Climate Change 101: This college campus may be literally underwater sooner than you think

Stockton University’s Atlantic City campus may be treading water—literally and figuratively. Built in 2018 on a stretch of reclaimed land in the South Inlet neighborhood, the coastal satellite of Stockton University sits just a few hundred feet from the Atlantic Ocean. With scenic views and beachfront access, it was marketed as a fresh vision for higher education: experiential learning by the sea.

But according to Rutgers University’s Climate Impact Lab and corroborated by NOAA sea level rise projections, that vision may be short-lived. In less than 50 years, large portions of the campus could be underwater—possibly permanently. In fact, with high tide flooding already happening more frequently in Atlantic City and sea levels expected to rise 2 to 5 feet by 2100 depending on emissions, climate change poses an existential threat not just to Stockton’s Atlantic City facilities, but to the broader idea of oceanfront higher education.

The Science: Rutgers’ Stark Warning

Rutgers’ 2021 “New Jersey Science and Technical Advisory Panel Report” projected sea level rise in the state could exceed 2.1 feet by 2050 and 5.1 feet by 2100 under high emissions scenarios. Even under moderate mitigation efforts, the sea is projected to rise 1.4 to 3.1 feet by 2070, placing critical infrastructure—including roads, utility networks, and public buildings—at risk. Stockton’s coastal campus is among them.

A Teachable Crisis

For students and faculty in environmental science, public policy, and urban planning, Stockton's Atlantic City campus is both classroom and case study. Professors can point to flooding events just blocks away as real-time lessons in sea level rise, coastal erosion, and infrastructure vulnerability. Students witness firsthand the tension between development and environmental limits.

Yet these lived experiences also raise ethical questions. Is the university preparing students for the reality of climate displacement—or is it merely weathering the storm until the next round of state funding? Are public institutions being honest about the long-term risks students will face, not just as residents but as debt-burdened alumni?

In many ways, Stockton’s presence in Atlantic City epitomizes the “climate denial by development” that characterizes so much U.S. urban planning: Build now, mitigate later, and leave tomorrow’s collapse for someone else to manage.

No Easy Retreat

Climate adaptation strategies in Atlantic City have been slow-moving, expensive, and often controversial. Proposed solutions—such as sea walls, elevating roads, and managed retreat—require enormous financial and political capital. There’s also no consensus on how to preserve equity in a shrinking, sinking city.

For Stockton University, retreating from the Atlantic City campus would be politically and financially damaging. The expansion was celebrated with ribbon-cuttings and bipartisan support. Pulling back now would mean acknowledging a costly miscalculation. Yet failing to plan for relocation or phased withdrawal could leave students and taxpayers on the hook for an underwater investment.

According to the New Jersey Coastal Resilience Plan, Atlantic County—home to Stockton’s main and satellite campuses—is one of the most climate-exposed counties in the state. And Stockton isn’t just sitting in the floodplain; it’s training the very people who will be tasked with managing these emergencies. It has both a responsibility and an opportunity to lead, not just in mitigation but in public reckoning.

Lessons for Higher Ed

Stockton is hardly the only university caught between mission and market. Across the U.S., colleges and universities are pouring resources into branding campaigns and capital projects that ignore—or actively obscure—the long-term environmental risks. Climate change is often treated as a course offering, not an existential threat.

In Universities on Fire, Bryan Alexander outlines how climate change will fundamentally reshape the higher education landscape—from facilities planning to enrollment, from energy consumption to curriculum design. He warns that campuses, particularly those located near coasts or in extreme heat zones, face not just infrastructural threats but institutional crises. Rising waters, wildfires, hurricanes, and population shifts will force universities to rethink their physical footprints, economic models, and public obligations.

Yet few accreditors or bond-rating agencies have accounted for climate risk in their evaluations. Endowments continue to fund construction in flood-prone areas. Boards of trustees prioritize expansion over retreat. And students, many of whom are first-generation or low-income, are seldom told what climate vulnerability could mean for the real value of their degrees—or the safety of their dormitories.

As sea levels rise and climate models grow more precise, Stockton’s Atlantic City campus may become a symbol—not just of poor urban planning, but of an education system unprepared for the world it claims to be shaping.

What Comes Next?

For now, Stockton continues to expand its Atlantic City footprint, even as new reports suggest that this part of the Jersey Shore may be uninhabitable or cost-prohibitive to protect in a few decades. The university has proposed additional student housing and even a new coastal research center. But each new building reinforces the same flawed logic: that short-term gains outweigh long-term collapse.

At some point, Stockton University—and many other coastal institutions—will have to decide whether to keep investing in property that’s literally slipping into the sea, or to model the kind of resilience and foresight they claim to teach.

