In today's challenging environment, is it better to be a public or a private institution?

Of course, the answer has got to be "It all depends."

If you are located in Illinois, it stinks to be with a public university.  The University of Illinois is surviving on emergency finding.   The governor signed an emergency funding measure back in April.  The measure was a response to the legislative deadlock that has persisted at least since January.

But if you are a private university, a state such as New Jersey may stink for you...
unless you are Princeton, which is in a class by itself in the Garden State.  For the remaining dozen or so private colleges and universities, Rowan University's stated goal of growing from 15,000 to 25,000 students in the next few years means the privates will have to find 10,000 students somewhere else.  The billion dollars in capital development funds for the likes of Montclair and Rutgers and TCNJ mean that those state schools' campuses continue to grow more dazzling year by year, while many privates struggle to address deferred maintenance issues.

So, as with the convenience food store business that I was in some 25 years ago, it comes down to location, location and location.  And, as I learned when I was a partner at Krauser's Food Stores, then the Garden State's largest chain, it depends on who else is in your neighborhood.   When a WaWa located within a couple of blocks of one of our stores, our store was done for.  We just couldn't compete with Wawa's look, feel, size and service.  And the same may be true for New Jersey's private colleges, which by and large depend on attracting students from a relatively modest geographic radius.

Once again, it's all about geography.  In one state it stinks to be a public institution, in another it's a bummer to be a private college.  In other words, the Fifth Wave will wash over different geographic regions with differing force and effects.  Like the Tsunami or tornado that takes one building and leaves another unscathed, the Fifth Wave in American higher education will not have the same devastating impact on all members of one or another sector of high ed, but will pick and choose its victims from all sectors... public and private, non- and for-profit.