Higher education has room to serve more people. Preserving that opportunity will require strategic choices about what each institution offers—and what they can offer collaboratively.
A healthy tree does not grow by keeping every branch. In an environment of finite sunlight, water, and nutrients, unchecked growth can weaken the whole. Thoughtful pruning directs resources toward the branches most likely to flourish.
Similarly, higher education can’t continue adding programs and instructional capacity as though enrollment will return to the growth trajectory it once knew.
A new EY-Parthenon report commissioned by Lumina Foundation shows the cumulative result: instructional capacity has continued to grow even as enrollment has stagnated or declined. Considering that this comes at a time of federal disinvestment, declining numbers of high school graduates, and existential questions about the purpose and value of higher education, this pattern is unsustainable.
With more capacity than current enrollment supports, and millions of students still to serve, higher ed must realign that capacity by pruning selectively, collaborating to protect access, and growing where students and communities need it most.
Higher education can’t count on growth
Higher education enrollment grew continuously for more than 50 years, peaking during the Great Recession. Since then, full-time-equivalent student enrollment (FTE) has steadily declined for more than a decade. Although enrollment has rebounded somewhat in recent years, EY-Parthenon projects an annual decline of 0.3 percent in the next 10 years. Instructional staffing, meanwhile, has moved in the opposite direction, growing at an average rate of 1.2 percent annually for about a decade, with growth projected to continue for the next 10 years. The pattern varies by state, institution, and sector, but broadly, enrollment (which drives tuition revenue and impacts public funding) is declining while instructional staffing, a significant institutional expense, continues to increase. The mismatch will create growing financial pressure unless state and institutional leaders respond.
Prune strategically, grow deliberately
It’s not an either/or debate between steady expansion or across-the-board cuts. Colleges and universities must make room for new priorities, collaborate to preserve access, and reach more of the people higher education has historically underserved.
Addressing this structural challenge will require deliberate conversations between state and institutional leaders that consider institutional missions, community identities, student interests, and a state’s long-term talent needs. Pruning should not only mean eliminating entire programs. It could mean consolidating low-enrollment offerings, sharing faculty or courses across institutions, maintaining programs critical to state or institutional missions, or, when necessary, phasing out programs that no longer serve a clear purpose.
This work does not come naturally. Research on an “addition bias” in problem-solving finds that people tend to look first for improvements that add something and often overlook solutions that subtract. Institutions behave similarly. It is easier to announce a new program than to close an old one; easier to hire around a new priority than to redirect existing capacity. This moment, however, calls for a balanced and thoughtful approach that includes both additive and subtractive strategies.
Protect access through collaboration
Part of the solution is stronger partnerships. Institutions can make more disciplined portfolio choices when states and systems help preserve breadth through deeper collaboration.
That could mean shared academic programs, cross-registration, common online course exchanges, jointly appointed faculty, regional centers, coordinated transfer and teach-out pathways, or shared administrative services. By sharpening institutional focus around centers of excellence while strengthening collaboration, states can maintain critical infrastructure that supports prosperity for students and the state. When done well, collaboration can lower the overall cost base, protect student access, and allow institutions to invest more confidently in areas of distinctive strength.
Use the capacity we have
Pruning is only half the strategy. Available capacity is also an asset. The country still has communities with low college-going rates, adults with some college but no credential, workers who need to reskill, labor shortages in critical fields like healthcare, and large attainment gaps by race, income, and geography. Lumina’s goal for the country—by 2040, 75 percent of adults in the U.S. labor force will have college degrees or other credentials of value leading to economic prosperity—cannot be reached by shrinking our way there.
Institutions should grow enrollment where there is unmet need and where programs deliver real value to students. That means improving college-going, retention, and completion; expanding flexible pathways for adults; and leveraging existing capacity to meet regional talent needs. Some states may be able to improve utilization primarily through growth. Many will need to grow and prune at the same time.
Act while there is still room to maneuver
The fiscal context makes delay increasingly risky. Per-student state support for public higher education declined last fiscal year for the first time in 12 years. Meanwhile, federal policy changes affecting Medicaid and student aid are placing additional pressure on state budgets. Higher education should not assume that recent funding patterns will continue.
Institutions make decisions within their own governance structures and incentives. But only state and system leaders can see the full landscape: where programs are duplicated, where essential offerings are missing, where students face geographic or transfer barriers, and where collaboration would create value that no institution can realize alone.
That is why the moment for state leadership is now. Before declining utilization becomes an institutional crisis, states can establish a common view of instructional capacity and program demand; create regular, transparent portfolio review processes; align funding and program-approval incentives; support academic and administrative partnerships; and protect access during transitions. The objective is not centralized micromanagement. It is strategic stewardship of a statewide asset.
Hard choices do not get easier when they are deferred. In a crisis, leaders lose options: programs close abruptly, students are displaced, faculty and staff absorb the shock, and communities experience decisions as abandonment. Acting earlier creates time to phase changes, build partnerships, redirect faculty expertise, engage affected communities, and invest in what should grow.
There is still time to shape the future deliberately. Institutions can realign programs and resources around mission, student value, and workforce need. They can partner to preserve access to a broad range of opportunities. And they can grow by reaching people who higher education has not yet served well.
Healthy systems, like healthy trees, are not defined by unchecked growth. They are defined by the ability to direct limited resources toward the branches that can carry the future.