Bowling Green State and a shrinking college-age population: Bloomberg on the enrollment cliff
A short report on fewer students and high fixed costs drew around 300,000 views in its first fourteen hours, and a comment section full of tuition bills and student loans.
Bloomberg TelevisionStory of Why this story? The video opened at a pace of 396,336 views a day, 37 times a normal first day on this channel (10,820).
Inside the Enrollment Cliff Hitting US Colleges
Bloomberg Television spends most of its days on rate decisions, elections and earnings, and on Sunday its most watched new upload was a story about college campuses.
"Inside the Enrollment Cliff Hitting US Colleges" looks at a simple squeeze: America's college-age population is getting smaller, while universities carry costs that do not shrink with it. The report holds up Bowling Green State in Ohio as one school trying to adapt, with career-focused programs and an effort to stand out, and points to institutions that have not adapted and now face cuts, closures and the knock-on damage to the towns built around them. The tags name Harvard University and David Westin, the Bloomberg anchor who once ran ABC News.
Around 300,000 people watched it within fourteen hours, a pace this channel's new videos rarely come near. The comments moved even faster: hundreds arrived in those hours, where a usual first day here brings a handful. Most of them are not about birth rates at all. Viewers write about tuition that has climbed for decades, administrative payrolls, student loans and degrees that do not promise a job. A few say an interview from Harvard misses the point, since elite schools are the least exposed, and some feel the piece leans too warmly on Bowling Green. One former student writes that their small Montana college has already announced a large tuition cut.
The same weekend show also had a busy clip on Donald Trump's midterm campaign, but the campus story drew far more.
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What viewers say
Maybe universities should reconsider the last 25 years of exponentially increasing tuition prices.
@RedShipsofSpainAgainSee it on YouTubeTurns out starting out 60k in debt at the start of your adult life isn't what people want. Especially when a degree doesn't guarantee a good job.
@nicholasgutierrez9940See it on YouTubeThe college I went to (Carroll College in Helena, MT) saw the writing on the wall and have already slashed tution fees 40%- that will start in 2027
@BBQburntends2024See it on YouTube
Public comments from the video's page on YouTube
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- Channel
- Bloomberg Television
- Subscribers
- 3,300,000 ▲ 10,000 this week
- Channel views, last 7 days
- 10,244,976
- Channel views, pace per day
- 1,400,207 (on a normal day: 1,282,399)
- Video published
- October 4, 2026
- Video views so far
- 302,559 (less than a day online)
- Video views, pace per day
- 396,336
The numbers
For a channel that lives on market news, a first day like this one is far outside the usual.
💡 Test your knowledge
Before joining Bloomberg, David Westin served as president of which TV news division?
David Westin led ABC News from 1997 to 2006 before becoming a Bloomberg anchor.
