Higher Ed Age of Conquest, Deleted Bluesky, & More

Around the College Towns: Links and commentary related to urbanism and higher ed for the week of March 2 - March 9.

Note: Around the College Town is my weekly links roundup article on urbanism and education. These posts mostly cover news that may have fallen through the cracks rather than the big events.

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Recognizing the Age of Conquest

In September 2025, I labeled the recent era of American higher education as the “Age of Conquest.” The thesis was simple: the biggest schools are growing, while the smaller schools are fading. The piece has been drawing a bit more attention lately.

In February, it was featured in The Atlantic article “The Harvard of the South … Of the West?” by Rose Horowitch. I talked with Rose about the conception, history, and logic behind the Age of Conquest. I was happy to have offered my expertise and insight. Our conversations became the meat of that piece:

The population of American 18-year-olds is expected to peak this year, followed by a precipitous decline. Stokes’s consulting firm has identified nearly 400 private colleges that are at risk of closure in the next five to 10 years. Everyone’s jockeying to be in the best position on the other side of the crisis. ‘For institutions like Northeastern and Vanderbilt, taking advantage of this weakening and precarity that certain institutions are experiencing, that creates an opportunity for them to get real estate,’ he said. Small colleges in major cities or Sun Belt states, which have seen a population boom, are valuable sites for branch campuses. Aoun said that at least one college asks to be acquired by Northeastern each week. Ryan Allen, an education professor at Soka University of America, calls it higher education’s “Age of Conquest”: The big schools will get bigger, and the smaller schools will be absorbed. Soon, high-school seniors who get accepted into a top college might start having to answer a question that their parents never did: ‘Which location?’

The full article is worth a read.

That citation in The Atlantic prompted The Chronicle of Higher Education to reach out to me, soliciting an updated version of the Age of Conquest. Again, I was happy to oblige, and the piece was published there under the headline “Welcome to Academe’s Age of Cutthroat Competition.”

While I prefer my original title, I did appreciate the editorial guidance. I write free and loose here on Substack, so being reined in was both awkward and appreciated. One of the directions the Chronicle asked me to go was with an additional postscript. They wanted me to flesh out a theory of mind on the Age of Conquest. To be honest, I struggled with that reflection, as I am still working through all of my thoughts on the phenomenon (it will be a good portion of the final chapter in my future book on closed colleges).

The “Conquest” label is more of a description of what is happening rather than a value judgment. I actually do not fault singular universities for chasing these kinds of tactics. I don’t want to pile on the Vanderbilts or Northeastern. My thinking on this is that these conditions are not just about universities, but the entire US broadly. Higher ed is merely wrapped up in this American culture:

As costs and competition spike, many sectors, not just higher education, have grappled with their own versions of an age of conquest. We can see it in the news of a looming Paramount-Warner Bros. merger, in complaints that movies are now mostly just superheroes and sequels, and even in charges that restaurants across the country taste the same due to an industrywide reliance on one mega-provider. The boutique, novel, quirky, or technology-resistant firm, studio, or college struggles when confronted with onslaughts of efficiency and mandates for rapacious growth.

So I appreciate the Chronicle making me think more on these issues. Although, the timing of publishing wasn’t great. First, it ended up getting posted on a Friday. My first Friday News dump ever! (just kidding, only happenstance). Second, I was a little worried about publishing the piece on metaphorical “conquest” the very same week the United States started a global war with Iran. Perhaps it was a little gauche on my part. Nonetheless, the piece went up.

One of my favorite responses came from Carol Keese, Vice President for University Communications and Chief Marketing Officer at the University of Oregon. She offered a nice metaphor, calling it Moneyball’s Lessons for Higher Ed. She quotes from the baseball book and film, “The problem is that there are rich teams and there are poor teams… It’s an unfair game. If we think like the Yankees in here, we will lose to the Yankees out there.”

Keese’s reminder is a good one that it is not all doom and gloom. Of course, I also don’t mind paralleling myself with Billy Beane/ Brad Pitt either. Hedging my “Conquest” label, I ended the post-script with, “Or perhaps I just played too much Civilization II as a kid.” But the Chronicle cut that line. I’m glad they did. Seeing College Towns picked up by traditional media and shared with peers in the sector is affirmation for the work we are doing here. Even if I did, indeed, play too much Civ II as a kid.

Links I’m Reading This Week

Education

• The mission to Mars may run through Texas A&M, as the university sets to open a $200 million space institute.

• More higher ed space news, here are the universities with the most moonwalkers:

  • Army - 2

  • Georgia Tech - 1

  • Michigan - 2

  • Navy - 3

  • Purdue - 2

  • Texas - 1

  • USC - 1

• Huston-Tillotson University in Austin, Texas, is trying “drone-delivered tiny homes” to help with its student housing crunch. These seem a bit more emergency rather than a solution, though. I’d love to review them one day.

  

• Narragansett debate change to town law on housing. Right now, it is illegal for more than 3 students to live in one house there. Crazy.

• Is the collective youth loneliness crisis just an individual choice? One young writer claims so.

• George Washington is selling its satellite campus. It’s going to become an Amazon Data Center. Tough fate for a dead campus.

• Wash U in Saint Louis has acquired another nearby struggling college. This is after last year adding the Fontbonne campus.

• Canadian universities are struggling due to caps on international students.

• A fellow academic made a free tabletop RPG that centers on AI in academia. Who wants to print one out and do a run?

Urbanism-ish

• Bert Kreischer discusses "The High Cost of Free Parking" with Pete Holmes (35-minute mark). The comedian famously studied abroad, too. I’d love to interview him here on College Towns one day. Thanks Daryl Fairweather, PhD for spotting it.

• Chinese younger generations are finding cheap housing in the so-called zombie developments. The aesthetics are terrible but cheap housing is better than none.

• One rail enthusiast thinks DMU will save America. Cool project.

• Mark R. Brown, AICP, CNU at Car Free America has notes from an autonomous transit workshop.

• Chris Arnade, the walking master himself, posted an honest assessment of public disorder in the US that limits so many aspects of good urbanism.

• Favorite urbanist development, Culdesac Tempe, was featured on The Daily Show. Cheesy, but pretty good.

Closing Time… Deleted Bluesky

My Bluesky experiment is over. I recently deleted my account on the social network after roughly a year and some change. In the end, the network effect just never really materialized. Even the CEO is stepping down, and fans of the social media are concerned:

“Venture capitalist” is very concerning. That’s the enshittification occupation.

Well Bluesky was fun while it lasted. Ugh

Indeed, I recommend having a second account on Mastodon. And posting on both. Just in case..

There are still good people over on Bluesky. I know there are thriving academic and urbanist circles active there. But they are just smaller and more niche than what I was hoping when I first joined. There may just never be another Internet Town Square like what Twitter used to be.

That being said, I am still on X now. Funny enough, I lost my Blue paid account there (one gifted to me by a reader) and the experience actually improved. I have been getting more engagement and seeing more interesting posts, not just rage bait. Even though I agree Elon Musk largely ruined a good thing, I simply prefer the chaotic weirdness of X to the manicured suburban lawn of Bluesky.

I agree with the comparison of the two sites by British comedian Alistair Green, which made me laugh, too. He posted, “This is how I feel about Twitter vs Bluesky:”

What do you think? Are you still on Bluesky or X? You can follow my full journey looking for the next Internet Town Square below. I call this the College Towns - Twitter Chronicles. See below: