The Buildings Are Trying to Tell Us Something

The New York Times reported this week what anyone near a school already knows: public school enrollment has dropped in 30 states. The biggest factor is simple — fewer children. The U.S. fertility rate peaked in 2007 and has fallen 24% since. Add school choice, homeschooling, charter schools, virtual learning, housing costs pushing families out of cities, and a crackdown on immigration that had been quietly buoying enrollment numbers, and you get a picture that isn't going to reverse itself.

NYC alone is projected to lose 153,000 students by 2035. Los Angeles, Chicago, and dozens of smaller districts are shrinking at similar rates. West Virginia has lost 13.6% of its K-12 students. Mississippi, 12%. New Hampshire, 11%.

But here's the thing nobody's saying: this isn't just a K-12 problem. This is the same demographic cliff that's been closing colleges for the past five years — and it's now hitting the pipeline that feeds them. Fewer kids in kindergarten today means fewer freshmen in 2038. The wave is only getting bigger.

The Buildings Know

If you drive through Pittsburgh, you'll see what happens when schools close. Some of the most beautiful condos in the city were once public schools — high ceilings, original chalkboards still mounted in the living rooms, gymnasium windows flooding loft apartments with light. They're gorgeous. They're also a monument to a community asset that was sold to a developer instead of reimagined for the people who live there.

The same thing is starting to happen with college campuses. Pittsburgh Technical College — 180 acres in Oakdale, professional kitchens, trades buildings, 461 dorm beds — closed in 2024 and is listed for sale. Penn State is closing seven campuses by 2027. Hampshire College, Fontbonne University, Siena Heights, Lourdes, Northland, Trinity Christian — the list grows every month.

Most of these campuses will follow the same path as those Pittsburgh schools: sold, converted, condos. The community loses its gathering space, its cultural anchor, its workforce pipeline. A developer gets a good deal on square footage. Everybody moves on.

Or They Don't Have to

Here's what I keep thinking about: what if we stopped waiting for the grim reaper to show up at the board meeting? What if a campus with a year or two of runway left started planning a transformation instead of being forced into irrelevance — or worse, condos?

A closing campus doesn't have to be an ending. With planning — real planning, not the kind where you hire a consultant to produce a report nobody reads — a campus can become something bigger than it ever was as a college. A workforce training center for the trades and certifications employers are begging for. A community learning hub serving everyone from teenagers to retirees. A small-business incubator. A K-12 outdoor education center. An event venue. A health clinic. A gathering place.

Not a college. Something better. Something that serves 15,000 people a year instead of 1,500 students. Something that doesn't depend on 18-year-olds choosing your school over a hundred others. Something that's flexible and agile enough to move with the times instead of fighting them.

The Window Is Now

The campuses that act while they still have runway — while the staff is still there, while the buildings are still maintained, while the community still identifies with the place — those are the ones that get to write a different ending. The ones that wait until the last board meeting, the final press release, the "thank you for 100 years of service" — those become condos.

I've seen it happen too many times. I taught for 25 years at a university where enrollment declined every single year I was there. The conversation was always about survival — how to recruit more students, how to cut more costs, how to stretch the endowment one more year. Nobody ever said: "What if we became something else? Something the community actually needs more than another small college?"

That's what we're building.

At Transform Learning, we've put together a team — educators, business developers, community builders, data analysts, operations leaders — distributed across the country, all focused on one thing: helping campuses plan and execute the transition from struggling college to thriving community asset. We call it Campus Transformation, and we've built the tools, the process, the financial models, and the case studies to show exactly how it works.

A clear path to a new beginning. Community learning. Workforce development. Year-round programming for all ages. Flexible, agile, built to move with the times instead of against them.

The buildings are trying to tell us something. The enrollment numbers are trying to tell us something. The question is whether we listen while there's still time to act — or wait until the only option left is condos.

Jeff Ritter, PhD, is the founder of Campus Transformation at Transform Learning. He spent 25 years as a professor and now helps boards and communities reimagine what their campuses can become.