Colleges in Dire Financial Straits

[apl68]

Not dire straits, but an example of the sorts of hard choices so many schools are having to make about their programs--John Brown University is shutting down its Communication Department.  Enrollment has fallen by half since 2012.  Administration considers it no longer financially feasible to keep it open.


https://www.nwaonline.com/news/2021/mar/03/communication-department-shut-at-john-brown/?news


The student paper--which one presumes is run by the affected students--takes exception to the decision:


http://advocate.jbu.edu/2021/03/01/a-defense-of-jbus-communication-department/


Be cynical about the students if you want, but I don't blame them for being upset at feeling the rug pulled out from under them.  The fact that the job market for aspiring journalists is getting worse and worse due to the changing media environment does not say anything good about where society is headed.

[Ruralguy]

Most of my students think that its such a slog getting through the courses they like, which to them is their major, that they'd rather not get "distracted" by history or whatever. Occasionally, I'll meet a student who really likes taking a variety of things (and doing well with all of them), but while not super rare, it not that common either.

[spork]

Becker College - Worcester MA

I find what's at the end of the article amusing: Becker was not on dimwit Galloway's list of MA colleges that are doomed, but Clark, Mt. Holyoke, Brandeis, UMass-Boston, and UMass-Dartmouth was. And then the first item listed as a related story is "Becker College Police Chief David Bousquet accused of crashing into car while driving drunk with loaded gun."

[Puget]

I find what's at the end of the article amusing: Becker was not on dimwit Galloway's list of MA colleges that are doomed, but Clark, Mt. Holyoke, Brandeis, UMass-Boston, and UMass-Dartmouth was.

Yep, somewhere on here is a thread where I have a long rant about the "model" he was using after digging into his documentation (such as it was). Literally he picked some things he thought were important and weighted them equally (based on what I have no idea), and then divided them into equal 4ths (i.e., by definition 25% were "doomed").

To make things even worse as I recall he only included ranked colleges or some such, so that's probably why it wasn't included and also means even if his criteria were valid the bottom 25% on his list would actually be pretty high up a list that included all colleges.

I wouldn't have passed it as an undergrad project, but he sure got a lot of media millage out of it.

You really would think that realizing your "model" is classifying major public university campuses as "doomed" would make you question your model. . .

[Hibush]

You really would think that realizing your "model" is classifying major public university campuses as "doomed" would make you question your model. . .

Some would appropriately question the models accuracy. But others would recognize its potential to get clicks. And that may be more important.

[kaysixteen]

Galloway is an idiot.   The state would never ever ever kill off any UMass school, and there is a real market for them too-- UMDartmouth, about ten miles from me, actually absorbed a private law school a few years back, and became (believe it or not) the only public law school in Mass.   UM Boston is, despite decades of mismanagement/ open corruption, vital to the core community it serves in the city.  Mt. Holyoke is a rich SLAC, very well regarded (better than Smith) and has a core constituency willing to pay for it, and oodles of $ for financial aid.   Brandeis has a similar well-funded core cachement area.   Clark and Simmons have problems, but they have grad programs that will keep them afloat.

[Hibush]

That article has a link to an article about a New York University marketing professor named Scott Galloway who predicts that six Massachusetts institutions--Clark, Mount Holyoke, Simmons, Brandeis, UMass Boston, and UMass Dartmouth--are "likely to perish."  I had the impression that Brandeis was supposed to be one of those elite schools that would be around as long as there were still universities.

Brandeis was founded in part because Boston-area Middlesex university was perishing and desperately looking for someone to buy their campus. This startup group jumped on the opportunity. Goes to show that what we think of as eternal is a result of the same kind of turmoil we see as uncommon instability.

[TreadingLife]

Brandeis has a billion dollar endowment.  While that doesn't solve every problem in the world, it certainly solves a few.

[spork]

Becker College - Worcester MA

Interestingly IPEDS shows that Becker's FTE undergraduate enrollment since FY 2006-07 was at its lowest that year -- 1368.  In 2010 it had climbed to 1770, then down to 1514 in 2012, and peaked at 1844 in 2016. By FY 2019, the last year of data in IPEDS at the moment, it had fallen to 1580. So I'm wondering if there was a major collapse in the incoming classes for fall 2019 and fall 2020.

Form 990s show deficits of about a quarter million and half million dollars for FYs 2018 and 2019, respectively. Before that the budget was in the black. Usually net margins were very small, but it didn't have the multimillion dollar deficits in multiple years like many of the institutions discussed on this thread.

[apl68]

That article has a link to an article about a New York University marketing professor named Scott Galloway who predicts that six Massachusetts institutions--Clark, Mount Holyoke, Simmons, Brandeis, UMass Boston, and UMass Dartmouth--are "likely to perish."  I had the impression that Brandeis was supposed to be one of those elite schools that would be around as long as there were still universities.

Brandeis was founded in part because Boston-area Middlesex university was perishing and desperately looking for someone to buy their campus. This startup group jumped on the opportunity. Goes to show that what we think of as eternal is a result of the same kind of turmoil we see as uncommon instability.

And Becker itself, though described as "one of the 25 oldest institutions in the United States," has actually existed in its current form only since 1974.  It was a merger of two tiny institutions, one founded in the late 1700s.  It goes to show how every institution is different.  In this case two "super dinky" schools were able to merge to form a viable entity that has lasted four decades.  Whereas polly's SD evidently had no handy neighbors to merge with.

[Hibush]

Brandeis has a billion dollar endowment.  While that doesn't solve every problem in the world, it certainly solves a few.

According to the Wiki article, Albert Einstein was the organizing group's public face and they wanted to call it Einstein University. But he quit when the fundraisers were publicly overstating their fundraising success to get more donors to what is now a billion-dollar endowment. Their technique worked, so Einstein's principles about telling the truth were not appropriate to the situation.

[spork]

John Carroll University starts firing tenured professors:

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2021/03/05/john-carroll-u-dramatically-alters-terms-tenure.

[Hibush]

John Carroll University starts firing tenured professors:

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2021/03/05/john-carroll-u-dramatically-alters-terms-tenure.

John Carroll is described as "small Jesuit institution in Ohio".  Does that description not contain three strikes against financial viability in the current situation? 

When the finances are so bad that you are taking operating expenses from the endowment principal and firing tenured professors, there is no positive story for a Board of Trustees to tell. But this one seems especially bad in trying to spin layoffs as an effort to save the institution of tenure while ignoring what that institution requires of them. One of the things it requires is that they be honest, but that is clearly too much to expect.

[Mobius]

There are also two other Catholic SLACs a few miles away (Notre Dame College and Ursuline). Schools are ripe for a merger.

This line is some baloney: "John Carroll's holistic approach to education is why so many professors wanted to teach there in the first place, she said..."

Does anyone believe the vast majority sought out John Carroll or was the university was hiring at the right time?

[jimbogumbo]

On a related note: https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2021/03/05/narrowing-enrollment-pipeline-pressures-roman-catholic-colleges