Inside College Mergers: Stories from the Front Lines. Mark La Branche, ed. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2024. 176 pp. Hardcover, $44.95, (978-1421448602)

Over the last several years, professionals in academia have grimly witnessed a growing number of colleges and universities across the United States close as casualties of the enrollment cliff and of other strong headwinds disrupting higher education. In the last two years, this sobering trend has escalated at an alarming rate. For 2023, approximately two colleges per month announced closure or consolidation with another institution. This past spring, that average climbed to one a week. During this age of contraction, institutions of higher education (especially small private colleges) must be flexible, proactive, innovative, and bold if they hope to avoid becoming another shuttered statistic. In this timely anthology, administrators of several private, nonprofit colleges document their respective institutions’ journeys that culminated in mergers or creative partnerships with other colleges or universities and impart practical lessons learned from those experiences.