The headline on this Inside Higher Education piece seemed prophetic: “What Led Concordia Portland to Close?”

The date, however, was the Feb. 14, 2020. In other words, this story broke just ahead of the national wave of headlines about colleges and universities struggling to deal with scary economic realities linked to the coronavirus crisis.

This story was linked to the OTHER life-and-death crisis facing higher education — especially private schools and, to be even more specific, faith-based private schools. I’m talking about the demographic cliff that looms just down the road when the massive millennial generation has moved past its college years.

The Concordia Portland story had it all. Administrators had tried to grow their way out of the crisis, adding on degree programs and remote campuses that were not linked to their original mission. There was a strange deal with a third-party recruiting agency. Finally, there were theological tensions with the school’s doctrinally conservative denomination — the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. This chunk of the story begins during an era when enrollments were headed up:

By all accounts, Concordia was massively successful. … Total enrollment more than doubled from over 3,000 students in 2012 to more than 7,400 in 2014, according to federal data. Much of that growth was among graduate students, where enrollment spiked from about 1,700 students to more than 6,000. Enrollment of adults aged 25 to 64 went from about 1,100 in 2011 to 3,697 in 2014.

Fast-forward several years to this week, and Concordia shocked the Portland area and many of its own students by announcing that it will close at the end of the spring semester. A statement from the institution said the university’s board decided to close after “years of mounting financial challenges” and a changing landscape for education.

Hold that thought. I am headed toward this weekend’s think piece from a former GetReligionista, Steve Rabey, writing at MinistryWatch.com.

Now, I took on some of these themes in an “On Religion” column the other day entitled “Concerning the coronavirus crisis and these Darwinian days in faith-based higher education.”