Colleges have been a lifeline for small towns. What happens when they shrink?

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For decades, higher education institutions provided steady, well-paid jobs in small towns where the industrial base was declining. But the tide of young people graduating from high school is now also beginning to recede, creating a stark new reality for colleges and universities – and the communities that have grown up around them.

With Americans having fewer children and a smaller proportion of young adults pursuing college degrees, the once-fast growing market for college slots has kicked in the opposite direction. Though undergraduate enrollment somewhat stabilized in 2022it is still down about 7.6 percent since 2019.

“It looks like going forward, the number of young people likely to go to college is decreasing, even in growing areas like the Mountain West,” said Nathan Grawe, an economics professor at Carleton College in Minnesota who studies the demand for post-secondary education. “We’ll start with some tough stories.”

Evidence of a shrinking student population is all over the western neighborhood of Clarion, home to 3,880 residents, which has taken immense pride in Clarion University’s gracious campus since the institution was founded as a seminary 156 years ago.

Since 2009, when it had 7,346 students, the university has shrunk by almost half. With the drop in enrollment, nearly 200 staff members have been lost, mainly due to turnover. Last year, the school even lost its name when it merged with two of the 13 other universities in the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education, creating a multi-campus university called PennWest.

Tracy Becker, who overlooks Main Street from her wide desk in the city’s chamber of commerce, says there aren’t as many young volunteers for community events like the annual Autumn Leaf Festival, held on Homecoming weekend since 1953.

Kaitlyn Nevel’s cafe used to be mostly staffed with university students; now she has such an employee. As foot traffic decreased, she branched out into catering. “Ideally, I’d like the university to stay and thrive, but you just have to try to have as many back-up plans,” said Ms. Nevel.

As Ms. Nevel’s resigned optimism suggests, declining enrollment doesn’t necessarily spell doom for college towns. Despite the lower number of students, there are few empty storefronts that mar Clarion’s downtown area. It even has attracted new companies such as Mechanistic Brewing, which Chelsea Alexander started with her husband in 2019 after returning from Washington, D.C.

Mrs. Alexander is one of 28 people in her family who attend the local university. Since 1905, her family has run a clothing store in town, selling a line of T-shirts that trade alumni’s nostalgia for favorite eateries that have long since closed and for towering dormitories that have been demolished. But as graduating classes get smaller, even alumni visits will decrease.

The father of Mrs. Alexander, Jim Crooks, runs the shop and he has organized local merchants to brighten up the compact high street and market their businesses to potential visitors who may not have much of a connection to the town.

“For years, the university has housed many of the businesses,” says Mr. Crooks, who has also converted four apartments above the store from student housing to Airbnb accommodations. “Everyone just says, ‘We can’t depend on the university.'”

Although Pennsylvania’s university system had been shrinking along with the rest of higher education for a decade, it experienced a sudden jolt when students disappeared during the pandemic. Among those who took notice: the leaders of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, whose territories in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware higher density from colleges and universities than most.

Along with major hospital systems, often affiliated with universities, educational institutions make up a significant portion of local economies that used to be dominated by manufacturing, logging, and mining. Patrick T. Harker, the president of the Philadelphia Fed, wanted to know how big that share was, as the education and medical sectors also began to show cracks.

“Traditionally, ‘eds and drugs’ have been seen as recession-proof,” said Dr. Harker. “This pandemic has shown that this is not true.”

However, not all of those settings are equally vulnerable. Rural hospitals are drying up as major healthcare chains build new facilities in fast-growing suburbs, as the dwindling population of students flocks to the state’s flagships. “They’re stronger than ever, while the regional systems are really struggling,” said Deborah Diamond, an economic development expert at the Philadelphia Fed.

Dr. Diamond compile a resource which showed how much different regions depended on health care and higher education. The places at the top of the dependency list were predictable, such as the Durham-Chapel Hill area of ​​North Carolina, which had two major universities. But they also include smaller areas, such as those around Bloomsburg, Pa., two and a half hours east of Clarion on Interstate 80. There, institutions such as Geisinger Health and Bloomsburg University — another state school — make up 21.9 percent of the local employment and 18.3 percent of regional income.

