Requiem for a College: What it's like when a college closes. Human emotions and business decisions

Hello, welcome back to another episode of This Week in College Viability. My name is Gary Stocker. It was on February 3rd, 2017, St. Joseph College, a small college in Rensselaer, Indiana, announced it would suspend operations. Effectively ending an over 100-year history as a 4-year college. While most of the world may not have taken notice, the day left a painful void in the lives of the college's students, faculty, employees, alumni, and the surrounding community. Requiem for a College is their story. Many books have examined the trend of small college closings. This one looks at what happens to the people involved. My guest today is Jonathan Nichols, and he has drawn upon hundreds of hours of interviews conducted over 5 years, as well as piles of documentation, to determine exactly what happened at the college and in what ways the loss transformed so many lives. Not only that, but as St. Joseph's College is part of the continuing wave of small college closures in America, Requiem for a College links St. Joseph's to other colleges that have closed, showing commonalities as well as lessons for other institutions to heed. Great tragedies, they say, often provoke conspiracy theories. In its reconstructed, definitive account of this institution's collapse, Requiem for a College demonstrates that causes of these tragedies are often more human and mundane than shadowy conspiracies, but are thus in their own way much sadder. John Nichols, welcome. I can't tell you what a privilege it is to have you on the podcast today. Thanks for joining us.

Thank you so very much, Gary. I am honored and privileged to be here.

"Requiem for Colleges" is not just a story about St. Joseph's College in Rensselaer, Indiana. It's really a story that continues today with just different names. And as you look back in the last couple of years, John, what, what were the factors that really made you say, I've got to write this book?

For me, the number one factor of a few that I went through throughout the couple-year process of writing, the number one was I wanted to understand. I wanted to understand why this all came about, why I lost my job, why my students and I lost our community. And I figured that if I could come to understand it, then that would help me go a long way towards accepting it and dealing with the loss. So, and I do feel, I'll always feel sad, I'll always feel angry, of course, but now that I understand what happened, it is much easier for me to deal with.

With all you've written, all you've talked about in the last few years, was the closure of St. Joseph's avoidable?

It— I, I think about this quite a bit, and I think for one thing you would have to go back a few decades with St. Joseph's College because it was a cumulative effect of a number of factors and a number of decisions. So we would have to go back go back a fair ways in time and make different decisions. But in the recent history, I started to think that the 4 men who made up what's called the Gang of Four in that particular chapter of the book, who were 4 alumni, fairly successful businessmen, who started to size up what was happening at the college, and they had developed a plan for how to maybe start bringing the college back in this and on a more sustainable path. And this was in around 2014. Had that been well received by leadership, it's possible positive changes would have started. But then you got to factor in that 2020 comes along— COVID lockdowns. I don't think there would have been sufficient time with that plan to get enough revenue positive momentum going to avoid closure. Just like a lot of other institutions got hit, I don't believe we could have survived that hit.

Yeah. And this is kind of a longer quote, but before I go there, yeah, you're talking about Alderson Broadus in West Virginia and the essence of what I know I posted today was, is this going to happen again tomorrow or next week or next month or certainly next year? And at what point do faculty and staff and community leaders say, hey, we should have been acting on this a long time ago, the signs are already there. And we'll talk about that a little bit later on. But yeah, you're right, you know, love can be blind. That's another trite phrase we can use. And I think that's what we're seeing in relationship to these, to many of these private colleges. But you go on to say, and this was in an article from the Chronicle of Higher Education right before the book was published, right before, right after the announcement in April 2017, and it says, the faculty at St. Joe's who believed in the college remained here despite stagnant salaries, egregious insurance deductibles, and significant drops in retirement contributions. Many of us hoped these sacrifices would be temporary by working together, streamlining our academic programs, and mounting a full-court press on fundraising and recruitment. We thought we could evade the fate that seemed to plague so many colleges these days. And John, in hindsight, how would you characterize that quote now in 2023?

