Colleges in Dire Financial Straits

[ciao_yall]

Not higher ed, but Sears. 70 years to implode.

http://fortune.com/longform/sears-self-destruction/

TLDR, you can skip to the later part for this paragraph...

(T)op executives and the board became so desperate that they broke with a century of tradition and hired an outsider to run the place—Saks Fifth Avenue executive Arthur Martinez. He found an organization still in its dysfunctional mode. "It was inward-looking and upward-looking," he recalls. "Everything rose to the top. There was no accountability."

[spork]

Two majors and three minors ended at Elizabethtown College, plus furloughs, elimination of unfilled positions:

https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2019/06/17/elizabethtown-cuts-some-liberal-arts-programs.

IPEDS shows Elizabethtown's undergraduate FTE enrollment fell by 16 percent from FY 2007 to FY 2017, to 1839.

[Cheerful]

Would be nice if journalists would identify the state when naming a college.  Elizabethtown College is in PA, had to look up on google.

Bye-bye philosophy and theater.  https://www.abc27.com/news/local/lancaster/elizabethtown-college-announces-program-staff-cuts/2077312400

[Hibush]

Two majors and three minors ended at Elizabethtown College, plus furloughs, elimination of unfilled positions:

https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2019/06/17/elizabethtown-cuts-some-liberal-arts-programs.

IPEDS shows Elizabethtown's undergraduate FTE enrollment fell by 16 percent from FY 2007 to FY 2017, to 1839.

The school claims that only 15 students were affected, so again this could be a reasonable realignment of effort from majors are not attracting enough students. Their popular majors are  Business, Health Professions, Biology, Engineering and Education, with 130 to nearly 300 maojrs. That mix looks pretty typical for a school of its type.

[spork]

There are very few U.S. colleges with an undergraduate FTE < 2,000 that have reputable engineering programs, which Elizabethtown College appears to have, given the engineering faculty listed on its website. Makes me wonder how a school that size can afford it.

[Hibush]

Seminaries and former seminaries have been on this list a lot, mostly smaller and often Catholic schools whose base is shrinking.
Now comes word from a juggernaut:
Liberty laid of a dozen Divinity faculty due to declining of enrollment. The resident numbers went from 1,078  in 2015 to 992 in 2018. The online program 19,727 to 13,688.  I don't know the student:faculty ratio they aim for in the online program. It is still huge.

[kaysixteen]

Sorry to hear this about Elizabethtown, a unique niche institution that also has a very strong and useful research center, again probably close to unique for the study of Anabaptist and Pietist groups, the home of the inestimable Donald Kraybill.

[polly_mer]

St. Joseph School of Nursing in Providence, RI just closed last week with no notice (https://turnto10.com/news/local/st-joseph-school-of-nursing-closes-after-117-years) and clearly no plan.

The union president states:

"Faculty were told yesterday at 2 p.m. it was their last day," Blais said. "Pack up their offices, leave badges, leave keys, go home."

insidehighered.com links to a Facebook announcement that's no longer available (https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2019/06/24/small-nursing-college-closes).  The only notice I can find on the college's webpage is a terse note in news that transcripts will be available during the summer (http://www.nursingri.com/news-and-events/post/attention-students1).

Other institutions that closed, even abruptly, tended to post a notice on their front page and take down the application forms for students and employment.  I wonder when St. Joseph School of Nursing will manage that.

[Trogdor]

the St. Joseph's facebook announcement was available when I clicked on it.

The most heartbreaking part is the comments. They were cashing people's checks for application fees and deposits right up until the day they announced the closing, and now nobody is answering the phones. As one commenter suggests, cashing people's deposit checks when you know the place is closing is probably fraud.

If they don't get refunds, I'd be shocked if some of these closings don't result in lawsuits or prosecution.

[spork]

This seems to be a purely corporate decision -- shut down a "non-performing" unit within the hospital. I would not be surprised if it's tied to personnel cuts and/or the contract with the union that represents nurses on staff.

[apl68]

No article to link to because it's behind a paywall, but Henderson State University in Arkansas has announced a hiring freeze.  Enrollment has been down in recent years, tuition discounts are up, and they apparently still owe millions of dollars on all that new construction they did some years back.  It's sad to see them having problems like this.

[spork]

Here ya go: https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2019/jun/26/henderson-state-freezes-hiring-in-face-/.

The school holds $10 million in unpaid student debt? What the hell? Are they letting students attend without paying tuition?

[magnemite]

parking fines?

[Trogdor]

The school holds $10 million in unpaid student debt? What the hell? Are they letting students attend without paying tuition?

I think they must be directly lending money to students, who are unable to pay it back.

[spork]

The school holds $10 million in unpaid student debt? What the hell? Are they letting students attend without paying tuition?

I think they must be directly lending money to students, who are unable to pay it back.

I doubt the University of Arkansas system allows Henderson State to operate as if it were a corrupt Third World dictatorship in need of an IMF bailout.