Another small college, Hodges University, will close

Hodges University, a small private nonprofit college in Florida, announced late Friday that it would stop enrolling students and close by the end of this academic year.

In a news release and a message to students on its home page, Hodges officials said that “due to financial challenges and declining enrollment numbers, we can no longer provide the quality educational programs that we have provided over the past 33 years.” 

The college in Fort Myers, Fla., which was founded in 1990 as International College but renamed after a private gift in 2007, had 443 students enrolled in 2022, according to the Education Department’s National Center for Education Statistics. It offered credentials ranging from certificates to master’s degrees.

Consultants and others who work with colleges on their finances have been predicting that numerous small colleges may announce closures late this summer and early in the fall as fall 2023 enrollment data come in.

The combination of suppressed enrollments, the expiration of federal recovery dollars that buttressed institutional budgets during the pandemic, and higher costs due to inflation may be too much for institutions on the edge, they’ve warned.