I just discovered this page and thread. St Leo UNIVERSITY cracks me up. My sister went there close to 40 years ago when it was little ol’ St Leo College in the middle of nowhere (which described a lot of Florida back then to be fair!). I was visiting her in Baltimore a few years ago and then I went onto DC. I had to a do a triple take when I saw a poster for St Leo Uni in the metro!!
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The latest casualty: Iowa Wesleyan University is closing this May due to financial and enrollment trends (though there had been a meaningful enrollment increase this past year, just not enough of one).
This is another where a partnership with St Leo University fell through a few years ago—I hadn’t realized there had been more than one of those!
There’s also an interesting (in a kind of morbid way) subplot of conflict between the university’s and the Iowa governor’s claims about requests for financial support as part of this story.
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Quotes are from the article:
It came despite not just enrollment growth but improved student retention and success in efforts to address economic and workforce challenges in Southeast Iowa.
Because those gains — including a year-over-year enrollment uptick from 782 in fall 2021 to 878 this year — have not been enough post-COVID to ensure financial stability
This makes me think that there are a number of colleges out there who need to be more proactive about seeing the coming troubles and to create and implement plans for sustainability, as this seems to (partially) be a case of too little, too late.
Wesleyan reports 110 full-time employees, including 35 faculty and 75 staff members.
Is a 1:2 ratio (faculty:staff) common at universities? Or is it because of the size of the university…i.e. smaller universities have a bigger ratio than a larger school which would have a similar number of administrators for certain essential functions, but more faculty due to a larger student body)?
18 athletic programs
70 percent of undergrad students participate in a sport
Iowa Wesleyan is an NAIA Division 1 school. Perhaps part of the problem for it is that 70% of its students were getting athletic scholarships? I’m surprised a school like this wouldn’t have switched to D3, as D1 just doesn’t seem financially feasible.
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It varies widely, but 32% faculty isn’t remotely out of bounds (though it’s on the low side for private colleges). I don’t know where precisely to find numbers on a per-institution basis, but the Department of Education has faculty:staff FTE counts by state separated by public and private colleges (and within each of those, broken down by 4-year and 2-year institutions).
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@LionsTigersAndBears has shared a really interesting data aggregator on this thread: College Tables - college data aggregator / filter
Among some of the things that this college closings thread would probably find very interesting are the charts showing enrollment over time and institutional finances (revenue minus expenses in particular, but also assets, and percentage of revenue from tuition). For instance, here’s the financial info for Iowa Wesleyan:
and its enrollment picture, showing the recent uptick in numbers:
Here is Birmingham-Southern’s financial picture:
and its undergraduate enrollment picture:
Frankly, I think this could be a very dangerous rabbit hole for me, but also a really great resource for families investigating their college options.
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Yeah, it doesn’t get as much attention here on CC as it probably should, but 2-year colleges as a sector of higher education nationwide are experiencing an existential enrollment crisis.
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Definitely declining interest for high school grads and older in many (but not all) places:
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ASU continues their LA expansion, it was the first location of their ASU local initiative. https://asulocal.asu.edu/
ASU also has a larger CA presence, including articulation agreements with all 116 community colleges. Our California Portfolio | ASU in California
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Cardinal Stritch University in Wisconsin (which, I have to admit, I had not heard of til I saw the headline come across my email) will close at the end of this academic year. No clear plans announced yet for how its students (a bit under 900 undergrads, a bit under 500 grad students) can finish their degrees.
But here’s a crazy enrollment statistic: It went from 5,159 students in 2011 to 1,365 in 2021. That’s an unbelievably steep decline.
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Wow! That sounds like terrible leadership decisions.
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Here’s an update on Birmingham-Southern from last week:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/birmingham-southern-college-will-remain-open-moving-forward-to-next-school-year/ar-AA19xTDa
Based on promising signs from some legislators, the university has decided to stay open next year. In reading the whole article, however, it still seems quite dubious as to whether or not these positive signs will actually result in the needed money. Since things have also been so up-in-the-air they’ve also had students looking to transfer and for staff members to find new positions. Since I know I would be very hesitant to send my kid to a university that didn’t know if it’d be open or closed for the next school year in April, I’m not optimistic about the size of its entering class, either.
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Living arts college closing down
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Can’t read the second article (without a subscription), but thanks for sharing the info on these changes in higher ed.
Interesting article listing all colleges closing or merging since 2016
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Interesting that almost all are religious schools, and especially Catholic liberal-arts colleges.