This Week in College Viability for Jan 29, 2024

It's January 29th, 2024, and it's This Week in College Viability. Hi, it's Gary Stocker, working to be the higher education fiduciary for faculty, staff, students, and their families, and maybe others as well. Hey, what are we talking about this week on this Monday's podcast? Uh, our good friends at Fontbonne and Webster University, people are leaving, and there was a story at MSN we'll talk about. College enrollment picks up for the first time. Yeah, a little bit. We'll talk about that in more detail. 3 more major universities reveal plans for budget cuts. Folks, this is happening everywhere. And this is on a story from Mike Nietzel. Flagships are enrolling more and more freshmen from out of state. Really big story I want to talk about. And a really important guy, sarcasm intended, at University of North Carolina Greensboro is resigning in protest Shock of all shocks, uh, Rick Seltzer's January 24th email newsletter focuses on deferred maintenance. That's something we really want to follow in the coming months and years. Western Oregon University adopts a new grading system. All right, some good, some bad about that. And then Jeff Salengo talks about chasing tuition coupons, and Jeff's got a name for that, is changing college choices interesting trend, and we'll talk about that as well. Cutbacks and layoffs. More officials from, from Fontbonne University and Webster University in St. Louis leave amid enrollment troubles.

And I don't remember the, the numbers, it's not that big of a deal, um, in terms of numbers. 5 or so leaders of higher levels in the organizations are leaving.

Are they jumping off a sinking ship at Fontbonne? Probably. At Webster Webster's not gonna close. They have all sorts of issues that have been self-inflicted. Can they recover from that? I have my doubts. I saw from some source the job description for the new, not the new president, but the new chancellor at Webster. Same old, same old, same old garbage we've seen from before. We'll follow that for sure. It's local. You know, these broadcasts come out of St. Louis.

I take particular interest in some of those stories. Something that's not in St.

Louis, in Youngstown, Ohio, the local community college cuts jobs as enrollment drops.

And this is from Kim Lampkins in, doesn't show the source here, WKBN in Ohio, Youngstown, Ohio. And she reports that the enrollment at Eastern Gateway Community College in Youngstown was 15,000 last fall and dropped to 9,000 this spring. I presume she got that right, but boy, that's a catastrophic drop. Something else going on. And the positions cut were 46, and then made note of the fact that no faculty were part of that closure. All right, headline: College enrollment picks up for the first time in over a decade, but student loan debt is still a major sticking point. All right, let's talk about that in a little bit more detail. The undergraduate enrollment rose 1.2% in the fall of 2023. That's across the country.

However, let's look at it a bigger picture than one year.