I think that the quote is an accurate reflection of our mindset at that time and how the mindset continued to be. We were dedicated to the place. We believed in what we were doing. We believed in the core humanities program that was our general education program there at the college. And at the same time, we were not aware fully of the real financial state. Even the most cynical among us— and he was a cynic— said, I think we have 6 years. I think that's what we're looking at. So we thought, well, okay, there's time, but We just did not have a real idea of the scope of the problem, and that is something that is not uncommon, I don't think. One bit of defense I can offer for us is that in the spring of 2016, before we began our final academic year, the faculty all received raises, and the exterior of certain buildings started to get renovations. The very day when the announcement was made to close the college, I saw a conference room being painted and spruced up, and I thought, this is all antithetical. This is not what a college in financial exigency does. You don't give your employees raises. And so we— I think a lot of us, myself certainly included, thought, well, if we're in terrible financial shape, we wouldn't be doing all of this, right?

Yeah. Yeah.

Famous last words.

Yeah. You know, just another example of that, when Cardinal Stritch closed earlier this spring, there was a story that ran a week later, or a day later, maybe, and it was a student who had toured the campus that morning, that morning, and the college had said in the timeframe that she and her parent were there, the college was closing. And I know I wrote after the fact, somebody knew a long time ago. That cardinal stritch was closing. What's going on with that? Yes, that continues to bother me. That's a topic for another day, but it's just— it's going to happen tomorrow or next week or next month or next year.

It will.

And the next quote, or the last quote I want to talk about from the book before I ask some other questions, is one about economic realities. And I'll quote you from— again, this is the article in the Chronicle: I know our college was never going to be shielded from the realities of the world, Whole lives and communities have been torn asunder by the closings of steel mills, factories, corporate offices, and other industries. And there is no reason, you say, to think academia should have enjoyed any special immunity from such things. So, John, again, with the benefit of hindsight and even living day to day in higher education, do you sense that higher education professionals don't believe economic realities impact their industry?

I think that from reading publications like The Chronicle or Inside Higher Ed, there are certainly a set of academics who are concerned, who do see this wave of small college closures, and they're, they're worried. However, I think I run into more and more colleagues in the industry who, when I bring this up, they respond with, well, I teach gen ed, so I know I'm safe, or I'm tenured, I'm safe, or I teach at a state institution, so we're funded by tax dollars, so we're safe. And I think in each case you're talking about, I can think of a couple different scenarios where, no, you are not safe. You— this is— it's actually much more fragile than you think because it was far more fragile than I thought when I was there. And studying this trend, I found— started to see how anything we people construct, whether it's a city, an institution like a college, a society, it's a set of dominoes. And one good shove in just the right place and all the dominoes come down. So it is definitely something to be concerned with, and I don't know if that level of concern is there for most faculty members.

Yeah, I tend to agree. And for those listening or watching this video or listening to it via podcast, we're speaking with John Nichols, who wrote, and I will add self-published, the 2022 book Requiem for a College about the 2017 closure of St. Joseph's College in Rensselaer, Indiana. And I think early on in the book, John, you talk about mixed communication. And in the timeframe that St. Joseph's was going through its trauma, the board and leadership was sharing that HLC, the Higher Learning Commission out of Chicago, was threatening to maybe close the college in mid-2017, as I recall. But HLC kind of had a different message. What was going on there, and based on your research and what you found out?

What was going on was— is really rather astounding to me. And you've identified an area that if I were to go back and redo this book, I would ask more questions about just this matter with HLC. What had happened was HLC did a 2012 accreditation visit and had remarked that we see financial trouble here, but There is time to improve. We'll talk to you when we come back for the next site visit. They came back and every part of the assessment passed except for finances. They said, we do not— we see a combination of high debt, high tuition discounts, and deferred maintenance. We are going to place your accreditation on probation. And give you a couple years to get a house in order. And normally when I looked around at other colleges who've had this happen to them as well, their— the response by the other colleges has been, okay, what do we have to do? Show us what we need to do. And HLC provides technical assistance and guidance and hopefully gets the institution back into solid financial shape, or at least on their way toward towards it. What St. Joseph's, the administration and the board leadership, decided to do was to challenge this verdict, was to appeal it and say, we don't believe this is a fair assessment, we don't believe it's accurate, please reconsider. HLC came back with a response saying, our response and assessment stays the same, you're on probation. And in reading the letter they sent back, you can sort of read that HLC is basically saying, you don't realize how deep in stuff you really are right now. And so the decision of probation remains, and that, according to many of the board members who voted to close, said that was a key factor in their deciding this needs to shut down. And what was also interesting is I talked to a board member in May of 2017, right around the very final commencement, and this board member said, well, it was probably all over when we lost accreditation. And I thought, we never lost accreditation. We still had it. It was on probation. So even there, a voting board member didn't seem to fully comprehend what the HLC situation was. So, but that can tend to happen, I think, when you have a college with around about 1,000 students, but a board membership that numbers at around 30, and they meet 2, maybe 3 times a year.

