Colleges in Dire Financial Straits

[treeoflife]

Not looking good.

"We will be finalizing major funding that will allow us to pay overdue student refunds and staff salaries from last semester."

Plus, they need cash from students staying in dorms.

St. Augustine's has delayed the start of its fall semester by two weeks, supposedly because of storm damage:

https://www.st-aug.edu/notice/delayed-start-to-fall-2024/

So I assumed they were in Florida. Nope, HBCU in Raleigh. They are not long for this world.

I hope everybody on campus has updated resumes. With the looming rescission this will not be a fun one. 

[Langue_doc]

Manhattan College: according to Wikipedia, its 2021 graduating numbers were:
Civil Engineering (89)
Mechanical Engineering (73)
Marketing (47)
Communication (44)
Finance (38)
Psychology (37)

Look at those low numbers. Two years ago they had 3,166 students total. I imagine students are leaving in droves and any faculty who can leave are leaving. So it's rather immaterial which majors they are cutting this year.

Manhattan College is now Manhattan University:

Why Manhattan College Is Changing Its Name
Colleges competing for international students prefer to be known as universities.

The first few paragraphs:

Change is coming to Manhattan College, which is in the Bronx.

The school is not moving to Manhattan, which it left 101 years ago.

But the school is changing its name — to Manhattan University.

Its officials will unveil the new name this morning, pulling off a blue tarpaulin that has covered a sign with the new name.

"There's more prestige associated with a university than a college," Milo Riverso, the president, said. "A university has a certain stature and status."

Manhattan hopes that a more prestigious-sounding name will help against headwinds that have buffeted other small-to-medium size schools, particularly when it comes to shifting enrollment trends. With parents and students in this country questioning the value of a college degree, "we feel we made ourselves more marketable" to international students, Riverso said.

Foreign students make up about 5 percent of Manhattan's current enrollment. The school wants to boost that to between 15 percent and 20 percent, but internationally, Riverso said, schools with "college" in their names are seen as "glorified high schools or community colleges. 'University' denotes a four-year degree."

Manhattan, a Lasallian Catholic institution, is joining an already sizable parade of colleges that have renamed themselves. A 2022 study in the journal Economics of Education Review said that 122 four-year colleges morphed into universities between 2001 and 2016.

"There's a gravitas factor that comes with being a university rather than a college," said Jason Simon, the chief executive of SimpsonScarborough, an educational marketing firm.

He also said that becoming a university often signaled a growth strategy, and Manhattan is looking to expand, or at least to return to its former size. The school's undergraduate population has slipped to about 2,800, Riverso said, about 500 fewer than he wants on campus. Manhattan had its largest enrollments from 2017 to 2020, he said.

The article goes on to note:

In New York, colleges began transforming themselves into universities after the New York State Board of Regents, which sets education policy, loosened the requirements for an institution to be known as a university. Until 2022, to be eligible for such status, a school in New York had to offer degrees in at least two professional fields and doctoral programs in at least three. The rules were revised to recognize 10 "discipline areas."

[dismalist]

...

"There's more prestige associated with a university than a college," Milo Riverso, the president, said. "A university has a certain stature and status."

The article goes on to note:

In New York, colleges began transforming themselves into universities after the New York State Board of Regents, which sets education policy, loosened the requirements for an institution to be known as a university. Until 2022, to be eligible for such status, a school in New York had to offer degrees in at least two professional fields and doctoral programs in at least three. The rules were revised to recognize 10 "discipline areas."

Yes, we change a dictionary entry and the world changes with it. Reality is, after all, a social construct.

[apl68]

...

"There's more prestige associated with a university than a college," Milo Riverso, the president, said. "A university has a certain stature and status."

The article goes on to note:

In New York, colleges began transforming themselves into universities after the New York State Board of Regents, which sets education policy, loosened the requirements for an institution to be known as a university. Until 2022, to be eligible for such status, a school in New York had to offer degrees in at least two professional fields and doctoral programs in at least three. The rules were revised to recognize 10 "discipline areas."

Yes, we change a dictionary entry and the world changes with it. Reality is, after all, a social construct.

There's also more prestige in being the captain of a luxury cruise liner than in being the captain of a harbor ferry.  But announcing that your ferry is now a luxury cruise liner isn't going to make it so.  Customers who come expecting that aren't going to be pleased with what they see.  Presumably the market here is customers who want to convince other people that they've taken a luxury cruise, as opposed to riding the ferry.

[Ruralguy]

Look. If the place is good, then who cares? Are Amherst and Williams running to call themselves universities? No.
They don't need to. They know they'd rather be number one in their category. But colleges that are failing in their primary task are the ones that feel the need to take on more tasks and change labels.

