Ah, it is time for a sad, sad melody. Allow me to pull out my tiniest of violins to provide one.
(No, not personally a fan of 2U and what they’ve been doing whatsoever, why do you ask?)
2 Likes
I ask - because I saw the paid Harvard and MIT $800 mil - which obviously helped lead to the bankruptcy.
Those schools aren’t hurting.
So do share please.
There had been, well, let’s say concerns surrounding 2U for years, reported widely in the Chronicle of Higher Education, among other sources. (There are similar concerns with other online program managers, but 2U was the industry leader.) Basically, 2U and other OPMs found a way for for-profit companies to do all the bad things that for-profit colleges widely do while shielding themselves behind the good names of nonprofit institutions (and, not coincidentally, the lighter oversight of nonprofit institutions).
2 Likes
Interesting that Harvard, MIT, and others would be involved if there was something sketchy.
But I guess they got their money - even if others will now be wiped out.
Admittedly, I don’t know what the company does - I’ll have to look at them more to learn about them.
Yeah, it’s one of those where if you look at OPMs’ stated aims, they look quite good—and the early contracts actually were, by and large, pretty decent. But then the whole sector (and perhaps 2U most of all) went bad very, very fast.
New merger news: Mount Mercy University is merging into St Ambrose University (both are in Iowa).
6 Likes
Harrisburg University closes its international campuses in Dubai and Panama. Seems the financial struggle is starting bite
3 Likes
An article about program cuts, not college closings. I saw it in the Boston Globe with a paywall but found it in The Detroit News without a paywall.
US colleges cutting majors, slashing programs after years of putting it off (detroitnews.com)
3 Likes
One factor (outside of enrollment) leading to belt tightening at colleges is increased rates of dual enrollment. Students enter college from high school with many or most of their general education requirements fulfilled. This is causing cuts to intro level courses, particularly in the arts and sciences.
4 Likes
This tidbit from the article was really mind-boggling for me:
The university’s enrollment rose to around 18,300 students in fall 2020 before steadily falling to about 10,000 students in fall 2023.
That’s a 45% drop in enrollment in three years. 
5 Likes
Though for open-access institutions like the one I work at, it seems to be resulting in a slight but palpable higher demand for upper-division courses—so it’s a weird balancing act.
(Of course, here most DE courses are delivered by university faculty at university campuses. The local school district wants to start having them taught by their own teachers in the high schools. That is IMO a problematic model for all involved, and that would cause some serious issues for my university.)
5 Likes
Students coming in with more DE (or AP, IB, etc.) credit could reduce demand for lower level courses, and either increase demand for upper level courses or graduate earlier than they would otherwise have graduated.
Upper level courses are probably more expensive to teach (a larger number of different courses with smaller class sizes, need faculty in the more specialized areas as opposed to any instructor in the subject).
While getting students to graduate earlier may be advantageous for state-level finances over its state universities (where in-state students are subsidized), it may mean less revenue for private schools. Perhaps that may be why state universities are more generous with transfer credit for frosh entry students than private schools are.
2 Likes
In my state, the VAST majority of DE classes are taught in the high school and by the high school teacher. The only involvement from colleges is they approve the syllabus and then transcript the class (for a price).
6 Likes
We are having the problem of students being granted more credit than they can possibly use. My son, who took a rigorous college-prep curriculum at his public high school with 13 APs, had so many of his AP and honors classes cross-listed as DE that he graduated with 65 college credits. All of those credits were paid by the state and all were from classes at his high school and taught by high school teachers.
If his end goal was an associate’s degree then that is fine. However, he can only apply so many of those classes to gen eds. The DE college was paid by the state for all of those credits, but maybe 24-30 of those credits actually shorten his time at a four-year college.
2 Likes
I’m pretty certain that this is paywalled (sorry!), but the Chronicle of Higher Education has an interesting article this week that uses Wittenberg University as a hook/case study, but asks a deeper question: If a proposal to restructure a college is going to fundamentally change the nature of the institution, might it actually be better for it to put its effort and (limited) resources not into restructuring, but into an extended, orderly closure?
The article: Cash-Strapped Wittenberg U. Envisions a Future With Far Fewer Faculty and Staff
2 Likes
It is paywalled - but it’s a fair question because often when organizations cut so much to the bone, trying to hang onto any shred of survivability, their product and experience becomes lesser as does their customer base. And extinction then becomes inevitable.
Better - to keep their cash, pay off the debtors, and find a suitable exit (with other colleges) for their customers.
1 Like
That just blew my mind. I had no clue that kids were getting DE credits for classes taught by high school teachers. In my state, most of the students go to the university/cc’s campus, whether a main campus or satellite campus. Back in the stone age, my high school was thrilled when a prof who had kids at our school was willing to teach a class there (hence why I took a historical geology class, which was far more interesting than I anticipated).
ETA: Having DE classes taught by high school teachers in a high school kind of makes me feel like it’s a real rip-off and not deserving of any college credit. Unfortunately, I’ve learned to be a bit more cynical as I’ve seen some public high schools with many students in “AP” classes where students either don’t take the AP exam and those that do usually get a 2 or below. Why do they do this? Because the high school gets extra points on its school report card score. But do they actually do any AP-level work in these classes? Generally, no. At most, they have to write an extra paper. So having DE classes taught by non-college faculty is a big flag, IMO.
20 Likes
5 Likes
This makes me sad. I know several kids for whom Wittenberg was life-altering. Ohio doesn’t lack for colleges- don’t get me wrong- but there were kids at that institution (let’s call them quirky/deep/intellectual but perhaps not with the traditional top grade/scores) that might not have gone to college at all-- and really came out transformed.
11 Likes
The article about Wittenberg was also somewhat mind-blowing. I might not have any mind left to be blown pretty soon.
Eliminating 60% of full-time faculty and 25% of noninstructional staff…dang.
The university’s leadership is betting on the premise that students would be happy with a steady diet of online courses, adjunct instructors, athletics, and social opportunities.
And five years ago it finished a $63M gym (originally supposed to have cost $40M). Why, oh WHY, do schools do such things? They had just needed to cut about 10% of their budget ($6.5M) in 2015. So they thought they should then build a big huge expensive gym? Apparently it did boost the athlete enrollment by 12%, but non-athlete enrollment decreased by 30%.
I guess I can see why the faculty at this college would think that a responsible closure would be a better plan altogether, and why they’re feeling sorry for the 400 incoming freshman who had no clue this was on the horizon.
12 Likes