Yeah. And I'm doing work and research on just that factor. And it's again a conversation for another day. Maybe you and I can talk about that another time. Different podcasts, but there continue to be developing concerns about the boards who lead these private colleges for a lot of reasons. None of them have to do with bad intentions. They have to do with not having the right structure in place, not having right communications in place. Again, a topic for another day. And as we go forward, I'm just scribbling notes over here on what we'll talk about the next time we have a podcast, John.

Great.

One of your colleagues, and his name was Stephen Nickel— I'll ask you to identify him here in a second— One of the things Stephen Nichols said in your book was, the thing that really sticks with me is that in hindsight, we almost should have seen it coming. Everyone knew the college had issues that were not being dealt with properly. And who was Mr. Nichols? I can't recall. And the second part of that question is, do you fear that faculty at other colleges are falling into that same denial that you wrote about in Requiem for a College at St. Joseph's?

Well, Stephen Nicol was a student. He was a very, very good student. He was one of the seniors, graduating seniors of that year, who decided to mount a sort of resistance against the decision to close. And a very admirable group of young men who you would think, well, I'm out of here in a couple months, I got a job, or I got grad school. I guess this really doesn't hurt me much, but that speaks to the value that these— everybody held for this institution, and they wanted to do something. But as Stephen pointed out, that there were all of these signs, and what's important is that that came from a student point of view. So what the student, I think, is experiencing is directly day to day are the results of the deferred maintenance. They are running into classrooms that if there's— if it's in a certain building, then it might have water leakage that day. It might have plaster that's kind of crumbling or a windowsash that hasn't been painted in a year or more, or they're in a dorm room that has a problem with mold, or, you know, the day-to-day things that that faculty don't see, right? And admin administrators don't see, and certainly the board, in our case anyway, doesn't see. And I dare say many institutions, the board doesn't see that either. So in that sense, I wouldn't be surprised if at other colleges that same kind of denial— yeah, well, I was going to say lack of awareness, same thing. But yeah. Yeah, it wouldn't surprise me.

And I remember reading in your book, "Ruckwin for College," and seeing in other news reports in the last couple of years that as colleges go through the final lack of transparency and pure speculation, idle speculation, speculation in a vacuum, there's almost always stories about there's hope, there's somebody who's gonna come and save us. Be it a, a given donor or two or another college that wants to merge. And that's kind of a setup. I'm gonna ask you to speculate a little bit, John. That's kind of a, a setup for the next question. Think back to 2015, 2016 when the awareness was minimal at best. Would your faculty colleagues have been receptive to a merger or other form of consolidation in that 2015, 2016 timeframe?

There was talk of it, that it would be a smart decision. And we'd like— there was a few of us who spoke about, wouldn't it be interesting if we were a satellite campus, say, of Notre Dame? Since we're both Catholic colleges, someone in the leadership suggested, why not partner with DePaul University, another alma mater of mine? Because the missions of the two institutions are in sync with one another. So that, I think we— there were people who would have been open to it. Now there's a couple challenges there. One is that with you, Saint Joe was $27 million in debt, not— and that's not counting the deferred maintenance and a few other debts. Most institutions are going to say, well, why the heck would we take this on and tie ourselves to the sinking ship? That's just not going to happen. But the other thing is the inevitable change that comes with a merger. There would have been job losses, probably. There would have been a cultural change because you're not yourself anymore. And then that would have maybe caused problems with alumni, this idea of Well, this isn't my idea of St. Joseph's College anymore. Well, that was gone. And I saw a tweet of a year ago and I screenshot it because it made so much sense. A tweet or on X or whatever it's called today, I don't know. But it said that this person said, I think sometimes failure to act comes from knowing deep inside that things have changed forever and they're never going to be the same again. And I said, wow, that really resonates with me. I think that is what was going on with a lot of faculty, alumni, and anybody associated with the college, because in the— one of the remarks that the chair of the board Gabe said, we didn't want to change this place we love, so we didn't do certain things. And I thought, yeah. And I think there was that reluctance all around because the way things had been, however great, just weren't going to work anymore. I mean, that was gone forever. And the words gone forever are pretty painful to just about any human being.

