Ricardo Azziz has held numerous executive positions in higher education and led the merger that resulted in Georgia Regents University, now Augusta University. He is principal at Strategic Partnerships in Higher Education, or SPH, Consulting Group.
He writes the regular Merger Watch opinion series on corporate restructuring in higher education.
The challenges small colleges are facing are sizable.
U.S. college enrollment is down from its peak around 2011. And while enrollment has declined across nearly all categories of colleges based on size, the loss has been especially dramatic for the very small institutions, meaning those with fewer than 1,000 students.
The only size-based category that has experienced growth has been institutions with more than 30,000 students. Enrollment at these very large institutions has increased by 23.9%, representing roughly 924,000 additional students between 2011 and 2021, the most recent year for which federal data is available.
What explains students flocking to larger institutions?
Some anecdotal reports suggest the political climate is driving students to seek a more intimate, less fractious, and more like-minded environment, such as they may find in smaller, often faith-based, colleges. However, this does not align with overall enrollment trends. My colleagues and I have hypothesized that many younger individuals want to be involved in the national dialogue and, consequently, are choosing larger institutions where a more diverse discourse may be happening.
Yet our recent survey findings suggest that while the political climate does influence college selection, it isn’t majorly impacting the size of institution students want to attend.
In a July 2025 online poll of nearly 1,500 prospective students, 58% of respondents felt that the political climate influenced their decision about where and when to apply to a moderate, very high or extremely high degree.
Political climate is influencing most students on their choice of college
Despite this, only 6% of respondents said the political climate strongly influenced them to prefer applying to a larger institution, while 5% said the same of smaller institutions. Another 47% said that the political climate “slightly” influenced their interest in either attending larger or smaller institutions. And 43% said the political climate did not impact the size of institution they were interested in applying to.
The Center for Higher Education Mergers and Acquisitions at the Foundation for Research and Education Excellence, a think tank I founded and where I serve as executive director, conducted this survey in collaboration with Hanover Research. Respondents were prospective undergraduate and graduate students who expressed interest in enrolling in a college or university within the next two years, were between the ages of 16-55, and were equally distributed across the major regions of the U.S.
The survey found modest differences about whether the political climate impacted the size of institution students sought depending on their locations and other factors. Among prospective students in the Northeast, 9% felt that the political climate strongly influenced their preference for larger institutions, compared to 3% of those in the South and 4% in the West.
Of respondents considering graduate school, 8% felt the political climate strongly influenced them to apply to a larger institution, compared to 4% of traditional undergraduate candidates and 5% nontraditional undergraduate candidates, which include those who aren’t in high school and didn’t recently graduate from high school
In turn, 23% of respondents who already obtained a professional degree and 18% who obtained a doctoral degree said the political climate strongly encouraged them to apply to a larger college, compared to 4%-8% students who had completed less education.
This data highlights that the political climate is impacting prospective students’ choice of where to apply, a finding also underscored by a recent EAB survey.
However, it doesn’t suggest that politics are driving most students to very large institutions — other factors are.
Those motivators could be intrinsic to these larger colleges, such as a higher number of academic opportunities, greater nationally recognized sports, more financial support, and so on.
Consequently, small institutions should not put their hopes into a change in the political climate when they consider how to address their enrollment challenges. While changing politics may play a role in federal and state funding for higher education, and in the state of the campus environment, it will not necessarily stop the migration of students to very large institutions.
Hence, smaller colleges need to continue to strategically consider their options for the future:
- Identify and leverage a unique educational niche with limited competition — a lane that is increasingly harder to find.
- Consider how to remain sustainable at a smaller size — a potential death spiral.
- Close in a thoughtful and deliberate manner — a path few choose, but many institutions might need to plan for.
- Strive to form or become part of a larger institution — through mergers, consolidations, consortia and the like.
Regardless of the strategy and tactic chosen, at the rate the pressures on the sector are rising, it’s better to start planning sooner rather than later.
