once. AI is reshaping entry-level work while campuses are still debating how students should use it. A decision in one area can deepen exposure in another.
This is enterprise risk, and it demands a view across the entire institution. Presidents and trustees need to test the assumptions behind enrollment projections, research ambitions, and spending commitments. They need to see the connections before they show up in annual budgets and decisions about which programs to close. Waiting for each threat to become a crisis leaves fewer choices and less money to make them.
Getting smaller or more focused (to even grow) need not mean decline or reduced ambitions. But it requires a decision that decades of growth allowed many campuses to postpone: where to play, and where to win. Not every institution can be comprehensive. Choosing where to concentrate resources, which students to serve, and when to partner will define the next era of higher education. This report examines six areas, from the business model and federal policy to research, AI, athletics, and governance. Its purpose is to help leaders distinguish what is temporary from what is structural, see around the corner, and act while they still have room to shape their institutions’ future.
Jeff Selingo — Author. Jeffrey Selingo is a higher education author and strategist who has written three New York Times bestselling books. His book Who Gets In & Why: A Year Inside College Admissions (2020) was named among the 100 Notable Books of the year by The New York Times; his latest is Dream School: Finding the College That's Right for You. A regular contributor to The Atlantic and The New York Times, Jeff is a special advisor for innovation and professor of practice at Arizona State University, where he founded the ASU-Georgetown University Academy for Innovative Higher Education Leadership. He also writes the Next newsletter — more at jeffselingo.com.
Acknowledgements. Thank you to my Future U. podcast co-host, Michael B. Horn, for his assistance and contributions to this report, and our conversations on the podcast, where many of the topics in this report first took shape. Learn more and subscribe at futureupodcast.com.
This paper was funded by Google Cloud and Google for Education. The author retained absolute editorial control. The views and analysis in this report are the responsibility of the author alone.
© 2026 Academic Intelligence. This work is licensed for educational and non-commercial use with attribution. Cite as: "The State of Higher Education, 2026 / jeffselingo.com". For permission beyond these uses, contact next@jeffselingo.com.