Because this is not just a sustainability issue. It’s a justice issue. It’s a debt issue. It’s a survival issue.

And it’s happening now.

Sources

Bryan Alexander. Universities on Fire: Higher Education in the Climate Crisis. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2023.

NJ Department of Environmental Protection. Resilient NJ: Statewide Coastal Resilience Plan. 2020.

Rutgers University. New Jersey Climate Change Resource Center.

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Back Bay Study – New Jersey.

New Jersey Future. “Climate Risks and Infrastructure in Atlantic County.”

Stockton University. Strategic Plan 2025: Choosing Our Path.

NOAA. State of High Tide Flooding and Sea Level Rise 2023 Technical Report.

Higher Education Inquirer's Long History, Sudden Rise

Since its founding in 2016, the Higher Education Inquirer has steadily established itself as a reliable, independent source for reporting on the less visible dimensions of American higher education. With a focus on institutional decline, labor conditions, and the growing influence of private interests, the publication has grown from a modest blog into a respected outlet for analysis and first-hand accounts. In June 2025, it surpassed 150,000 views, a milestone that reflects both the persistence of its contributors and the relevance of its subject matter.

HEI's development can be traced through its evolving approach to research and storytelling. In its early years, it introduced the phrase college meltdown to describe the financial and enrollment stress afflicting many institutions, particularly small colleges and for-profits. It later popularized the term edugrift, referring to the role of consultants, investors, and online program managers whose involvement in the sector often escapes scrutiny. These terms were not intended for provocation, but as practical shorthand—frameworks for understanding trends that might otherwise be overlooked or mischaracterized.

Throughout its reporting, the Inquirer has placed a premium on documentation and primary sources. Public records, government datasets, and legal filings form the basis of many investigations. Contributions from whistleblowers have added firsthand depth, while independent experts have offered context and critique. Collectively, these elements have allowed the publication to trace patterns not always visible from press releases or institutional communications.

The work has been shaped by a small group of persistent writers and researchers. In addition to its founding contributors, the platform has featured the voices of David Halperin, Henry Giroux, Bryan Alexander, Michael Hainline, Gary Roth, and Annelise Orleck. Each brings a different lens—legal, sociological, historical—but shares a commitment to rigor and accessibility.

Rather than emphasizing single events, the Higher Education Inquirer has tended to focus on slow-moving structural change: the decline in enrollment at non-selective institutions, the tightening of state budgets, the casualization of academic labor, and the steady rise of administrative cost centers. It has also monitored the effects of algorithmic tools and automation in admissions, advising, and teaching, raising questions about accountability and oversight.

Over time, its readership has broadened to include students, faculty, policy analysts, and reporters seeking an alternative to promotional narratives. The site's growth has been slow but consistent, its audience largely built by word of mouth and citation.

The Inquirer has not positioned itself as a substitute for mainstream coverage, but rather as a complement—an archival and analytical space that focuses on enduring issues rather than fleeting controversies. In doing so, it has provided a place where difficult questions about the purpose and direction of higher education can be raised without distraction.

Games and higher education: the gathering (Bryan Alexander)

This week the Future Trends Forum approaches the holiday season in a playful spirit. A panel of faculty and researchers who teach with games will be our guests: Depauw University professor Harry Brown, American University of the Caribbean School of Medicine professor Ryan Downey, Dr. Karl Kapp, and Forum favorite Ruben Puentedura.

Universities on Fire wins AAC&U book award (Bryan Alexander)

For the past several years I’d focused much of my research capacity on forecasting how the climate crisis might impact higher education, and what academics might do in response. That work appeared in many blog posts, presentations, meetings, Future Trends Forum sessions, and my 2023 book, Universities on Fire.

Today I’m delighted to announce that this work has received some splendid recognition. The American Association of Colleges and Universities is a 109-year-old organization devoted to liberal education, with more than 1,000 campuses as members. AAC&U has just chosen Universities on Fire for its Frederic W. Ness Book Award. The award goes to books which make “outstanding contributions to the understanding and improvement of liberal education.”

I am both humbled and ecstatic to learn of this. As someone who has worked in liberal education for decades, this is a signal honor, a career highlight. This award also feels like a validation of years of work on climate change. It’s especially delightful coming from a group I’ve followed and worked with for decades.

More important than my own self and career, by choosing to give the Ness award to Universities on Fire the AAC&U indicates that climate change should be a major concern for colleges and universities. It connects global warming to liberal education by virtue of the award’s emphasis “on liberal education as an evolving tradition,” as well as by signaling climate as “an issue or topic in postsecondary education that is discussed substantially in relation to liberal education.”

