Private colleges and universities are facing financial challenges like never before due to declining enrollments, fierce competition, reductions in funding, and skepticism about the value of a college education. As deficits continue to rise, many of these institutions are realizing that closure is a possibility. To confront these challenges, innovative leaders have experimented with a number of vehicles, including partnerships, joint ventures, sharing arrangements, and matriculation agreements and others. When these strategies fail, as they often do, institutions are left with little choice but to merge with another institution. Although mergers can result in many benefits like increased efficiencies and economies of scale, they are complicated, expensive, time-consuming and offer no guarantees. In these turbulent times with many closures looming, one thing is certain, mergers of private colleges and universities are here to stay.