One reason is that many states face large pension obligations for public employees, including those who work at universities; for some universities, the impact is becoming more immediate, as states shift this burden directly onto them. More than half of the $4.1 billion allocated for state universities and colleges in Illinois, for instance, now goes not to teaching or research, but to pay retirement costs, the Illinois Policy Institute says.

“There’s always been a kind of a wishful thinking that when the economy gets back to normal, things will get better. And that is not happening anymore,” said James A. Hyatt, associate director of the Center for Studies in Higher Education and former vice chancellor for budget and finance at the University of California, Berkeley.

On top of that, public universities face political pressure to keep tuition flat. And the Moody’s bond-rating agency calculates that long-term returns from private university endowments are falling far short of what they need. A Department of Education list of financially troubled institutions now has more than 500 universities and colleges.

All of these pressures mean something has to give, and that includes upkeep. Colleges and universities face a combined shortfall of $30 billion for needed repairs and renovations, according to the APPA, formerly the Association of Physical Plant Administrators.

But in another bid to attract students, they keep building more, spending $11.6 billion last year on new construction, the private firm Dodge Data and Analytics says. That is adding not only more space the universities will have to maintain, but billions of dollars in debt on which someone will have to pay the interest.

Meanwhile, universities’ monopoly on credentials is being threatened by alternative forms of education like software coding academies. Some employers are rethinking whether going to college is even necessary: 14 percent of hires at Google have no college degree, according to the company’s senior human-resources officer. Nearly half of Americans surveyed last year by Public Agenda — a nonpartisan policy organization that focuses on education and other topics — said a higher education is no longer necessarily a good investment. And about the same proportion of graduates in a Gallup poll released last year said they were less than certain their degrees were worth the money.