Yeah, amen. And as I read through the book and did all those highlights I was telling you about, And for those looking at thinking about purchasing the book, don't do it yesterday. If you're looking at this kind of scenario, whether you're faculty, staff, community leader, or even college leader, the two parts of the book are the first part, which are, I don't know, John, touching, sad, maddening, all those kind of things, because it details really the individual challenges and emotions of all these faculty. And when you read it, you'll see John Nichols was very emotional. As she went through this process. But it was really the second part that really nailed this down as, I think, a book for everybody to read. And that you did some serious analysis and digging of records of what the Board of Trustees did and did not do in that whole closure timeframe, both before and after. The Board of Trustees had a fiduciary responsibility, and you go to great lengths to describe what that is. Looking back on it, is John Nichols' opinion— what is John Nichols' opinion on the board honoring that fiduciary responsibility to St. Joseph's College?

They didn't do it. They did not. And I don't say that as commentary on any one individual on the board, because as you pointed out earlier, in almost every case, board membership is composed of individuals who can make great decisions. They've proven it in their careers. And in St. Joe's case, I think with very few exceptions, the members of the board all love the college as much as I or anyone else did. Um, but as an entity, as a group, it didn't work. It fractured and it stopped working. I would love to get a TARDIS, a DeLorean, or any kind of time machine and get it full of scholars in, uh, group psychology and organizational leadership and be able to take them back to the board meetings and just watch and be able to figure out what was going on, because I think that it would have been a marvelous case study for those disciplines and just see how Despite the qualifications and despite the intentions, it just wasn't working as a group name. I mean, the, the many conflicting opinions I collected, it— I sort of, between the dysfunction and between the decades of financial difficulties, I'm surprised the college lasted until 2017.

Interesting. And you know, you talk about fiduciary in the book and do a great job of putting in the context of higher education. One of the things that I want to kind of get your thoughts on is, is a position I've taken, and I think I shared with you in our previous discussions, is college presidents will say today, my college is fine, my college is fine, my college is fine, my college is closing, right? And that's how— that's kind of how it was at St. Joseph's, and really all— almost every other college that has closed in the last 5 or 6 years. And so when, when we get to that point, I really, this is a relatively recent discovery of mine. I can't fault the college leaders for saying that because they have that fiduciary responsibility. However, it begs the question, and I'd like to hear your thoughts on this, who do you think is the fiduciary for the faculty and staff and students to protect their interests in light of the fact that these smaller private colleges some of them aren't so small, continue to close and will continue to close?

I've thought about that quite a bit, and I don't know if I have a very good answer, but in an ideal situation, as I look through the layers of accountability for finances, I think about, well, okay, every institution just about has a vice president of business, so they're in charge of finances. They're hired by a president who's hired by a board. The ultimate responsibility belongs to the board of trustees. I just keep coming back to that, and they're the ones who should be bearing the responsibility for anything that goes on. And there's not much of an excuse for them to be unaware of things or plugged into what's happening. As for who's looking out or the others who are harmed. I think that's a discussion we're going to have to have in education in the coming years. What entity is looking out as almost— I don't know if regulatory is the right word, or maybe a watchdog sort of organization looking out for the best interests of the faculty, employees, and the students. Because you're right, we keep seeing the same thing play out. We talked about the school in West Virginia. We talked about Cardinal Stritch. How it's sudden, but of course somebody has to know. And what became clear to me with Saint Joe is that, yes, they knew the plane was crashing, but they're, they're as pilots saying, we could be heading in for a little bit of discomfort. And they're trying to figure out, how can I crash this thing as, as well as possible? So that means control of information. And undoubtedly they are doing what the corporate model says. You go find a consultant. In PR, and they're controlling the information that gets out, and they're not going to let the closure announcement get out a second before they're ready. Unfortunately, that doesn't take into account the students that we just talked about who, you know, just got done touring a campus and they're ready to go move, thinking about moving into their dorm, and, oh, sorry, we're closing. Um, so that doesn't It's more about, well, it's a controlled burn and it's a control of information and the people in leadership are the ones driving that. So whether it's Department of Education or I don't know what, but yeah, there should be somebody holding them to account.

