The news that Colby-Sawyer College in New London has eliminated five majors and laid off 18 employees is the sort that likely will be repeated around the country in the next few years. Demographics and student debt may well bring tougher times for many small colleges.

Behind the cuts is the fact that enrollment at Colby-Sawyer has dropped to about 1,100 from a peak of 1,500 four years ago. That has led to an operating loss of more than $2 million annually over several years, and a quieter scene in New London. Selectboard Chairman G. William Helm Jr. put it this way: “You’ve had 400 less students on Main Street, buying less doughnuts and so on.” Anyone familiar with the spending patterns of young adults knows that income from any source, from employment to parents, generally leads efficiently and rapidly to spending.

Colby-Sawyer officials say that as the number of high school graduates has plateaued, the college has faced stiffer competition in recruiting. Because of that, they say, it has had to offer deeper discounts from its over-$50,000 price tag for tuition and board. This comes at a time when recent college graduates nationally are burdened by excessive college debt, making younger students and families more skeptical about the expense. It is a market correction years in the making.

We aren’t in the business of turning around college finances, but it is dismaying to see that Colby-Sawyer, which has long stressed the liberal arts along with professional training, particularly in nursing, is eliminating majors in English and philosophy, along with accounting, health promotion and health care management. Trimming liberal arts offerings strikes us as a retreat from the belief that colleges can produce something beyond job opportunities: well-rounded lifetime learners, better citizens and better people.

Yet it is probably best that Colby-Sawyer’s administration has acted decisively, rather than managing continued deficits. With a $38 million endowment, the red ink could not flow forever. Beyond that, we hope the college is able to move forward by concentrating on what it does best. Some institutions turn to aggressive branding and marketing to spur growth; a small college in a rural setting can’t compete on that score, but it can make the case for the quality of the education it offers.

There’s a bigger picture here, too. Colby-Sawyer’s financial challenges are another expression of the financial inequality that has swelled in America in recent years. In a time when some colleges struggle, the Associated Press reported recently that the salary race among college presidents in large universities and elite schools has risen to new heights, with eight earning more than $2 million in 2014. Lagging not so far behind were 39 whose compensation packages exceeded $1 million, among them Dartmouth’s Phil Hanlon. Of course, the Ivy League’s multibillion-dollar endowments are the stuff of legend.

That’s how the other half lives, but locally we can only hope for better days for Colby-Sawyer. Generations of students have benefited from its existence, and New London certainly is a livelier community because of it.