What Syracuse's Struggles Say About Higher Education

A university that has long seen itself as a national heavyweight is finding that self-image harder to sustain. The Wall Street Journal reports that Syracuse University is wrestling with an enrollment slide that has left it with a 1.5% budget gap this year. Reporters Douglas Belkin and Roshan Fernandez detail a tangle of problems: a drop in international students after a Trump-era visa crackdown; a weaker sports profile; and tuition—total annual cost is now close to $100,000—that has left it struggling to compete with cheaper public schools in the Sunbelt. That it's located in a snowy and "geographically isolated" city puts it at a disadvantage compared to rivals like BU, Northeastern, and NYU.

Though Belkin and Fernandez dig into Syracuse's problems specifically—including how a decision to offer some accepted students hefty merit-aid offers after the May 1 decision day, angering families who had already accepted and gotten smaller offers—they also look at what those troubles say generally. "The problems that have long buffeted the nation's smaller schools are now spreading to the nation's bigger, richer universities," they write, "with midsize private schools such as Syracuse especially feeling the pinch." Read the full article here.