Inside Colorado College’s Ed Robson Arena, hundreds of high school seniors from Massachusetts to Marin County circle the ice, forming clusters around shared interests and mutual connections. Between bites, parents lower their forks and admissions ambassadors relax their smiles, watching each admitted student’s name blaze across the jumbotron in gold letters.
The crowded arena, however, tells a misleading story. Enrollment has been below target at Colorado College the last few years, forcing the school to recruit students earlier and closer to home to fill its freshman class.
“It means there’s a bit of an arms race,” said Dan Johnson, professor of economics at Colorado College. “Both on quality of engagement enrichments, but also in terms of financial aid.”
Colorado College, like its small liberal arts peers, faces mounting headwinds; a shrinking number of high school applicants and a cultural moment in which the value of a college education—particularly one in the liberal arts—is being questioned by young people, experts, the media and the federal government. These forces pose a particular threat to CC, which relies more heavily on tuition and has a smaller endowment than many of its peer institutions.
Partially due to underenrollment, CC raised tuition 3.72% for the 2026-27 academic year, to $93,590 from $90,230. Tuition is also set to increase 5% at Pomona College, 4.5% at Middlebury and 3.9% at Carleton, according to Forbes.
Unlike these schools, however, Colorado College is 65% tuition dependent, meaning that nearly two-thirds of its operating budget relies on how much its students can pay. Williams College has a similar dependency figure, but recently increased its endowment to almost $3.5 billion in the 2024 fiscal year, according to its student newspaper.
Although Williams’ tuition dependency is not publicly available, its endowment, which surpasses Colorado College’s by almost $2 billion, indicates that CC has less of a buffer against future challenges than peer institutions.
“There’s some strategic work that goes on behind the scenes when you’re making offers of admission,” said Lori Seager, CC’s VP of Finance. The school is need-aware, meaning it weighs financial circumstances in admissions decisions while meeting 100% of demonstrated need once a student is admitted, making “net tuition projections an important part of building a sustainable business model.”
CC students are among the wealthiest in the country, a business model that’s “not intentional,” but on the other hand, “is not accidental” either, said Johnson.
The business model, according to Johnson, is partly a “strategic choice.” If CC were to augment the cost of tuition by investing in real estate, trademarks and patents, like Harvard, Stanford and Princeton do, schools that are less than 5% tuition dependent, according to Johnson, it would change the integrity of the school.
“We don’t want to be a research powerhouse,” said Johnson, because that would require professors like himself “to invent the next thing that could be patented.”
But what happens when there are fewer conversations to go around?
Beginning this year, and in the years following, higher education faces a crisis: not enough college applicants. Figures from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control show that the U.S. birth rate has been declining since 2008, other than a slight one-year rise in 2021.
A report released in December by the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE) says that the number of college-eligible 18-year-olds nationwide will fall by 13% by 2041.
While much of higher education braces for this demographic cliff, Tony Cabasco, CC’s vice president for enrollment, pushes back on the panic. “It’s not a cliff,” he says. “It’s a dip.”
Whether it be a ‘cliff’ or a ‘dip,’ the drop has had real consequences. CC has underenrolled the classes of ‘28 and ‘29, putting a squeeze on the institution’s finances. Cost-cutting has made the situation bearable—for now.
“We have been working hard to balance those budgets by spending less in certain areas and believe we will end the academic year with a positive financial result,” said Seager.
Attitudes around higher education are also changing, putting additional pressure on schools like CC. Seven out of 10 Americans say the higher education system in the United States is generally “going in the wrong direction,” up from the five in 10 who said so in 2020, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.
“It’s not a good return on investment,” said Hillary Dickman, senior assistant director of admission marketing and communications. “When you’re competing both with the actual shrinking demographics and then also the changing cultural narrative that college isn’t worth the time or money, then your numbers are shrinking even more.”
However, CC’s status as the only liberal arts college in the Mountain West and Four Corners may position the college to thrive despite these changes. Students also learn on the Block Plan, a distinctive academic structure where students focus on one class at a time for three-and-a-half weeks.
“If you are going to put CC on your list, you’re already somewhat different from the normal kid,” said Cabasco.
Lately, an application to CC is becoming a less reliable indicator that they will decide to enroll if they get in.
“[We] have more applications, not more students,” which means “there’s more unpredictability and volatility,” Cabasco said.
Students, according to Seager, are increasingly “pulling the trigger wherever they think they might be remotely interested.”
Trinh Bui Nguyen, a Colorado College freshman from Vietnam, says she “didn’t know anything about CC,” and added that it was the last school that she applied to. Nguyen applied to 13 other schools, while her friend from high school applied to at least 30.
Looking at CC’s data from this year’s Common App, the highest recurring incident statistically is 20 applications, which is the maximum allowed on the Common App.
“That’s 4% of our applicants who submitted 20 applications,” said Cabasco.
In the face of changing demographics and the rising cost of college, CC is refining its recruitment strategy. The school aims to differentiate itself from a host of competitors. One advantage is the Block Plan. CC has long relied on the abnormal style of learning to appeal to students.
But there are signs that the Block Plan alone isn’t enough. According to Johanna Blickenstaff, CC’s vice president of marketing and communications, the school is making an intentional effort to up its marketing efforts.
“It’s a moment to be really clear on those differentiators, and to be able to calmly and confidently respond when someone does say, ‘What is the value of a CC education?’” said Blickenstaff, when asked how CC responds to rising skepticism surrounding the value of higher education. “Prior to this refresh, we didn’t really have a succinct, repeatable response to that.”
Blickenstaff says CC is making a concerted effort to get onto the radar of high school students before they begin the application process. It is also trying to recruit more from the four corners area, as well as the Southwest, one of the only areas in the U.S. seeing growth in the number of college applicants.
To attract these students, the College is reframing the Block Plan around outcomes rather than structure. Career Catalyst Blocks and experiences with visiting professors, says Blickenstaff, are “really only possible because we have the 3.5-week model.”
The environment of higher education is changing. Colleges should—and are—strategically approaching the political, economic and demographic challenges ahead.
Founded 152 years ago at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, Colorado College has weathered two world wars, the space race, the computer era and now the advent of artificial intelligence. Its leaders say the College is committed to changing with the times.
“We’re on the right path,” said Blickenstaff. “We’re not late to it.”