[Hibush]

Harrisburg University closed two international branch campuses, one in Panama (opened 2022) and United Arab Emirates (opened 2023). The effort to stem declining applicant pools in Pennsylvania by literally meeting students where they are turned out to be far too expensive. "The significant financial burden" ($1.5 million a year) of operating the campus was coupled with the very small student enrollment expectations."  The Dubai campus was motivated by a specific donor who pulled out.

Harrisburg's financial situation is severe enough that they missed the last bond payment.

[jimbogumbo]

The situation at Western Illinois is just insane: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/business/cost-cutting/2024/08/20/library-faculty-eliminated-western-illinois-university

[aprof]

From https://emma.msrb.org/P21744553-P21339711-P21774241.pdf

Over a period of 1.5 years a staff of five full‐time recruiters, marketers and program coordinators was hired in Panama.  Additional outreach and partnership efforts were made into Columbia and Peru over
this period.  These efforts resulted in the sale and delivery of several contracted training programs mostly focused on data analytics and cyber security.  These programs generated approximately $75,000 in revenue.  However, unfortunately, these efforts only produced 4 full‐time students for the Panama location.

If I'm reading this correctly, they had 4 students enrolled at their Panama campus. Or their marketing campaign only produced 4 students?  I'm not sure, but either way it seems pretty obvious that this was not a worthwhile investment for a school with no name recognition.

[apl68]

A school has to be careful about partnering with institutions in other countries or recruiting there.  Especially in places where general sketchiness is common.  In the late 1990s or early 2000s Alma Mater recruited a small cohort of students from one of the sketchier former Soviet "republics."  They turned out to be very poor students, and disciplinary problems.  Turned out that local oligarchs had bribed/intimidated whoever was doing the recruiting on their end to reserve the available slots for their offspring.  One can only imagine what unspeakable specimens of humanity some of those youths had had for parents.

That said, Alma Mater has had some more successful recruiting efforts in other countries.  They've got students from several places at any given time, although they don't amount to a very large proportion of the student body.

[apl68]

The situation at Western Illinois is just insane: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/business/cost-cutting/2024/08/20/library-faculty-eliminated-western-illinois-university

They've gotten rid of all their professional library staff?  And turned their campus library into what amounts to a closed book warehouse, with a skeleton staff to fetch books across campus?  That's not going to do much for their credibility as an institution of higher learning.  One would think that the regional accrediting body would have something to say about that.

[treeoflife]

The situation at Western Illinois is just insane: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/business/cost-cutting/2024/08/20/library-faculty-eliminated-western-illinois-university

They've gotten rid of all their professional library staff?  And turned their campus library into what amounts to a closed book warehouse, with a skeleton staff to fetch books across campus?  That's not going to do much for their credibility as an institution of higher learning.  One would think that the regional accrediting body would have something to say about that.

This is a model that we will see more and more. Unfortunately it is a direct result that began twenty years ago when all the reading material was scanned and given to students and they were not required anymore to go to the library and find the sources. 

[apl68]

The situation at Western Illinois is just insane: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/business/cost-cutting/2024/08/20/library-faculty-eliminated-western-illinois-university

They've gotten rid of all their professional library staff?  And turned their campus library into what amounts to a closed book warehouse, with a skeleton staff to fetch books across campus?  That's not going to do much for their credibility as an institution of higher learning.  One would think that the regional accrediting body would have something to say about that.

This is a model that we will see more and more. Unfortunately it is a direct result that began twenty years ago when all the reading material was scanned and given to students and they were not required anymore to go to the library and find the sources. 

This sort of thing has all but killed any use of the public library by local students since COVID.  We're no longer treated as a partner or a resource by the local schools.  That takes a large part of our community's limited available learning/literacy resources right off the table.  It's as if we don't even exist to them anymore. 

[spork]

Temple drops merger with University of the Arts like the debt-ridden potato that it is:

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2024/09/03/temple-drops-plans-uarts-acquisition

[spork]

St. Augustine's enrollment collapsed. It now has only 200 students.

https://abc11.com/post/st-augs-crisis-st-augustines-university-faces-enrollment-drop-strives-rebuild-improve/15262397/

It should have closed years ago.

[treeoflife]

Temple drops merger with University of the Arts like the debt-ridden potato that it is:

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2024/09/03/temple-drops-plans-uarts-acquisition

St. Augustine's enrollment collapsed. It now has only 200 students.

https://abc11.com/post/st-augs-crisis-st-augustines-university-faces-enrollment-drop-strives-rebuild-improve/15262397/

It should have closed years ago.

We all know how this will end. There is nothing more than real-estate