(Meant to reply to thread not tobyou specifically @kelsmom).
An issue is that Emerson is a niche college - excellent for creative fields but resulting in low paying jobs at least at first - yet with high net costs (basically Pell grant families were expected to devote 100%or close to 100% income to college) and little in institutional funds (hence, FAFSA dependent if only for a package presenting federal loans.) So, with no FA package and no way to afford a college that would have low ROI, students turned elsewhere, making a trend worse (Emerson has trended this way for 5 years or so IIRC.)
I agree they found the best attention-grabbing headline.
7 Likes
Totally agree, @kelsmom. Having worked with schools who are trying to get this kind of information, I have learned that it’s almost impossible to get any/good info from people who choose not to apply or not to attend. But it’s definitely worth trying to understand.
What I have learned in that same capacity is that often, organizations believe that a situation/crisis caused something to occur when it fact, it may have simply exposed or accelerated an existing problem. (Oh, the number of timrs I have heard “As a result of covid…”!)
I’ve mentioned before that quite a few schools are probably staring down some existential issues but are having a tough time pulled the trigger on difficult responses. It’d be easier if there was less negative press and more support for these “recovery plans” before the patient was on the deathbed. Unfortunately, not the world we live in.
7 Likes
And following up on this one from September, yes, Union Institute & University in Ohio has resigned its accreditation, which is one of the last steps in an orderly closure.
3 Likes
Sounds like Marquette has seen headwinds approaching, and is deciding to take a measured approach, though—cutting the budget by $31M is hard (especially given inflationary pressures), but doing so over 7 years is likely to make the negatives for students, faculty, and staff quite a bit less intense.
7 Likes
In reading the Marquette announcement from March, it feels like they are “planting the flag”, and will use it as the lever for all of the program cuts they are going to make over the next few years. I’m also guessing that they are redirecting the “40% re-investment” to capital budgeting… I’d guess debt service increases / improvements.
As @dfbdfb points out, inflation is going to put significant pressure on a “hard cap” for the operating budget. Based on the numbers provided ($31M = 7%)… the schools (very roughly calculated) $450M budget with 2% annual increases would be $500M in 6 years. If the expectation is that the budget in 6 years will be $30M less, they they are going to have to cut double programmatically to get there.
I’d expect a few announcements each year that start with “In keeping with the Marquette 2031 long term vision for the university, the board has decided to no longer offer…”
5 Likes
Eastern Nazarene College in Quincy announces closure - Boston News, Weather, Sports | WHDH 7News
Eastern Nazarene College in Quincy, MA to close.
6 Likes
Clark Summit University closing… yet another Pennsylvania University.
Keystone college could be next?
3 Likes
Yet another Art college closes! This time in Chicago.
3 Likes
Columbia College Chicago is one of the teach out colleges. Unfortunately, that school has been in the news for its own struggles recently.
3 Likes
In Chicago Columbia College of Chicago and Roosevelt University are struggling. Let’s see if they merge as RMU merge with RU didn’t add value except real estate
1 Like
When colleges close, how many of the affected students actually find the teach out colleges suitable (affordable, has the desired academic programs, accepts transfer credit from the closed college, commutable for commuter students, etc.)?
1 Like
I don’t know, but I have read in some press releases that the teach out schools are trying to keep the net cost the same as it was at the school that’s closing. I’m sure other schools don’t bother to match, though - especially if they figure that the other school is closing at least in part due to offering too many discounts.
1 Like
Fewer than half of the students whose colleges close down go on to get degrees, which provides an indirect, partial answer to the question.
5 Likes
That is worse than the overall 6-year graduation rate to bachelor’s degrees (64%).
However, when they were open, how did the closing colleges’ graduation rates compare?
3 Likes
And yeah, that’s the sort of comparative stats I’m having trouble finding an easily usable source for.
Also useful to know would be how many junior- and senior-level students fail to complete their degrees when their college closes down.
4 Likes
Senior level students probably have the worst situation with respect to transferring, since they may have taken more specialized upper level courses that may not transfer as well as common lower level courses. They also have less time to catch up on different general education requirements at the teach out colleges.
3 Likes
Sorry if previously mentioned but did not see it in a search…
RIP University of the Arts in Philadelphia.
Something shady clearly happened behind the scenes because the sudden closure was announced on May 31 and they were completely shut down one week later. Students were blindsided. It had been around since 1870.
Some details here on how it went down:
University of Arts closure remains a mystery.
1 Like
I agree, that sounds extremely shady, especially the fact that the upper administration all skedaddled without saying anything.
2 Likes
I work at a university that did a teach-out program for a college that closed. For the rising seniors, we made huge exceptions to our own regular policies to match them to what the other college would have required. For example, their college required 8 less total credits to graduate than ours, so we honored that. We were liberal with the application of their transfer courses and honored the gen ed curriculum of their previous school so that no rising senior would have to take more courses than they would have had to take their senior year at the closed school. The “teach-out” was just for rising seniors. Non-seniors did not have all these accommodations, but were handled as any other transfer student but with some extra grace in equivalencies and substitutions. Financial aid matched their previous institution so they wouldn’t pay more.
13 Likes