Last year, nearly 20 colleges went out of business and this year a dozen more are in trouble.

This couldn’t happen to a nicer group of people: Both Moody’s and Standard and Poor’s have issued negative assessments of the overall financial condition of higher education.

The National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO) and the Commonfund also issued an annual report on college endowments, based on data from 657 schools with nearly a trillion dollars in assets.

Despite the strong stock market, universities are spending endowment funds to cover expenses at a much higher rate, up 11 percent from the previous year. Chickens are coming home to roost. Major irate donors have been reducing or eliminating expected financial commitments.\

The Trump Administration has also started imposing big fines on schools that have ignored laws, Supreme Court decisions or regulations prohibiting DEI-style racial, gender or religious discrimination – such as permitting sometimes violent anti-Semitic campus demonstrations.

Here’s a list of some of the small east coast liberal arts colleges that are facing financial troubles:

American International

Connecticut

Lesley

Roger Williams

Assumption

Curry

Merrimack

Sacred Heart

Babson

Emerson

Middlebury

Saint Anselm

Bates

Emmanuel

Mount Holyoke

Saint Michaels

Bay Path

Endicott

New England College

Salve Regina

Bentley

Fairfield

Norwich

Springfield

Bryant

Gordon

Our Lady of the Elms

Stonehill

Champlain

Holy Cross

Providence

Suffolk

Clark

Husson

Quinnipiac

Trinity

Colby

Johnson & Wales

RISD

University of New England

Colby Sawyer

Lasell

Our view is that it wouldn’t be such a terrible thing if some of these schools went out of business and then maybe the rest would actually start to concentrate on giving kids a return on their $200,000 or more investment.