Michael Horn warns that U.S. universities face a demographic cliff and loss of online master's program revenue. With 23 million available seats but only 15 million students enrolled, he predicts consolidation and enrollment drops over the next 10-15 years.
We see that there's a demographic cliff. Every single university thinks that they're going to grow into this market. Their growth I think was frankly going to be on online master's degrees, targeted adult learners. That market is now done I think with the one big beautiful bill act like that's not free money anymore. And so I don't see how any of these institutions frankly grow. They might be lucky to hold on to market share if they're lucky. But most of them are going to lose enrollment I think in the next 10, 15 years and so a bunch of them are going to consolidate. Like it's just just you know, we we have something like 8 million excess seats as it is in higher ed over what the demand is like. I think we have enough seats for like 23 million kids and we have about 15 million students enrolled. That's like that's not going to work. Those numbers.