In the years since COVID since the COVID pandemic, there are still more than 1 million— that's 1 million fewer students. I'll say that again. There's still more than 1 million fewer students enrolled in college compared with pre-pandemic times. And here's my point. This is a macro look. I'm not going to question the numbers, not for a second. Up 1.2%. But almost certainly this minor, modest at best, increase probably doesn't impact the small rural private colleges. And we'll talk about that in more detail here in a few minutes. So don't say that because overall enrollment is up that everybody is safe. That's not the case. That's not the case at all. We'll continue to see cutbacks, layoffs, and closures despite what Derek Newton at Forbes says. And I'll talk about that later on as well. Page 2: 3 more major universities reveal plans for budget cuts. Now, many times our stories are focused on private colleges, and many times those are smaller private colleges in the middle of nowhere, but these are 3 rather august universities. Penn State announced in this story— and this was in Forbes— a deficit of $140 million. University of Connecticut, and I got a chance to see their women's basketball team last week in Milwaukee. That's fabulous. The University of Connecticut, they have a $70 million deficit. And New Hampshire, we've talked about before, has an announced deficit of $14 million, and they've already laid off 75 employees. Now, none of these colleges, none of these colleges are coming, are going to go anywhere close to closing. It's not going to happen. But what they are already doing will will impact the majors of students and maybe the time to get a degree. Colleges will never admit that. They'll never admit this could increase the time to get a degree. But I already see evidence in the news stories that colleges are cutting back. We've got our own section, cutbacks and layoffs, that colleges are cutting back on both low enrollment majors and low enrollment sections. Of course, there may be an English 101 course and 10 sections, 5 sections, whatever the number may be. Colleges are cutting, are cutting back on those sections in addition to the majors. So if not enough sections of English 101 or Math 101, whatever it is, are open when a student needs them, there's a real chance— and I don't know what the likelihood is, but there is a real chance— it could impact their graduation time period, go beyond the plan, 4 years, 5 years, 6 years, whatever it is. And the analogy that I use is shippers jam packages into trucks. When the Amazon shipper comes to yours and my house, odds are when they started their run, they had a lot of packages in the truck. And colleges are doing the same thing. And to a degree, it's not to their fault, but colleges want to jam students into classrooms. They want to jam students into sections. And jam is an emotional word, I know that. But effectively, that's what's going on. So if I am a parent, If I am a parent with a child in college, here's what I'm doing. I'm aggressively asking that admissions rep for enrollment numbers by major over the last 3, 4, 5, 6 years, whatever they can get you. And I'm asking if a college is increasing or decreasing the number of sections of course offerings, especially in those junior and senior levels. I'm asking to make sure that the major that I want or that my child wants is not at risk of a closing being taken off the board or having so few sections that it becomes very difficult for my child or myself to graduate in the time frame that they want. And don't, don't take generalized answers. Don't say, don't take the comment that we're always adjusting sections. That's not good enough. That's just an excuse. That's just a rationalization. That's not answering the question. Ask for detailed information on gen ed and specialty major sections for the majors you and/or your child are considering. So Audrey Williams in the Chronicle, her story was flagships are enrolling more and more freshmen from out of state. Now here's the quote from Audrey Williams' story. Nearly every public flagship, every public flagship enrolled a smaller share of freshmen from within their states in 2022 than they did two decades earlier in 2002. According to a Chronicle analysis from U.S. Department of Education data, that trend played out at 45— that's right, 45 flagships between that 2002 and 2022 time frame. Now this, this, ladies and gentlemen, is a big story. It really is. And it starts to firm up. And there's more besides this story. It starts to firm up the reasonable speculation that more students are looking at public colleges than has historically been the case. Now, it's not definitive, and I'm not going to say it's definitive, but here's what we want to think about. If we are, like I believe, if we are in the early stages or maybe even the later stages of a market migration from private colleges or even regional public colleges to flagships? What's the impact going to be on higher education in general if families, for whatever their reasons, and I won't list those this time, are choosing the biggies, if you will, the biggie publics for their child's education?

