Per the article enrolment has fallen from 17,000 to 5000 in the past decade. I looked up the campus history. It started as LSU New Orleans; it then became UNO but remained part of the LSU system. With the creation of the University of Louisiana system UNO became part of that system. Now it will be back to LSU New Orleans.
Why would an institution not want to be part of a national brand like LSU? Sounds like politics and local hubris was involved.
From Friday’s Marketplace podcast, a brief segment on the demographic a student preference issues facing satellite campuses. The initial hook is Troy University’s plan to close its Phenix City campus, but others are mentioned, and there’s a decent amount about Middlebury’s closure of its MIIS Monterey campus.
Monterey wasn’t a satellite campus for undergraduates. so it wasn’t like having a degree from OSU Lima versus OSU main campus. Undergraduates were exclusively in the Middlebury campus - no undergraduates were choosing between the Middlebury campus and the Monterey campus. No undergraduates were choosing between Monterey and another LAC. No undergraduates were applying to Middlebury College, and being accepted to MIIS instead. No undergraduates (or graduate students) were applying to MIIS because they didn’t have the grades to be accepted to Middlebury College. It’s like saying that the Duke University Marine Laboratory is a “satellite campus” of Duke University.
Furthermore, MIIS was failing as enrollment and applications to Middlebury are exploding. It is the most ridiculous example that they could have thought of to support the point that they are trying to make.
What’s worse is that the author is a Vermont resident and a LAC graduate, and should know better.
I mean, it didn’t say otherwise? I don’t really understand the objection—it was a segment on the economic pressures that are leading colleges to shut down satellite campuses (and the Duke Marine Laboratory is, from a business standpoint, most definitely a satellite campus).
Yet another branch campus at University of Wisconsin branch campus closing.. the 8th branch campus to close beating out Penn state by one for now..
I think that they are conflating “satellite campuses which provide the same services as the main campus, but are limited and to students who are unable to attend the main campus for various reasons” and “satellite campuses that provide specialized services that are not provided by the main campus”.
The former type of satellite campus are dependent for their enrollment on the reflected reputation of the main campus among undergraduates and potential undergraduates. These campuses are, vey often, “consolation prize” for undergrads who cannot afford the main campus or whose grades aren’t good enough. Undergraduates also attend these because they can transfer from the satellite campus to the main campus. So, again, their existence depends on the reputation of the main campus in the student’s chosen major. Finally, the former type of satellite campus relies on the same pool of applicants that the main campus has.
That means that a drop in the size of the applicant pool for the main campus will affect the viability of these types of satellite campuses. Their success or failure really is connected to enrollment processes at the main campus.
The latter satellite campuses serve a different pool than the main campus, and they generally succeed or fail based on their own offerings and popularity. MIIS became a liability unrelated to what was going in at Middlebury College.
Th so-called Demographic Cliff will have no affect on The Duke Marine Lab, even if it affects enrollment at Duke. In the Demographic Cliff affects enrollment at OSU, it will affect the viability of OSU Lima.
Not sure why some are going to the mat for the definition of ‘satellite’ campus, it’s not adding to this conversation.
Middlebury is closing MIIS because it represents over 50% of Middlebury’s projected operating deficit this coming year. And Middlebury not addressing said operating deficit is not an option. Middlebury has been running an operating deficit for 15 or so years, and they still have work to do.
Exactly.
It was from a business-oriented podcast. From the point of view of the modern college as a business, it doesn’t matter what sort of population a satellite campus serves, it just matters that it’s another (read: satellite) campus run by the folks at the main campus, and therefore is either a profit or a loss center for the college as a whole.
And whereas many of these (in business terms) satellite campuses used to be profit centers, with changes in demographics and in expectations around learning, they have often become loss centers, and thus are being closed.
This isn’t a closing, but it does NOT look good for the school:
Rider has a $73M endowment. We don’t know how much of that is restricted, but either way it looks like the threshold for immediate worry about a college’s financial stability is creeping upward.
The Rider News ran another article today, which included this quote from the university’s (new) president:
“We’ve borrowed all of the money we can borrow to the point where no bank would give us additional funding. We’ve taken all the money out of the endowment we can take that wasn’t restricted or used as collateral to borrow money in the past to fill the deficits,” Loyack said.”
If I worked there and was among those spared from being cut, I would certainly be looking for another job. It’s unfortunately probably going to do a quick death spiral.
Having worked for a college that was thisclose to closing, it is truly terrifying and I did, indeed, find another job. However, the president of that school and his staff pulled it out of the fire and it is on its way to financial viability again. I hope that Rider can accomplish the same.
The new president at Rider has apparently brought a school that was on probation by Middle States back from the brink (King’s College in PA), and turned around another (Alvernia). I hope he can make it a trifecta. He’s a $ guy w/ an MBA and also a CPA, so fingers crossed.
A very niche school for sure, but one less option for students interested in sustainability and ecological studies. Faced with financial and enrollment challenges, Sterling College announces it will end degree programs - VTDigger