Colleges in Dire Financial Straits

[TreadingLife]

We're going to need to accept the fact that some majors are going to need to lean on other disciplines to fill out course offerings. The issue on many campuses is no one wants to do it. Or you have a discipline willing to count 1-3 classes from another discipline to count for the major, but other disciplines won't do the same.

I 100% agree and yet somehow folks cannot see the writing on the wall and a potential solution before them.

The only things people can agree on: 1.)They hate the way things are and 2.)They hate change.

[Hibush]

Birkbeck College, University of London, founded in 1823.
"Citing financial pressures, the college's bosses propose to cut up to a quarter of all teaching staff from departments including English and geography, plus up to a third of administrators.

Universities that were committed to levelling up have shut or shrunk courses that don't fit the government's narrowing agenda. 

Closures are blamed on deficits combined with falling demand. This followed the decision in 2016 to lift caps on student numbers, which freed the most prestigious universities to recruit more, but meant places elsewhere went unfilled. "

All that sounds familiiar, except the University of London isn't in the lower part of the prestige ladder.

[AmLitHist]

One of the WI CC's has come to its end:

https://www.chronicle.com/article/in-wisconsin-a-merger-cant-save-a-community-college?utm_source=Iterable&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=campaign_5603428_nl_Academe-Today_date_20221128&cid=at&source=ams&sourceid=&cid2=gen_login_refresh

[marshwiggle]

One of the WI CC's has come to its end:

https://www.chronicle.com/article/in-wisconsin-a-merger-cant-save-a-community-college?utm_source=Iterable&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=campaign_5603428_nl_Academe-Today_date_20221128&cid=at&source=ams&sourceid=&cid2=gen_login_refresh

From the article:

Enrollment at Richland Center has plummeted from 567 students in 2014 to just over a tenth of that number this fall, according to system data.

It's amazing that it's survived for this long if this decline has been steady.

[apl68]

Whittier College is shutting down their football team and other sports programs:


https://www.whittierdailynews.com/2022/11/15/whittier-college-appears-to-be-ending-football-program-after-115-years-but-school-hasnt-made-it-official/



Because they're trying to save academic programs, or because they've already shut a number of those down?  I notice the article mentions that a number of smaller colleges in the region have already shut down their football programs. 

[Ruralguy]

Would never fly at my SLAC, which is fairly similar to Whittier academically.

[mamselle]

Rant:

I HATE FOOTBALL!

WHY/WHY/HOW DID IT BECOME A CREEPING CANCER ON OUR ACADEMIC SYSTEMS?

HOW CAN WE EXCISE IT?*

       There.

All better now....

M.

* Recall, my U/G was at Ohio State.....

[Hibush]

Whittier shut down football, golf and lacrosse, and expects to save about $700,000 a year.

The LA Times quotes a few disgruntled students, but they will either transfer or switch sports. "The school has a growing esports program, and the administration sees that as a place where the school can invest its resources."

They had the only NCAA lacrosse program on the west coast, which does make it a challenge (and expense) to maintain. Plus the coach was gone.

The football program does not seem like a loss: they "did not play in 2020 due to the pandemic and did not win any games in the season that started in 2021. Freshman Zach Fernandes, 19, played offensive line for the football team and never felt like he was playing college-level football due to the lack of fans in the stands and support from the school."   "The school spent roughly half a million dollars on the football program each year. But waning interest in the program — and game day attendance — has made it clear that football is not the draw that it used to be at Whittier College."

[Mobius]

Nixon played football at Whittier, so a bit of a historical blow. College football just doesn't sell in L.A. like it used to. There are a handful of D-III programs, but no D-II football programs. Long Beach State and Cal State Northridge had programs into the early '90s. UCLA drew 41,000 on average to the Rose Bowl in a good season this year.

[Ruralguy]

Although LA area is so big that it can draw crowds for many sporting events, in general it did not feel like people were as "into" their teams as, say New York or Boston.

[Mobius]

My place has football. I haven't been to a game and don't plan on it, since I'd rather watch ranked teams from my couch. The stadium is in awful shape and a replacement isn't coming anytime soon. Plus, the team usually has one winning season every 10 years. I attend a few basketball games in the winter as there isn't much to do locally in town, and the basketball team is competitive. Student attendance at basketball and football games is abysmal.

[Wahoo Redux]

Our students pay for football.  It is glommed onto their tuition payments.  The team did better this year than in past years (7-4) but not too many people care; crowds are meagre and high school football gets more time on the evening news than we do.  The players, with a few exceptions, are almost all from within 100 miles of the school.  They are normal sized human beings for the most part.  They resodded the football field to the tune of $600K while laying a number of us off. 

I know we have a basketball team----but I know nothing about it whatsoever.

[Hibush]

Apparently Olivet University has been fudging student numbers to the extent that it raises "questions over the extent to which Olivet functions as a learning institution at all."  This reporting is from Newsweek, which turns out to have owners in common with Olivet. How is that for a twist?  It turns out that a 50% owner, Dev Pragad, is the publisher of Newsweek and a former member of the Olivet sect. The other 50% owner, Johnathan Davis, remains a member. The latter thinks Newsweek is doing a hit job to force him out. Definitely juicier than your usual tale of desperate moves in the face of inexorably declining enrollment.

[selecter]

https://www.syracuse.com/news/2022/12/cazenovia-college-to-close-after-nearly-200-years.html

[apl68]

https://www.syracuse.com/news/2022/12/cazenovia-college-to-close-after-nearly-200-years.html

An awfully sad day for its faculty, staff, students, and alumni. 

That's an interesting history given in their article.  They've existed in some form or another for two centuries, but only became a four-year college in the late 1980s.  With hindsight it looks like they were too ambitious there.  But then at the time it probably seemed like jumping up to four-year college status was the best hope for the long term.