It's not definitive, but here is what to worry about if we are in the early stages, or maybe even the later stages, of a market migration from private colleges and even regional public colleges to the main, to the main public colleges, the flagship colleges, what will be the impact on higher education in general? That's a big topic. That's a big question. It could be substantial. I think it will be. Boy, I can't even begin to think what that might look like, but it's fair game. It's fair game for public discussion. In the Higher Ed Brief, and Higher Ed does some really good stuff, and this was out on January 26th, and this is where I had sarcasm in the lead-in stories today. An administrator at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro— they had some cutbacks and layoffs that we announced a few weeks ago— is stepping down to protest the way the public institution is going about eliminating 19 academic offerings. And you've heard me say this many times before: a college can't change even the most minor of components to its business model before somebody's going to protest. One follows the other, just like 3 follows the 2. It just happens. So it was a resignation later, stunningly made public. Sarcasm again. Charles Bolton, who is the associate dean— whoa, big title— associate dean of University of North Carolina Greensboro's College of Arts and Sciences and interim head— okay, interim head, take that one and run with it— of its anthropology department. Accused university officials of not being transparent, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We've heard that before. We're gonna hear it again. Mr. Bolton, probably Dr. Bolton, accused the university provost, Debbie Storrs, of not meeting the expectations that they had previously set. The details go on, but the essence is Change your business model, get a protest. Change your business model, get another protest. It's not gonna change. Page 3, Rick Seltzer's January 24th email focused on an item I talked about a few months ago. And he talks about deferred maintenance at colleges. And his headline reads, "When Maintenance Can't Be Deferred." And he has a couple stories about cold weather has stressed some boilers for the most part at colleges across the country. One was in North Carolina. I don't see the other one. St. Augustine's University had boiler problems and had to delay student move-in. North Carolina A&T lost heat in 34 buildings. Whoa. And they had to make adjustments. And then the University of Georgia apparently had a bat infestation that they had to fix. All right, they're details, they're anecdotal observations. I understand that. But Seltzer goes on and makes the points that are big picture. He notes that this topic, Deferred maintenance, or preventive maintenance if you will, has been popping up in Chronicle stories for the last 12 years. And I've got 4 stories in, in my notes here. I'm not going to read those off to you. This occurred from 2012 until right now. And it's something I reported from a news source. I think it was in December sometime. The problem may be growing. Last year's annual State of Facilities in Higher Education report from the company Gordian— and this is one I reported on— found that capital renewal needs at colleges jumped $133 $100 per square foot, up from about $100 per square foot in recent years. The bigger picture, Seltzer adds. And finally, the bigger picture maintenance budgets sound sleepy, again from Rick Seltzer. And in some cases, delaying repairs and replacements can be a way for colleges to, to save from cash-strapped scenarios until something goes wrong. Now, these issues have got to be on the minds of college leaders. And I'm going to go out on a limb here. I'm going to go out on a limb. This is a safety— this is a student, student, faculty, and staff safety issue. It's very difficult looking at financial statements, and I don't know that it's reported at all in IPEDS. I'd have to check to track deferred maintenance. And as such, that's why Seltzer says it's easy to overlook it and to push deferred dollars to something that needs short-term dollars for, like salaries or payroll. But is there a tragedy? Is there a tragedy waiting to unfold because some college somewhere is unable to afford to safely maintain its buildings? Man, I hope I'm wrong, but I think it's worthy of a discussion because deferred maintenance is an issue not talked about. And Seltzer does such a good job of reporting. It's out there. And if I'm doing tours with my children, of course, they're well past the college age, I may ask about deferred maintenance. The admissions rep isn't going to know the answer, but I'm going to look closely at the building. I'm going to ask to look at places off the regular tour pathway and make my own assessment. Western Oregon. Western Oregon University adopts a new grading system. And this is from Inside Higher Ed, and Jessica Blake always has some good stuff, and was sent to me by frequent listener Greg Howard. And so here's the new grading system. D and F grades will be replaced with no credit on the report card or grade sheet, whatever it's called, and will not affect a student's GPA. University leaders at Western Oregon University say it will raise retention rates. All right, that's their opinion. Critics, and there are many, say it may lower academic rigor and lead to grade inflation. Again, I don't— maybe, but that's pure idle speculation. And as you might imagine, there was a blizzard of commentary on that. Folks on mostly said, oh man, this is a mess. But I looked at it from two perspectives, and the questioning side of me wonders if this is simply a tuition and fee maintenance— different kind of maintenance that we just talked about— a tuition and fee revenue tactic. So if I don't get a D, an F, maybe I keep paying tuition longer. Again, idle speculation on my part, at least I'm willing to admit that. But really, what percentage of students, what percentage of students who get a D or F are consistently and academically capable of getting a higher grade the next time they take the course? It's a rhetorical question.

I don't know the answer.

But the inquisitive side of me is intrigued with Western Oregon University's innovative mindset. This is a soft topic for sure.

I'm not aware of much data supporting the no credit versus DNF, if it's even out there.

