American higher education has entered a new cold war, a long twilight struggle defined not by weapons of war but by enrollment, prestige, athletics and institutional survival. Nowhere is the front line more visible than in Appalachia. In a region where small colleges have long served as economic anchors, cultural institutions and engines of mobility, the escalating rivalry for enrollment, prestige and survival threatens to do what past economic shocks could not: destabilize the very communities that depend on these institutions most. Appalachia — already shaped by uneven investment and decades of structural transition — now faces the risk of collateral damage in a national struggle it cannot escape. The question is no longer whether this cold war exists, but whether policymakers will act in time to ensure that Appalachian students and institutions are not left behind.
In February 2018, a Wall Street Journal article titled “U.S. Colleges Are Separating Into Winners and Losers,” contrasted Clemson University’s ascent with Concord University’s struggle to maintain enrollment in a shrinking Appalachian demographic pool. Eight years later, the article reads less like journalism and more like an early intelligence briefing. The forces it described have intensified, and the structural pressures on most regional and small private institutions have multiplied.
George Orwell, writing in 1945, used the term “cold war” to describe a world locked into permanent rivalry — states “unconquerable and in a permanent state of ‘cold war’ with their neighbours.” That is the posture of American higher education today: institutions that cannot conquer one another, yet cannot escape the competition that defines their existence.
I was reminded of Orwell’s insight during a visit to Croatia, where conversations with citizens about the Yugoslav era revealed a lesson policymakers should not ignore. The Cold War, for all its dangers, imposed external stabilizing pressures. Both the United States and the Soviet Union had mutual interests in Yugoslavia’s stability, ensuring it remained a buffer state. That meant financial support, political attention and a kind of enforced equilibrium. When the Cold War ended, external support dissipated. Yugoslavia’s internal divisions, once held in check by global superpower rivalry, suddenly had no counterweight. The result was fragmentation.
Higher education is experiencing a similar unraveling. For decades, demographic growth, broad public investment and bipartisan belief in the value of a college degree acted as stabilizers. Even institutions with modest resources could count on a steady stream of students and predictable support. But those stabilizers have vanished. The “demographic cliff” has arrived. Public skepticism has hardened. And the competition for students has intensified to the point of existential threat.
The NIL era has accelerated this divide among the larger institutions. Name, Image and Likeness has become the higher-ed equivalent of an arms race. Wealthy institutions with deep donor pools can assemble powerful collectives that attract top athletes, who in turn drive enrollment, visibility and revenue. Smaller institutions cannot match the pace. Athletics, once a point of pride, has become a proxy for institutional strength. The cold war logic intensifies: the strong grow stronger, the vulnerable grow more vulnerable, and the middle thins out.
If policymakers want to prevent a Yugoslavia-style fragmentation of the higher-education landscape, they must rebuild the stabilizing forces that once held the system together. That requires more than nostalgia. It requires structural reform.
States must rethink how they approach higher education. Regional and small private institutions cannot grow their way out of decline. They need funding models that recognize mission, geography and the economic role they play in rural communities. Without that, the cold war will produce casualties. Alderson Broaddus University in West Virginia is a harbinger of what is coming, shuttering in 2023 even though its history pointed otherwise — it was the first college in the state to offer a four-year nursing degree and the first in America to offer a baccalaureate program for physician assistants.
One example of a stabilizing force was plainly pointed out by Roanoke College President Frank Shushok in a Richmond Times-Dispatch op-ed last year, noting that Virginia’s Tuition Assistance Grant remains one of the state’s most effective tools for expanding access and strengthening the entire higher-education ecosystem. By supporting students rather than institutions, TAG creates stability for private institutions and demonstrates how targeted state policy can reinforce the very stabilizing forces that are now eroding nationwide. It is the kind of policy that keeps a system from splintering under pressure.
Another stabilizing model emerged this year when the Virginia General Assembly authorized an exploration between George Mason University and Averett University. In a moment when many states are watching institutions falter, Virginia instead chose to study whether a public-private partnership could strengthen regional access, expand program offerings and create a more resilient institutional footprint in Southside. The exploration does not assume merger or acquisition; rather, it reflects a recognition that collaboration — when supported by state policy — can be a strategic counterweight to demographic decline. It is precisely the kind of forward-leaning, structural intervention that other states should be watching.
Institutions must rethink duplication. In a world of permanent competition, every campus tries to be everything. That is unsustainable. States should encourage regional compacts that align academic programs, share back-office operations, and coordinate recruitment rather than cannibalize it. Collaboration is not a sign of weakness; it is the only rational response to demographic scarcity. In 2016, the Virginia Community College System — made up of 23 colleges — became an early adopter of this alignment when it opened the Shared Services Center in Botetourt County to handle routine administrative transactions.
Moreover, and most importantly, higher education must reclaim its public mission. The Cold War in higher education is fueled by the belief that institutions are competitors first and civic institutions second. That mindset is corrosive. Colleges and universities — especially regional and small private institutions — are economic engines, cultural anchors and pathways to mobility especially in Appalachia. Policymakers must treat them as such.
But structural reform must also include a renewed commitment to recruiting and educating students in Appalachia itself. The region is not an enrollment desert — it is an under-engaged talent reservoir. States should encourage partnerships with institutions in across Appalachia to create shared academic pathways, dual-enrollment pipelines with high schools, and cross-state program compacts that reflect the region’s economic and cultural realities rather than its political boundaries.
Appalachia offers natural laboratories for innovation. For instance, the New River Gorge National Park — America’s newest national park — presents robust opportunities for collaborative programs in many disciplines, including outdoor recreation management, environmental science, conservation, hospitality and rural economic development. A coordinated effort among institutions in Virginia and West Virginia could turn the Gorge into a multi-state educational corridor, where students move seamlessly between campuses, field sites, and applied-learning environments.
The lesson from Croatia is clear: systems collapse when stabilizing forces disappear without anything to replace them. The lesson from Orwell is equally clear: permanent rivalry produces permanent insecurity. And the lesson for higher education is that the cold war will not end on its own. It will end only when policymakers and institutions choose stability over escalation. If we fail to act, the map of higher education in Appalachia will continue to fracture. If we succeed, we can build a system resilient enough to meet the demands of the century ahead.
Steve Capaldo is a former longtime attorney for Virginia Tech, a professor of practice at Roanoke College, and an attorney in West Virginia.
