“The cuts mean more than just savings, or even job losses. Often, they create turmoil for students who chose a campus because of certain degree programmes and then wrote checks or signed up for student loans,” the report noted.

For years, many colleges held off making cuts, Larry Lee, who was acting president of St Cloud State but left last month to lead Blackburn College in Illinois, was quoted saying.

College enrolment declined during the pandemic, but officials hoped the figures would recover to pre-Covid levels and had used federal relief money to prop up their budgets in the meantime, he said.

“They were holding on, holding on,” Lee said, noting colleges must now face the new reality.

Higher education made up some ground last fall and in the spring semester, largely as community college enrolment began to rebound, National Student Clearinghouse Research Centre data showed.

The trend for four-year colleges remains worrisome. Even without growing concerns about the cost of college and the long-term burden of student debt, the pool of young adults is shrinking, the report noted.