Bloomberg Surveillance · Monday, July 20, 2026
While state universities and top-tier Ivy League schools are performing well, the higher education sector is facing pressure, particularly from smaller liberal arts colleges. These institutions, with student populations around 1,000-2,000, are struggling to attract applicants from a shrinking pool.
“Yeah, it's very much a focus area for us. I hesitate to say we're staying away from it because, as I mentioned, there's a lot of issuers, there's a lot of universities, So it comes down to can you pick the right ones. State universities. I think they're doing just fine. The top tier Triple A Ivy's also doing just fine despite some of the political pressure. Where we're seeing pressure is think of it as a smaller maybe liberal arts school somewhere around one thousand, two thousand kids, and they're having a tough time drawing those applicants in from a smaller applicant pool.”