VU's percentage draws on its endowment are indeed higher than the recommended 4-5%, but sadly those figures are not out of the norm right now compared to similar universities.
In addition to navigating the challenging application pools, many schools of all shapes and sizes are simply hoping to ride out the current instability and threats to higher ed coming from the current White House that make any planning very difficult.
In this environment, while genuine growth is possible in certain units of a given university, just about no one's business model is resulting in a thriving overall institution. True, schools like Grand Canyon and Liberty are supporting their on-campus, residential programs with humongous distance learning operations taught by a ton of adjunct faculty, but frankly that's not a model I'd want to be associated with as an alum.
The Big Ten schools continue strong undergraduate enrollment growth, notably IU-Bloomington. I think we can consider the elites and the flagship state universities to be on solid ground due to the powerful brand they carry.
But, indeed all others are going uphill in steep fashion.