And again, we're going to talk about this in a minute, but the work I do on the College Viability App is intended to be available for parents, students, faculty. And just yesterday I created a faculty version that's out there so faculty can look at the enrollment comparisons, the finance comparisons, and endowment comparisons, because I'm worried that there is no fiduciary and that by the time we get one, it'll be way too late to have that fiduciary responsibility for faculty and students and staff. All right, so John, thousands of people are going to watch this. and many of them will be faculty, they'll be staff, they'll be students, they'll be community leaders. What's— if you could pick one, the most important piece of advice, let's just focus on faculty. If you can just pick one of the most important pieces of advice you would give to faculty sitting in their chairs today, just like you were in December of 2016 before all this closure stuff hit, what was that one piece of guidance, what would that one piece of advice be?

Is it all right if I give two?

Because I'll give you two. I'll give you two.

All right, thank you. Well, first of all, number one is related to enrollment. And enrollment becomes somewhat self-evident. And everybody can pick up on if your enrollment's in decline. Everybody on the whole institution can figure that out. But demand to know what kinds of tuition discounts are going on and what is the average tuition discount. At St. Joseph's College, there was barely anybody paying full price. I'd be surprised if there was. The average discount was around 60%. So if you're doing that and that's backed— well, if you have a lot of discounts, what's backing it? Is it a grant? Is it a scholarship fund? Is, is it your endowment? Because if your endowment— we were talking the other day about a small institution, what kind of endowment they should have. You said, uh, $50 million, I believe.

Yes.

I— that, that, uh, I was aiming higher, actually, but particularly if they have big sports programs. So I would really want to know what's the average tuition and Factor that into your assessment of the situation. But also look at how is your leadership being held to account. When something goes wrong, what has happened? What kind of action does the board of trustees take? What kind of action does the president take? That begins to be telling if this is going to be business as usual or is everyone committed to make the kind of changes if need be, try to survive in the 21st century.

Yeah. And it brings up a point about the tuition discounting. And I write and talk about this all the time. Another college that closed, Iowa Wesleyan, this year, their enrollment actually grew 300-plus students from 2014 to 2021. And yet they closed this year. Their tuition discount— and remember, tuition discounts aren't scholarships. They're not merit aid. It's just unfunded discounts, just like you and I get, John, when we go to the grocery store or Walmart or buy a car. They're just discounts. They're unfunded. So the school is foregoing money. In effect, Iowa Wesleyan was giving away the store to increase enrollment. And as I see you nodding your head, the next time I'm going to say is something I've said many times: enrollment does not pay your salary. Enrollment does not. It's the net tuition revenue from students that pay the salary and keep the lights on, all those kind of things. That's an important distinction. And John, I think many don't make that connection yet. I've even had a college president tell me his parents tell him they would rather have higher tuition rates and larger discounts, scholarships, merit aid, because then they go to the neighbor next door and says, my son got a $25,000 scholarship to whatever, sing, dance, play football because they're sharp. And the discount, the $25,000 is, You can call it whatever you want, but it's a discount. There are— there's not $25,000 being transferred from one account to the other. It's just a discount. All right.

Yes, that's, that's the truth. And everybody in higher education really needs to get their, their perception of that straight.

I mean, so put your futurist hat on, John. 2030. Talk to me what you think based on the experience you've done, had the research you've done, what does, what do private colleges, particularly small rural ones, look like in 2030?