But let's give them credit for at least trying something. If it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out, and I don't think it will, but they get credit. Page 4 is changing college choices. Now this is from Jeff Selingo, his January 25th newsletter. And Selingo has always used the term tuition coupons to reference discounts, tuition discounts. So tuition coupons, in Jeff Lingle's language, are tuition discounts. He's coined the term, give him credit for that.

It's a nice little term.

And I'll include that in my show notes as I will for all the stories we talked about. And he talks about in this newsletter, skip over colleges. Now these are not coin toss colleges that I talk about all the time for low graduation rates. Skip over colleges is the term that Selingo is giving to those colleges that are just, if I understand it correctly, those colleges just below the Ivy Plus, just below the Browns, Princetons, Harvard, Jales, and others, maybe Michigans, maybe Ohio States, University of Texas, UCLA, others. So what's happening, he speculates, he's doing research for a book he's writing, is if students can't get into one of those Ivies or Ivy Pluses, They're going to a flagship state university, going to a flagship state university. And essentially, I think I'm using Selingo's words, it's Ivy, Brown, Princeton, Harvard, Yale, or show me the money. And there is a group of colleges below the flagship states, above the flagship states and below the Ivies, that were used to getting the trickle-downs, if you will, the students that weren't accepted to Brown, Princeton, Harvard, Yale. And Selingo is saying he has early evidence to suggest that students are skipping over those colleges. If they can't get into the Ivies, they're going to the public flagships. All right, it's engaged, it's somewhat educated speculation, but it's something to think about. And here's, here's my question. All right, I'm going to give Jeff Shillingo every credit for this. How long, how long does it take for the market to realize that a college degree is largely— not always, but largely— mostly a commodity. How long will it take for the market to realize that a college degree is a commodity? And I guess the qualifications outside that Ivy Plus group, it's worthy of pondering. Markets always adjust, markets always adapt. A college, the higher education market, is adapting as we speak. It's just tough to tell where it's going, but this is an interesting observation from Jeff Sullengo. And then our last story for today, Mike Rowe from the Dirty Jobs fame says a 4-year degree no longer resonates with pride. They're shameful, he says. And this is a story from Alicia Warren at Fox Business. And I'll quote from the story, Mike Rowe, again Dirty Jobs fame, claims a PR problem is unfolding for four-year institutions as the degrees that these graduates are earning are no longer resonating with pride. I kind of paraphrase that a little bit. And Rowe goes on, that's spelled R-O-W-E, if I'm an employer hiring a Harvard grad, I honestly have no idea. Again, this is Mike Rowe's words, not mine. I honestly have no idea who I'm hiring. It could be, he goes on, a disciplined, hardworking, smart, industrious self-starter, or it could be the son of a legacy who coasted through the whole thing.

We have no way of knowing.

No way of knowing. The degree on the wall, the piece of paper on the wall, says the same thing for both of those kinds of students. And Rowe argues that education is too important to root against it. And I've said that many times. My College Viability Manifesto says that many times in many ways. However, Roe concludes he's afraid that higher ed may have to go splat, quote, in quotes, have to go splat before it goes back to being great. All right. Interesting scenario. Interesting analogy. So as a wrap, I was in Milwaukee last week to watch some college and pro basketball games with my son, and we drove by the former site of Cardinal Stritch University that closed last spring. And my son pointed out that the concrete entry sign had the Cardinal Stritch name removed, but the concrete remained. No name on it, just concrete. It was, in my mind, a stark reminder of what has happened— Cardinal Stritch in this case— and what will continue to happen to smaller and probably poorly or poorer managed colleges. They were once a solid base, like the concrete Cardinal Stritch. And now those colleges in the past, in the present, and in the future will come— will become essentially a nameless piece of rock. Until next Monday, this is Gary Stocker with This Week in College Viability for January 29th, 2024. We'll talk then.