Can a school shrink its way to success?

“I like to say that I’ve never seen a college shrink its way to greatness, and that’s true. But just because I haven’t seen it doesn’t mean that it hasn’t happened,” writes Matt Reed. The author notes that while some schools have been able to navigate a planned contraction with success, “the more common case involves sustained incremental cutting and watering-down.” Once the process of cutting has begun, writes Reed, “the decline tends to outpace the incremental cuts, and the college has to resort to layoffs.” Reed maintains that layoffs lead to decreased quality in an ongoing cycle. The author ends the piece with a call to peers for examples of transferable solutions for the problem of institutional decline. Inside Higher Ed