“As we’ve seen some declines in industry employment, their economic relevance is greater than ever before,” said Fred Gaffney, the president of the area’s chamber of commerce.

A similar set of factors is evident in Clarion County, where the university is located still the largest employer, followed by Clarion Hospital. Walmart comes next, and then a few factories that make building materials and prefabricated homes, various community organizations, and the county government. The county used to have more production, including a large glass factory that closed in 2010. As it declined, so did the county’s population; its working population dropped to 16,000 in 2022, from about 21,000 in 2008.

During the same period, Clarion University’s enrollment began to decline, like state funding, increasing the entrance fee. In 2021, Daniel Greenstein, the chancellor of the state higher education system, proposed forming two clusters of three schools each to consolidate operations and offer more classes on campuses.

“We had to align our costs with our new enrollment numbers,” said Dr. Greenstein in an interview. “We were built as if we still had 120,000 students when we had 85,000. You just can’t. Like any American family, you have to live within your means.

At the same time, Mr. Greenstein asked for more money from the state legislature to enable the system to freeze tuition and offer more scholarships, which he said was critical to halting the decline in enrollment. The state increased the base funding of the system by 15 percent by 2022 and threw in $125 million from a federal stimulus. The freshman class grew slightly last fall, but not enough to offset another overall drop in enrollment.

For the merged schools, swooning enrollment underestimates the extent to which student presence on campus has faded. To strengthen their course catalogs, the schools are offering more of their classes online. Because of this, some students can only show up in person a few days a week — a trend that may accelerate as the system pursues more mature students, some of whom just need to earn a degree or complete shorter certificate programs.

Clarion Mayor Jennifer Fulmer Vinson – also a Clarion graduate – sees that as a loss to the municipality. History lessons are less frequent at her antique shop, which is located in a centuries-old house reclaimed from a long-gone fraternity, brimming with curios, including an old Coke machine and a cabinet full of war medals.

“Why do students come to pay to live on campus if they never leave their room?” said Mrs. Vinson. “It’s become more of a ghost town.” (The university says the first-year student experience should be campus-oriented, and most courses will remain in-person.)

About an hour’s drive west on Interstate 80 from Bloomsburg, the town of Lock Haven also has a university that merged last year with two others in the state-owned state. With the school downsizing and well-paid staff leaving, the state’s substantial tax-exempt land holdings are beginning to hurt local residents.

Gregory Wilson, the city manager, has produced a handout showing what the average property owner pays in taxes to subsidize Lock Haven University: $186 a year.

“I think the hope has always been that the investment they make to have the university here is somehow returned to them,” said Mr. Wilson. “But that becomes harder to sell as the university gets smaller.”

The downsizing comes along with another recent and unwelcome development: The local hospital, which bought the sprawling University of Pittsburgh Medical Center in 2017, announced in January it would close its inpatient operations, forcing residents to wait at least half an hour. travel for serious care.

It was all deeply frustrating to Angela Harding, a Clinton County Commissioner, who says that while she values ​​the hospital and the university, it’s getting harder to attract new residents to Lock Haven as those economic anchors lose their grip.

“I’m tired of having to fight for every crumb we get,” Ms Harding said.

Colleges and the cities they occupy can do little about demographic trends. But they should reinforce each other, experts say. For example, the university can provide space for community functions and small business support, while the city can host events for prospective students and their parents. Vacant student residences can be converted into homes for new residents who may be able to work remotely or want a quiet place to retire.

Matthew Wagner, the director of programs for Main Street America, a group dedicated to developing small town centers, says he sees less tension in the city now that municipalities and schools understand their shared fate.

“Like a manufacturer facing headwinds, we should view the university as a retention program for economic development and direct our assets and resources in that direction,” said Dr. Wagner.

Lock Haven has taken that idea to heart. The main street is lively, with several new boutiques interspersed with old local restaurants. Fabre Sanders, whose father runs a window decoration shop, returned from Boston a few years ago to start a candy and gift shop. During the pandemic, she said, residents did everything they could to keep the stores alive.

“They looked around and said, ‘If we don’t support the locals that we have, we have nothing,'” Ms Sanders said.

Audio produced by Parin Behrooz.