John Nichols, author of Requiem for a College, compares Fontbonne University's closure to St. Joseph's College's 2017 shutdown. Both saw waves of senior administrator resignations before closing, a pattern Nichols identifies as an early warning sign. Fontbonne attempted a late-stage merger that came too late to reverse financial decline.
Chapters
It's Gary Stocker, and welcome back to a special episode of This Week in College Viability. And we're bringing back a returning guest, John Nichols, author of Requiem for a College. John, it's always fabulous to have you on the show. Thanks for coming back.
Thank you so very much for having me.
So, Fontbonne University was the recent, and what will, I think, continue to be a series of college closures. I think lots more in the coming months or so. What did you notice about Fontbonne that was different than what you went through at St. Joseph's in 2017?
Well, first of all, my sincere condolences to everyone at Fontbonne. If you read Requiem for a College, you know that I feel I've been through this pain and know it all too well. So I'm sorry anybody else has to go through it. As far as differences that I see here. One is that the institution did attempt to try a merger. That's something that, to the best of my knowledge, St. Joe never had talked about doing, but never really pursued with any real vigor. Unfortunately for Fontbonne, that was tried a little late in the financial situation. They tried last December, I think it was. Other than that, really, Gary, all I see are similarities. We have a small Catholic college which was in financial distress, and a few things I highlighted from the article that you sent me from the Post-Dispatch. At least 6 Fontbonne officials resigned prior to the closure announcement, including the heads of human resources, finance, marketing, and registration. That is a lot. Of upper administration suddenly exiting the pattern, to use an aviation term, that should be a signal to most folks. There was something somewhat similar at St. Joseph's. There were 3 major administrators that left about 3 years before the closure or suspension of operations announcement. So that is a sure sign when a lot of people start leaving, then something is amiss. Something else I saw that was similar was that the president cited one of the reasons for their announcement to close is that HLC were asked for a plan for programs they expect to close in order to provide students with options for completing their studies. Sort of, uh, I don't know if this was the intent, but citing HLC as a reason why the institution had to close. HLC answered back saying the institution determines what programs it is closing or discontinuing. HLC has no role in making that determination. With St. Joe, there was something very similar, only more overt. The chairman of the board of trustees claimed that HLC could revoke the college's accreditation in the middle of a term. And of course HLC publicly pushed back on that saying, "No, we would never do that." So I think it's just a little, few similarities.
So is it, are we kind of seeing a pattern, not just with these two, but other colleges, John, where the accrediting agency in this case HLC is kind of becoming the whipping boy excuse for some of these closures?
I don't know how common it is. This is the second time, including St. Joseph's College, that I've seen them listed at least a reason why the college claimed it couldn't go forward. I, I don't know. I think that what we may be seeing is a turn. We've spoken before about how there needs to be oversight of these institutions in order to protect students and employees. So there may be additional pressure from HLC in order to say you need to show us a house that's in order. Or, um, there are going to be problems. One other quick thing I noticed is that the Fontbonne will be closing in 2025, so that at least gives students and employees more time to try to figure out how they're going to reset their lives. And that's something much different than happened at St. Joseph's College, where the announcement was made in February and the final commencement in May.
Yeah, I'm going to be watching that too. I can't say, John, that I've noticed a pattern where colleges are giving their students more lead time, but certainly Fontbonne deserves credit for doing that. McMurray in Illinois a couple years ago. Of course, the child bad example of bad closures was Mount Ida back in Massachusetts back in 2018 or '19. They closed one month, they made the announcement one month, and I think they closed the next. So it'll be interesting to watch if we're looking at more college closures, and we certainly almost certainly are. Be interesting to see what balance we find happens with announce today, close tomorrow, or announce today and close some year or two down the road for that kind of stuff. One of the things that caught my attention about the Fontbonne history is it was just last fall, I think, where they made some announcements about staffing cuts and degree program cuts. And say it was 6 months ago, probably not that long. And now, you know, 6 months later, they're saying, well, we You have to close. Do you make any connection between a college saying, hey, we need to cut back, and then a relatively short time later saying we're done?
Well, obviously I wasn't inside the room when all these decisions were made, but from an outsider in higher ed, sort of looking at their situation, this seems to just seem like a kind of a lot of frantic, desperate last-minute acts to throw something at the wall, see what'll stick, and see if they can make it through. And the president was quoted saying that those layoffs and program cuts that you talked about were necessary to ensure the institution's continued success. And then we have, like you said, just a couple months later, we have this closure announcement. So didn't come with enough— the retrenchment didn't come in soon enough, or it just seems to be the— that when coupled with the rapid departure of several administrators, you begin to wonder if a lot of people were sort of pounding the table, waving their hands, saying, "We got a problem, we've got a problem," and somebody somewhere in leadership control just couldn't see that.
[Speaker] And I think one of the item in the Post-Dispatch story, and I think you might have referenced this, is the students weren't particularly surprised, and that's the headline. But one of the nuances was they were talking about HVACs and elevators not working, And there's a bigger picture story here that goes way beyond Fontbonne. I'm gonna reference a story that I think I posted in my podcast on This Week in College Viability this Monday. And there was an Evergreen College, I can't remember, John, where that is. There was an issue with the carbon monoxide indicators making too much noise. The maintenance staff turned them off because they were annoying. There was indeed a carbon monoxide issue and a student lost their life. As a result of carbon monoxide poisoning. And the bigger picture here is not just the tragedy at Evergreen and the notes from Fontbonne, but what are your thoughts about colleges not having the resources to make sure their students are safe in that college experience?
Well, I think it's disastrous. The number one commitment any higher ed institution should have is to the safety first and foremost of their students, because how can it be an atmosphere of learning if students do not feel safe?
Yeah.
So when deferred maintenance, as we were talking about, uh, in a previous podcast, and as I mentioned in Requiem for a College, there were concerns of course where, and this is a much milder, um, example, but one of the more dilapidated dorms having black mold issues and that possibly leading to upper respiratory issues for students. Yeah, when you, when you have things like that going on, they're naturally going to pop up in places that have a long-term deferred maintenance. One of the things that the mayor of Rensselaer stated publicly in a newspaper interview about St. Joseph's was how reactionary the administration was. If there was a hole suddenly in a roof in a building, well, then they went to go patch it. They just reacted to problems rather than having a proactive, preventative approach. One of the students from Fontbonne said, at best, I think, no real notice, no real plan. And I think that is rather evident. So That, I think, is another commonality with the small colleges that are struggling to find a plan to go forward.
Well, John, I appreciate you. You're quite gracious with your time to give me a couple minutes to kind of draw some connections between what you went through at St. Joseph's and what the students, faculty, staff, and really community are going through at Fontbonne. You and I both know it's going to happen again. And for those of you listening to the podcast who want to read a predictive story that's actually a history, of a College Closing: Requiem for a College, written by John Nichols in 2022, is released, right, John? Correct. In 2022, is available through Amazon and other retailers. It is both an exemplary story of the pain and suffering associated with the closure, and Mr. Nichols did a phenomenal job of doing an after-the-fact research on what the leadership at that college did and did not do. So John, again, my congratulations, sir.
Thank you.
And we'll talk to you again soon.
Appreciate it very much. Looking forward to it. Take care, Gary.
