Questions 47 to 51 are based on the following passage. Many
private institutions of higher education around the country are in danger. Not
all will be saved, and perhaps not all deserved to be saved. There are
low-quality schools just as there is low-quality business. We have no obligation
to save them simply because they exist. But many thriving institutions that
deserve to continue are threatened. They are doing a fine job educationally, but
they are caught in a financial squeeze, with no way to reduce rising costs or
increasing revenues significantly. Raising tuition doesn’t bring in more
revenues, for each time tuition goes up, the enrollment goes down, or the amount
that must be given away in student aid goes up. Schools are businesses, whether
public or private, not usually because of mismanagement but because of the
nature of the enterprise. They lose money on every customer, and they can go
bankrupt either from too few students or too many students. Even a very good
college is a very bad business. It is such colleges, thriving but threatened,
I worry about. Low enrollment is not their chief problem. Even with full
enrollment, they may go under. Efforts to save them, and preferably to keep them
private, are a national necessity. There is no basis for arguing that private
schools are inherently better than public schools. Examples to the contrary
abound. Anyone can name state universities and colleges that rank as the finest
in the nation and the world. It is now inevitable that public institutions will
be dominant, and therefore diversity is a national necessity. Diversity in the
way we support schools tends to give us a healthy diversity in the forms of
education. In an imperfect society such as ours. uniformity of education
throughout the nation could be dangerous. In an imperfect society diversity is a
positive good. Ardent supporters of public higher education know the importance
of sustaining private higher education. The phrase "go under" in the third paragraph most probably means ______.