This is how they describe climate change as the very point of this year’s award:

“Among an exceptionally strong pool of nominees, Universities on Fire stood out because of how effectively and constructively it speaks to the urgency of the moment—its subject matter, interdisciplinarity, creativity, continual grounding in learning, and focus on the future,” said [Lynn] Pasquerella [president of AAC&U].

I’m so glad they recognized the interdisciplinary nature of the topic. I raised the idea that responding to climate change might be the new liberal arts.

AAC&U has long been a leader in encouraging higher education to address a series of key topics. The organization created the high impact learning practices (HIP) model, which helped institutions implement those teaching and student support ideas. Similarly, AAC&U advanced the concept of liberal education preparing students for active civic life, as well as supporting diversity, equity, and inclusion . They also introduced eportfolios to campus assessment and curricular strategies. My hope is that the group now adds climate thought and action to that list of major, good ideas… and that colleges and universities are inspired to think and act accordingly.

I’m deeply grateful to AAC&U for this award and excited about what comes next.

Thinking about climate change and international study (Bryan Alexander)

[Editor's Note: This article first appeared at BryanAlexander.org.]

Greetings from London, where I’m attending a CIEE event on international study. It’s good to be back in this city, if only for a few overscheduled days.

I’d like to share notes for my talk here. Since I gave it without slides, the only images I’ll share are screen grabs and photos I took, like this one of the unsuspecting audience:

 

To frame my quick talk, recall my old question: how can higher education best respond to the climate crisis?

I began with a big picture overview: the specter of global warming as a grand civilization crisis. I noted the sheer size and complexity of the problem. It impacts everything, including climate change. I mentioned the many ways colleges and universities can react and be influenced by the crisis, then focused down to the question of international study. How can we reduce the carbon footprint of study abroad? What are the available options? 

I didn’t get to show this Climate Reanalyzer image, but described it.

One option is to consider alternatives to flying. Students can take trains to destinations. This can work well in Europe, coastal China, America’s east coast, and… not many other places, given the limited availability of train infrastructure. We can also turn to ships and boats, but similarly that also only works in a limited sphere. Using these options a study abroad program would have to re-localize or regionalize its scope.

A second option is to go virtual. We already know how to do virtual trips through combinations of web content, live video, and asynchronous video. There have been examples of immersive experiences in virtual reality for a long time. Now extended reality (examples: Hololens, Magic Leap, Vision Pro) offer even greater immersive possibilities. So student can have *some* experience of another part of the world. Yet this runs into all kinds of problems, such as yielding a much narrower and shallower experience, not to mention cost and digital divide challenges.

(I told the crowd a little about my own experience with decarbonizing professional travel)

A third option is for study abroad to embrace climate change at a programmatic level. First, students can study global warming through themed internships, exchanges, formal classes, and just cultural immersion. Host groups can identify climate-relevant opportunities, from civil engineering projects to solar installations, agricultural experiments, and more. Imagine an economics major working with a company attempting to decarbonize operations, or a political science student interning with a government wrangling climate policies. As I keep saying, climate change is deeply transdisciplinary.

Second, students could travel abroad for non-climate topics, but explore global warming in that content. Imagine, for example, a student spending months in Madrid to work on their Spanish language and culture understanding. They can keep an eye out for how climate appears there: consumer behavior, popular attitudes, new regulations, emerging products and services, even the language used. This will take some preparation on the “sending” institution’s part, perhaps through a climate change literacy program.

As with anything involving climate, or higher education, there are quality questions. How can we assure that such experiences are good and germane? How do supporting faculty and staff learning climate issues and their applications in these contexts? Institutions of all kinds – colleges, nonprofits, companies, governments – will have to do this carefully. Realistically, some might not.

I wrapped up this quick sketch with advice to the audience, recommending that everyone in the study abroad world not only get up to speed on climate change, but look ahead to changes in this topic. We might expect (for example) rising governmental or cultural pressure against flying. We should also anticipate developments in air travel technologies, such as the emergence of new jet fuels and the return of airships. Study abroad might take to the skies once more.

…and that was a lot to do in 15 minutes, but I managed in 14. “Like drinking from a firehose” observed the program’s moderator.

Afterwards, there was a good deal of interest from conference participants in conversation. I raised climate during question and answer periods for some other sessions, and presenters took the topic seriously. I got the impression that this was a topic either new to them, or one they hadn’t hashed through out loud. I hope my quick presentation was a useful contribution.

At a meta-level, I’ve been traveling a lot this summer, reaching locations on two continents via car, train, and aircraft. I’ve also done a series of virtual events. I am by no means satisfied with my own professional carbon footprint, and am working on it. 

From yesterday afternoon’s walk.