Well, you're trying to tap into, I think, my love of science fiction, and in a sense, um, but I, I really honestly don't know, um, I don't know what it's going to look like. We could do a whole separate podcast on what AI is going to do to colleges. But let me talk to you about what I'm scared most— most scared about, in addition to this trend of closures and finance, is that there will be something— we're only starting to see it with higher education— that a reactionary sense that will cause us to lose sight of what college is supposed to do. And there will be increasing pressure for colleges to become job training grounds. Now, I have nothing against getting a job. Big fan of having a job. Being someone who lost his, uh, yeah, that's good. But, um, in addition to that, we're supposed to be developing the mind as well. So that, for example, where at the college I teach that they could— a student could go and get a degree in our automotive program or our manufacturing program, be able to go get a very good job that pays well, they can support their family. In addition to that, our outcomes say that the other faculty in the college are dedicated to enhancing your communication skills beyond what you have in high school, so you can speak, you can write, You can argue for what you want. You can recognize what someone else is arguing. You have an understanding of other people and other cultures so that when— that makes you a better coworker. That makes you able to speak to a wider range of customers for your employer. And it makes you just an all-around better employee if you can communicate well and work with different groups of people. Also, it gets to the question of what kind of nation do we want to be. What kind of democracy do we want to be? Because part of the education should be about analyzing information and understanding arguments. We've had a lot of discussion in the recent year around misinformation, disinformation, and what that is. So it's more vital than ever before that for what we would call an educated person, they're able to see a claim, ask if it's a quantitative claim, okay, where's this data? Coming from and how is it being presented to me? Who's presenting it? What exact evidence do they have to back their claim? And be able to answer those questions. A good friend of mine said that in response to the push now for trade school education, which is great, that's what somebody wants to do. They said, well, the, the people who fix my car and who do my roofing, They get to vote. They're voters too. So it benefits everyone to be able to have these skills beyond what our jobs entail. And I also tell this to my students. I say, I've had the usual students say, well, college doesn't really get you ready for life. And I say, I agree and I disagree. I disagree because of everything I just said about what we're dedicated to do. To make you a good employee through all these various fields and disciplines so that you have a variety of skills to draw upon. But I agree with you in that there's no schooling that gets you ready for losing a career like I thought I was when I wrote in the experience of St. Joseph's College. But it happens to a lot of people despite all their efforts. Something doesn't work out, or it doesn't get you ready for when you lose a parent. Nothing does. But what a bit of education in things like literature, philosophy, history— that helps you see you're not alone, that that's life that's happening to you. You're not being punished. It's just a sad fact of life that there are these things that happen, and you're not alone. And maybe you can take a few lessons on how to persevere and get through what it is that's happening.

Yeah. And then before we talk about how to get the book, you've seen our College Viability app. Yeah. And for those watching and listening, it provides 8 years worth of comparisons of private and public colleges across a bunch of different statistics and data from the National Center for Education Statistics. It wasn't available in 2015. We just started releasing in 2021. If you had had access to a tool like that in that 2015, 2016, 2017 timeframe, would it have made a difference?

I, first of all, really like the app. I've been playing around with it and it's just fascinating to see all the different data points that come up for a different institution. Had I seen that and had my colleagues seen that in 2015, 2016, I think it, yes, Short answer is yes, it would have forced us to look at a lot of the different factors. And even our, as I call him, you know, the town cynic, even he was saying we got maybe 6 years. Well, we may want to be rephrasing that 6 years, and we have a more dire situation on our hands than we had ever realized truly, because if we had that kind of information, that information rather than being reliant upon either college channels to distribute it or having to dig through publicly available records, then that would have been— that's instantaneous. That's right there in front of you. And I would hope that in combination, in concert with having that information and people hearing my story, of saying, look, look what it did to me, that we can have a qualitative and quantitative picture for folks who are in small private colleges, particularly rural ones right now, and help make them aware. It's sort of— and I don't mean to be a doomsayer, really. I see it more as you're at risk for cancer, just like we all are. But there are things you can do to lower your risk. And if you get— the sooner you get started on them, the better.

How can— what— how can viewers, how can listeners get the book, John?

It's available on amazon.com, both as physical copy and as an ebook for the Kindle. And just search for Requiem for a College.

And make— for those again watching and listening, we'll make sure to include links for both the video and the audio version so you can access that. And again, John Nichols, a stunningly good book. I know the term must-read is trite, but if you're in higher education and you're concerned about the financial health and wellbeing and even the viability of your college, the 2022 book from our guest John Nichols, Requiem for College, is something you should have read yesterday. I'll make sure you have links to get that. Go out and get that book and help provide the background information that your college needs so you don't have to go through the trials, traumas, and tribulation that John Nichols and his friends, family, and colleagues went through back in 2017. John, a pleasure. We look forward to talking to you again someday.

Thank you so very much. Love to come back.