Colleges in Dire Financial Straits

[BadWolf]

Caz looks like it had been having issue for a while and flying under the radar, and their hand was forced when Middle States called them out on not being prepared for their upcoming reaccreditation visit this spring.

[Wahoo Redux]

NBC News: Holy Names University in Oakland to Close Next Year

"Merry Christmas.  We're closing!"

[apl68]

NBC News: Holy Names University in Oakland to Close Next Year

"Merry Christmas.  We're closing!"

The timing of the announcement was awfully unfortunate for all concerned.  A lot of faculty, staff, students, and alumni will find this a heavy blow.

I notice from their Wikipedia entry that they seem to have followed a profile common to several of these small colleges that have closed in recent years.  They started out as private schools in the 19th century, became colleges in the 1900s when public high school education started to become common, and attempted to become a university only a few decades ago.  They have survived for generations by successfully chasing trends in education, but that strategy now no longer works for them. 

[spork]

Manhattanville College continues to circle the drain:

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2023/01/10/manhattanville-cuts-tenured-faculty-freezes-programs.

$2.5 million deficit in FY 2021, $6 million deficit in FY 2020. It borrowed $20 million in FY 2021. 20% undergraduate FTE enrollment decline 2014-2021. 

[Cheerful]

"Multiple faculty sources declined to speak on the record, saying that Manhattanville required departing professors to sign nondisparagement agreements in order to receive severance pay. Those who spoke on background said the current round of cuts include two tenured professors of art history, three tenured professors of English, one tenured professor of history, one tenured professor and one instructor of music, and one tenure-track professor of philosophy."

Is that requirement common in higher ed?

[apl68]

"Multiple faculty sources declined to speak on the record, saying that Manhattanville required departing professors to sign nondisparagement agreements in order to receive severance pay. Those who spoke on background said the current round of cuts include two tenured professors of art history, three tenured professors of English, one tenured professor of history, one tenured professor and one instructor of music, and one tenure-track professor of philosophy."

Is that requirement common in higher ed?

Sounds like they're arresting (and shooting) the usual liberal-arts suspects.

[TreadingLife]

Manhattanville College continues to circle the drain:

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2023/01/10/manhattanville-cuts-tenured-faculty-freezes-programs.

$2.5 million deficit in FY 2021, $6 million deficit in FY 2020. It borrowed $20 million in FY 2021. 20% undergraduate FTE enrollment decline 2014-2021.

Those deficits are particularly notable given the amount of COVID funds available during those years.

[Wahoo Redux]

Hechinger Report: With student pool shrinking, some predict a grim year of college closings

Not sure if this says anything peeps here don't know.  But here it is.

[lightning]

Hechinger Report: With student pool shrinking, some predict a grim year of college closings

Not sure if this says anything peeps here don't know.  But here it is.

Fora members have known all the stuff in the article for a long time, as you say. What's more interesting is that potential students and their parents are starting to consider a college's financial stability in their college selection. They don't want to end up at a place that might not actually have the means to meet students' needs & expectations or might close down (however remote) halfway through their degree program.

Articles like the Olivia Sanchez article are piling on and are unwittingly advertising the precarious position of sLACs, to the potential students, and are accelerating the decline of sLACs in an act of self-fulfilling prophesy.

Good for my university, I guess, as our enrollments continue to remain stable and have been stable, partly because some of our new enrollments are students who are now afraid of attending a sLAC or are refugees from a closed or dying sLAC. But some admincritters and politicians, use articles like the Sanchez article as an excuse to cut budgets even for financially healthy places like mine, citing general gloom-and-doom inspired by gloom-and-doom articles. Frankly, I'm getting tired of these articles, and I'm really getting tired of admincritters using these articles to justify cutting budgets when we are in the black, have stable and in some years growing enrollments, and have been breaking records with our grants and fund-raising. And, it's articles like this that are used to sharpen the axe.

[apl68]

Hechinger Report: With student pool shrinking, some predict a grim year of college closings

Not sure if this says anything peeps here don't know.  But here it is.

Fora members have known all the stuff in the article for a long time, as you say. What's more interesting is that potential students and their parents are starting to consider a college's financial stability in their college selection. They don't want to end up at a place that might not actually have the means to meet students' needs & expectations or might close down (however remote) halfway through their degree program.

Articles like the Olivia Sanchez article are piling on and are unwittingly advertising the precarious position of sLACs, to the potential students, and are accelerating the decline of sLACs in an act of self-fulfilling prophesy.

That's a real concern, all right.  The perception that a struggling school is as good as doomed could easily finish it off.  Some SLACs with a fighting chance might end up being crushed by negative perceptions that become self-fulfilling prophecies.

And yet...many of the schools we've seen on this thread have clearly tried to keep going past the point at which they really should have been planning an orderly shutdown, so as not to leave students in the lurch.  It's only fair to students and parents that they be made aware of the fact that the worst could happen.

[Hibush]

Hechinger Report: With student pool shrinking, some predict a grim year of college closings

Not sure if this says anything peeps here don't know.  But here it is.

Fora members have known all the stuff in the article for a long time, as you say. What's more interesting is that potential students and their parents are starting to consider a college's financial stability in their college selection. They don't want to end up at a place that might not actually have the means to meet students' needs & expectations or might close down (however remote) halfway through their degree program.

Articles like the Olivia Sanchez article are piling on and are unwittingly advertising the precarious position of sLACs, to the potential students, and are accelerating the decline of sLACs in an act of self-fulfilling prophesy.

Good for my university, I guess, as our enrollments continue to remain stable and have been stable, partly because some of our new enrollments are students who are now afraid of attending a sLAC or are refugees from a closed or dying sLAC. But some admincritters and politicians, use articles like the Sanchez article as an excuse to cut budgets even for financially healthy places like mine, citing general gloom-and-doom inspired by gloom-and-doom articles. Frankly, I'm getting tired of these articles, and I'm really getting tired of admincritters using these articles to justify cutting budgets when we are in the black, have stable and in some years growing enrollments, and have been breaking records with our grants and fund-raising. And, it's articles like this that are used to sharpen the axe.

Doom and gloom sells papers¹, as does hype on expansion. For the future health of higher education, it's worth having articles that describe normal as the large number of schools that have stable enrollment, reasonable finances and provide a sound education.

Articles like that could be written from or about schools like yours. The articles could be basically accurate and still make readers optimistic about going to college.

That is not who is writing the articles.


¹I mean generates clicks.

[rth253]

Presentation College, a Catholic SLAC in South Dakota, will close at the end of Summer 2023.

[rth253]

Link re: Presentation College: https://www.insidehighered.com/live-updates

[Hibush]

Presentation College, a Catholic SLAC in South Dakota, will close at the end of Summer 2023.

This school was founded with the specific mission of training nurses to serve rural communities. That need still remains, but is it a viable business? There used to be lots of small nursing-training outfits that were not tied to colleges and universities.

[Mobius]

Northern State, also in Aberdeen, offers a pre-nursing program. Don't know if Northern State will upgrade to a bachelor's program.