Key Points
- At least eight U.S. nonprofit colleges have announced they will cease operations in 2026.
- Six notable mergers or acquisitions are in active transition right now as well, with the trend appearing to accelerate.
- Huron Consulting projects nearly a quarter of the country's roughly 1,700 private nonprofit four-year institutions could close or merge within the next decade.
Anna Maria College's closure announcement last week brought the 2026 U.S. nonprofit college shutdown count to eight. The 80-year-old institution in Paxton, Massachusetts said its Board of Trustees could no longer project the financial resources to sustain academic operations past the spring 2026 semester. This decision came less than two weeks after the Massachusetts Department of Higher Education formally flagged the college as a closure risk.
Anna Maria's announcement came the same day workers at Hampshire College (which announced its own permanent closure on April 14) launched a relief fund ahead of June layoffs. Together, the two Massachusetts institutions underscored the accelerating pressure on small, tuition-dependent liberal arts colleges in the Northeast.
Since the summer of 2025, a steady cadence of small-college shutdowns and high-profile mergers have reshaped parts of American higher education.
A parallel trend has emerged: a growing number of schools are choosing merger or acquisition instead of winding down.
What follows is a running tracker of both, based on institutional press releases and verified reporting as of April 24, 2026.
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2026 College Closure List
Eight institutions have either ceased operations in 2026 or announced they will do so before year-end. Three Massachusetts colleges (Labouré, Hampshire, and Anna Maria) are among them, and four of the eight announced in a window between around early February 2026:
- Siena Heights University (Adrian, MI) — announced June 30, 2025; closing at the end of the 2025–26 academic year.
- Trinity Christian College (Palos Heights, IL) — announced November 4, 2025; final commencement May 8, 2026.
- Sterling College (Craftsbury Common, VT) — announced November 13, 2025; final commencement May 16, 2026.
- Providence Christian College (Pasadena, CA) — announced February 7, 2026; closing at end of 2025–26 academic year.
- Lourdes University (Sylvania, OH) — announced February 11, 2026; closing at end of spring 2026 semester.
- Labouré College of Healthcare (Milton, MA) — announced February 2026; operations ceasing August 31, 2026.
- Hampshire College (Amherst, MA) — announced April 14, 2026; closing at the end of fall 2026.
- Anna Maria College (Paxton, MA) — announced April 23, 2026; ceasing academic operations at the end of spring 2026, with full wind-down by year-end.
Sixteen nonprofit colleges closed in 2025. Since March 2020, roughly 48 public or private nonprofit institutions have closed or announced planned closures, affecting an estimated 52,600 students, according to tracking by Higher Ed Dive and BestColleges.
The 2026 list shares several common threads. Enrollment declines of 30% to 70% over the last decade appear in nearly every case. Every closing school relied heavily on net tuition revenue, and several lost federal grant funding heading into fiscal 2026.
Providence Christian cited the end of its Hispanic-serving institution grant (roughly $600,000 annually) as a factor its $25,322 endowment could not absorb. Lourdes University reported that the Sisters of St. Francis could no longer subsidize operations at the level required to keep the 68-year-old institution afloat.
Labouré, a nursing-focused institution in Milton, will transition programs to nearby Curry College. Anna Maria's FY2025 audit carried a “going concern” qualification from its auditors that triggered new federal financial aid restrictions, a warning sign that preceded its closure decision by just weeks.
Mergers Are Growing As Well
Alongside outright closures, a wave of mergers and acquisitions has picked up momentum. Mergers tend to draw less public attention because they often preserve the campus name or mission under a larger institution's umbrella, but the financial logic behind them is frequently identical.
Six mergers currently in process:
- Ursuline College (OH) → Gannon University (PA) — Letter of Intent September 16, 2024; definitive agreement January 2, 2025. Change of control took effect June 30, 2025, with full merger targeted for December 15, 2026.
- New Jersey City University → Kean University (NJ) — definitive agreement October 1, 2025; Gov. Phil Murphy signed enabling legislation January 13, 2026. Full merger effective July 1, 2026, with $25 million in state transition funding. The Jersey City campus will operate as “Kean Jersey City.”
- Rosemont College (PA) → Villanova University (PA) — announced March 31, 2025. Rosemont continues awarding its own degrees through 2028 before the campus becomes “Villanova University, Rosemont Campus.”
- Cornish College of the Arts (WA) → Seattle University (WA) — definitive agreement March 14, 2025; transaction closed May 31, 2025.
- Queens University of Charlotte (NC) → Elon University (NC) — intent announced September 16, 2025; definitive agreement December 18, 2025. SACSCOC approval anticipated June 2026.
- East Georgia State College → Georgia Southern University (GA) — Board of Regents final approval December 2025; consolidation effective January 1, 2026.
What This Means For Students And Families
A closure or merger announcement should set off warning bells for currently enrolled or prospective students. Federal rules preserve the option of a closed school discharge for federal student loans if borrowers cannot transfer and complete a comparable program elsewhere, but the window is short. The U.S. Department of Education generally requires withdrawal within 120 days of the official closure date to qualify. Students who accept a teach-out transfer forfeit the discharge.
Most 2026 closing schools have lined up teach-out partners to help students complete their degrees. Providence Christian is working with Biola, Concordia, and The Master's University. Lourdes has partnered with the University of Toledo, which has committed to admitting Lourdes students in good standing into aligned programs. Labouré's nursing programs will transition to Curry College. Trinity Christian has teach-out agreements with Saint Xavier, Calvin, and Olivet Nazarene universities.
Credit transfer is typically honored, but families should confirm program-level articulation, since specialized credits in nursing, education, or the arts do not always map cleanly to a receiving institution's degree requirements.
Financial aid also resets. A teach-out student's federal aid package is rebuilt at the new institution based on its cost of attendance and state aid portability varies. Families in states with significant tuition grant programs (Pennsylvania's PHEAA, New Jersey's TAG, California's Cal Grant) should verify eligibility before committing to a transfer.
For prospective students, the pattern is a reminder that financial health needs to be a part of your due-diligence checklist before committing.
Useful indicators published through the Department of Education's College Scorecard include full-time equivalent enrollment trends , graduation rates, transfers, and more. Under the federal financial responsibility framework, schools with enrollment declining more than 25% over five years, tuition discount rates above 55%, or a CFI below 1.0 tend to face elevated closure risk.
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