Colleges Grapple With Grim Financial Realities: Net-tuition losses and steep discount rates augur a precarious spring

[...]there were the financial hits from canceling fall athletics, buying personal protective equipment for faculty and staff members, and retrofitting buildings for spread-out classes. (Colleges in Republican-controlled states were also more likely to lose money on athletics.) Among doctoral institutions that have NCAA football, 61 percent experienced a decline in athletics revenue, while only 36 percent of doctoral institutions that do not have football lost revenue. [...]says John Barnshaw, vice president for research and data science at Ad Astra, the survey confirms some assumptions about the pressures colleges are facing and indicates that institutions with size, prestige, and higher graduation rates — qualities that provided “preservative effects” in the crisis — will pull away from smaller, poorer institutions. (By way of comparison, tuition discounts for first-time, full-time freshmen at private nonprofit institutions surpassed 50 percent only in the last three years.) Private colleges were also more likely to raise the price of tuition this year.