Colleges in Dire Financial Straits

[apl68]

I thought I would just post this from Reddit.  It touches on several Fora themes.

Admin announces job losses using ChatGPT-generated email
That's all. Can't give details for obvious reasons but we are sunsetting a program and there are job losses entailed. Upper admin sent out an announcement to the campus. Details were wrong. The voice was odd and not characteristic of the sender. There was nothing specific about the program being ended.

I put a prompt into ChatGPT to "write a memo to the campus community announcing the closure of X program due to low enrollment" and got a reply that was as close to identical to the memo as one can get with Chat — the same points in same order and oodles of identical phrases. Why the heck am I killing myself to hold students accountable for misusing GPT? It is stunning and insulting.

Not the least bit surprising that some would try something like this.  I am a bit surprised that it was fingered so easily as ChatGPT's work, given that so many institutional announcements already have a stereotyped, canned feel about them.

[apl68]

New Jersey City College pretty much toast. Outstanding debt of 244M, operating deficit of 6M (down from 20 after 33% of academics slashed), and 50M in overdue deferred maintenance.

And they want a partner. Ummm. No.

https://www.nj.com/hudson/2024/04/financially-distressed-njcu-needs-a-partner-but-which-university-can-afford-to-take-on-the-school.html

Apparently they made a huge mistake a few years ago of taking on two branch campuses--trying to expand just as their enrollment was set to shrink due to demographics.  Wonder why that seemed like a good idea at the time?

No, you're definitely not going to see another university offering a tow to a sinking ship unless the state promises to pay them for undertaking the salvage operation.  Maybe the state will see fit to keep part of the campus open as a glorified junior college or vo-tech school.  They already took the standard step of eliminating nearly all of their arts and humanities programs last year, and even quite a bit of STEM.

[secundem_artem]

Thanks to all for the concern and good wishes for all the ongoing mishegoss at Artem U.  I'm personally safe and close enough to retirement that if the merde well and truly hits the fan, I am well funded for retirement and can just leave.

Earlier this week, the advisory body that was the next step in the process just spit the pacifier and threw all the toys out of the crib.  Were I the prez, I'd argue that they did not negotiate in good faith.  They have essentially ceded all decision making to the board and gawd knows what those guys may do.

Said advisory body seems to have recognized they shat the bed and are scrambling to come up  with a last minute, Hail Mary proposal to get in front of the board.  I'd offer that the proposals are about as effective as "let's have a bake sale".  Rather than dance with the devil they knew, now we all get to dance with the devil we don't.  Academic governance is a freakin' farce.  Nobody should take it seriously. 

[treeoflife]

New Jersey City College is beyond saving. I wonder if the campus will have some value.

[spork]

Bacone College is dead in all but name.

[apl68]

Bacone College is dead in all but name.

Apparently it has been for several years now.  I see in looking at its recent history that it was already essentially bankrupt in 2018.  But a consortium tried to take it over and revitalize it.  Apparently they were hoping for federal funding that failed to come through.

The HVAC company that put their campus on the auction block for unpaid bills relented, no doubt because they didn't want to look like the bad guys.  But yes, it's pretty obvious that the school has no money to pay its bills, so no vendors are going to want to deal with it for any kinds of goods or services.  Absent some massive money dropping down out of the sky on the school, there's surely no way to recover.

[Wahoo Redux]

IHE: Lakeland Community College on 'the Precipice of Fiscal Watch'

Lakeland Community College in Ohio is struggling with steep enrollment losses, underutilized campus spaces and on "the precipice of fiscal watch," according to a recent performance audit by the state auditor. Fiscal watch status would require the college to submit a financial recovery plan.

<....>

The audit notes that enrollment, which is currently at about 5,000 students, fell nearly 50 percent since its peak in 2012 but the college has not reduced staffing levels accordingly, held courses with few students enrolled and opened new facilities, including a 16,000-foot expansion on the main campus, leading to debt.

[downer]

Nassau Community College isn't on the brink of collapse, but it is going through hard times. Massive consolidation of departments, and they have got rid of all their food services.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/institutions/community-colleges/2024/04/17/nassau-community-college-consolidates-departments
https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/nassau-community-college-cafeteria-cafe-snack-bar-close/

Given the massive taxes residents of Nassau County pay, it's a little ironic. But their property taxes don't go towards the community college.

[sonoamused]

Nassau Community College isn't on the brink of collapse, but it is going through hard times. Massive consolidation of departments, and they have got rid of all their food services.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/institutions/community-colleges/2024/04/17/nassau-community-college-consolidates-departments
https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/nassau-community-college-cafeteria-cafe-snack-bar-close/

Given the massive taxes residents of Nassau County pay, it's a little ironic. But their property taxes don't go towards the community college.

I am betting the vendor probably had a long term contract and was planning profit based off of pre-2021 or earlier enrollment numbers.  Either way, most colleges wouldn't be able to cough up 300K immediately to adjust a contract.

[apl68]

It's pretty horrible to think of a campus of 12,000 with no dining options whatsoever.  And pretty astonishing that any school that size could get itself into such a situation.  For now I guess everybody will just have to brown-bag it.  It's what I did through six years of grad school.  We had dining services on campus.  I just couldn't afford them.  Good thing I really liked peanut butter.

[downer]

Maybe they could allow food trucks to come to campus.

[lightning]

Maybe they could allow food trucks to come to campus.

Post-pandemic, my university used food trucks, as a short-term solution to losing our on-campus food services (which was contracted out to some loser company who couldn't live up to their end of the agreement). We lost some significant parking spaces, but it solved our 1+ year problem of inadequate on-campus food options after the pandemic.

As a side-note, admins need to play hard ball with contractors. A deal is a deal. Contractors shouldn't be allowed to walk away from the terms of a signed contract. If they are allowed to walk away from a signed contract, that's the fault of spineless and/or incompetent administrators. 

[spork]

Closure announcements today:

Wells College, NY

University of Saint Katherine, CA

[selecter]

"Better FAFSA" is gonna sever the thin thread that some colleges have been hanging on to. In the case of Wells, the writing was on the wall for a long time, and I don't think there was really even a thread left.

[BadWolf]

Closure announcements today:

Wells College, NY

University of Saint Katherine, CA

Heard about St. Katherine over the weekend - a message came out on one of my ListServs basically begging for people to look at their staff/faculty to see if any would be a good fit at our institutions.

Writing had been on the wall for years at Wells, but man that's a hard blow personally. Aurora was my mom and dad's happy place. So many family memories there, mostly because of MacKenzie-Childs and the Victoria/Richard empire (pre sell out). In fact, when my mom is gone she wants her ashes blended with my dad's and scattered into the lake. (Yes, we know we can't do that but she doesn't need to know that.)