College closings continue to mount, with two more schools announcing they'ill shut their doors this ... [+]
The drumbeat of college closings continues. In the past week, two more small, private colleges have announced that financial difficulties have overcome their ability to continue operations, forcing them to shutter their doors.
On April 25, the University of Saint Katherine, an Orthodox Christian college in San Marcos, California abruptly announced it will cease operations at the end of the spring 2024 semester. And on April 29, Wells College in Aurora, New York revealed it would be closing at the end of the current semester, after 156 years of operation.
Here’s a summary of the financial conditions leading to the decisions in each case.
University of Saint Katherine
The University of Saint Katherine was founded in 2010 by Frank Papatheofanis, its current president.
In an email to the campus community that was shared on social media, Papatheofanis said the institution was no longer able to meet its financial obligations due to “a steep shortfall in operating cash.”
“Multiple reasons for this shortfall include extraordinary inflation, higher-than-anticipated salary increases, and high institutional student financial aid,” he said in the email. “The same factors have resulted in the closure of many small colleges and universities across the country.”
The announcement, which apparently caught students and staff off guard, continued, “the Board and I have vigorously explored multiple options that might allow us to continue. Unfortunately, none of these has proven viable. The University is filing for bankruptcy protection. As this is being worked through we will continue to pursue and consider any opportunity we can identify.”
The official closing date for the university, which has an enrollment of less than 300 students is May 18. Arrangements for students to transfer or pursue other options were not yet clear, although an email from Papatheofanis to students obtained by the ABC 10 News affiliate in San Diego listed several other Christian schools that the president claims were committed to take SKU transfers.
In that email Papatheofanis also said that students will be assigned a final independent study project and that he’s working on a plan to offer credit to students who have just one additional semester of school remaining so they can graduate in May, reported the ABC outlet.
Wells College
In their April 29 letter to the campus, Wells College President Jonathan Gibralter and Board Chair Marie Chapman Carroll, wrote, “it is with profound sadness that we announce the forthcoming closure of our beloved Wells College at the end of this academic semester.”
They said that after “a thorough review,” they had determined “that the College does not have adequate financial resources to continue. As you may be aware, many small colleges like Wells have faced enormous financial challenges. These challenges have been exacerbated by a global pandemic, a shrinking pool of undergraduate students nationwide, inflationary pressures, and an overall negative sentiment towards higher education.”
Wells College, which for much of its history was a women’s college, has faced financial struggles for years. According to a summary in Inside Higher Education, its enrollment had fallen from about 500 students several years ago to 357 in fall 2022, and financial documents revealed it had lost money in five of the last 10 available fiscal years.
Wells officials indicated the college had entered into an agreement with Manhattanville University to “become our preferred teach-out partner.” Manhattanville will offer dedicated housing for Wells students and will also support them with transfer plans. Manhattanville is also considering “a legacy agreement that would integrate the Wells College name and history into the Manhattanville community,” according to the letter.
Wells College has developed additional teach-out agreements with several other institutions, including Excelsior University, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Keuka College, Le Moyne College, Mercy University, and SUNY Brockport.
An article in The Hechinger Report last week indicated that “about one university or college per week so far this year, on average, has announced that it will close or merge,” an increase from the slightly more than two institutions per month closing down last last year.
The contributing factors are by now all too familiar — sagging enrollments, decreased tuition revenue, inflation, soaring labor costs, and unsustainable debt often taken on in futile attempts to build or spruce up facilities that might attract more students.
The financial effects of the COVID-19 pandemic are also continuing to take their toll. In fact, the real costs of the pandemic to higher education might just now be coming to be fully realized.
Financially struggling colleges were able to limp through the worst of the pandemic period with the help of three rounds of federal relief money totaling about $77 billion. But those funds are gone now; they’ve all been spent. Bailout money may have temporarily kept the wolves from the doors of cash-strapped colleges, but for many those days are now over. Their financial reckoning is here.
