This Week In College Viability (TWICV) for Jan 12, 2026

It is This Week in College Viability news and commentary for January 12th, 2026. Hi everybody, Gary Stocker sitting in front of that blue Yeti microphone and the always smooth-running Riverside.fm podcast software. This week we're talking about a lot of different things. We're going to talk about a closed college that bails on both faculty and students. Don't want this to happen to you. We talk about universities cut over 9,000 jobs in 2025, just suggests the trend we've already talked about. And how about a public college that graduated 6% of its students in 2023, just 6%, getting public funds to build a multimillion-dollar STEM building? Ugly stuff. And then is there, here's something I'm saying, is there a coordinated effort by some, by some in higher education to write stories trying to deny that the industry is in decline. And as always, don't be a hog. Share the podcast link with your friends in higher education, with those in your orbit who are looking at colleges for 2026 and beyond, or even those at a college right now who just have some concerns about financial health or other factors as well. Feel free, and I encourage you to share the podcast link with one and all. I'm starting off with college drivel today. Of course, drivel is silly talk. And here's the quote: I believe, I believe in the transformative power of higher education, and I look forward to exploring opportunities on the horizon that will enable me to elevate mission and purpose in support of student success. This is from a college president who just resigned after a no-confidence vote. That's some highfalutin words. Um, that's some really highfalutin words. But, but we see that a lot in higher education. And let's move on. Layoffs and cutbacks. Here's a quote from a student: I've had these stories before. Headline reads: Now I have to start over. Students are left in the dark after Martin University closes. Jalen Coleman was in the story. She was a graduate student at Martin University in Indianapolis who completed all of her credits and was getting set to graduate with her degree in May. This story comes from WTHR Channel 13 in Indianapolis. Matthew Fultz was the reporter on January 6th. And here is the lead-up, right? A quote: Following the decision to pause operations from Martin University, the Higher Learning Commission directed the university to cease operations. Well, good for the HLC being all over that one. Combined with the lack of sufficient operating revenue, Martin has had no choice but to move toward closure, reads the statement. How many times, how many times have I pointed out these accreditors are a day late and a dollar short, and they have no incentive or little incentive to cite financial health issues with colleges. And we know the conflict because these colleges pay their fees to the accrediting agency. I won't go into that today. So here is the story from Jalen Coleman. I never got an email. You had to know people for you to know that they, that they, the college, were even closing down. Not going to lie, she said, I cried all night yesterday because like I was done and now I have to start over, Coleman said. A spokesman for Martin University said they had a 2-day transfer fair in December with other schools for students to attend. Coleman, Jalen Coleman, said she never got notified about it. She goes on to say, I pretty much begged Martin for like 3 months to transfer my transcripts. They never got sent. The university that I was trying to go to never received anything. They reached out to Martin on their own and they didn't get anything. I reached out and I never got anything from Martin, Coleman said. And Coleman went on to say in recent weeks, she's tried to reach staff at the university on what to do now, but has not heard back. I'm not getting any response from anybody. And then people are saying, talk to the board of trustees and different things, but no one is really giving me an answer. You're getting the runaround, or they're saying they can't say much, but there's no staff to even communicate with you. So there you have it yet again, a college in obvious financial distress for a long period of time. Look at the data in my app. Look at the data in Matt Hendricks' Financial Compass. It's been this way for a long time. And it's a credit to the college. The Higher Learning Commission appears to have not done anything until the college itself announced a pause. That was in mid-December, I believe. A pause. Creative. I'll give them that. Students, faculty, staff, and community are left to sort out the mess. It appears they're sorting out that mess on their own. And that That's why your first criterion in selecting a college, especially a private college, should be to look at, assess, and compare its financial health. I'll have a link in the show notes to get you access to a free trial, free trial for 7 days of the College Financial Health Report. If you like it, buy it. If you don't, at least use it for the 7-day free trial period to check on colleges you are attending. Are considering attending. Julia Schulman Hall at yahoo.com had a story on January 6th, Struggling Western Massachusetts College Misses Enrollment Goal by Half. And this is a story that we see all of the time from colleges across the country. They just, and the consequences are substantial. The details aren't important because they're similar to what I've talked about and other colleges have reported as well. Let's go on to universities cut over 9,000 jobs. Fox News had this story. Rachel Duguidice had it on January 8th. Universities cut over 9,000 jobs in 2025 as Trump targets federal funding. The new report from Inside Higher Education, which is the original source, says the university system is bleeding jobs. We talked about that all year in 2025 and even 2023 and 2024. I lead off each podcast with layoffs and cutbacks. The report published Tuesday found that higher education— found out that the— found that the higher education sector lost 300 jobs in just December and over 9,000 in 2025. And there are a lot more details in the story. Again, as always, I'll provide the link for you to look at. It's, it's another nail, another nail nailing that industry coffin closed for many, not all, for many colleges, those without the financial resources to provide quality college education. Page 2, a frequent flyer on the show, Rider University in New Jersey. Rider University creates a $2 million HOPE fund. A HOPE fund. That tells us a lot. HOPE fund to help students pay tuition. As the college faces cuts and layoffs. And the story— this is a story from Mike LeChance. Uh, what's the source on that? I don't see the link on that one. Um, he's quoted as saying, all the allocated— college writer allocated these funds entirely to provide immediate financial support for students whose education may be at risk due to unforeseen financial or family hardships. All right, $2 million. Is that $2 million now? I don't think so. Is it over time? That's what the story suggested. To the data we go. In 2024, they had unrestricted gifts, essentially cash. That's a generalization, but that's, that's effectively what it is. Unrestricted gifts in 2024 of $2.8 million. I remember that number, $2.8. Fundraising expenses— and this is from Matt Hendricks' Financial Compass and the audited financial reports— And of course, from 990s, they had fundraising expenses of $2.3 million. So $2.8 minus $2.3, let me get out my fingers and toes, that's $500,000 in cash. Unrestricted gifts, $500,000 net. Now I've learned you want to look at other areas, and you can also use gifts and grants for operations, which are essentially restricted gifts, is my understanding. And that number was $5.3, which took the total gifts to— it looks like $9.1 million for expenses of $2.3 million. But the unrestricted gifts are available for any kind of use. Restricted gifts, of course, have strings attached. And here's, here's why I point this out. The data is out, the data is out there to challenge what colleges are saying. In this case, it's Rider University. Week in and week out, it's different universities. So college leaders public relations pieces, talkers. As I have said many times before, spin the data any way you want. This is America. You can, you can spin the data any way you want. It's possible that there is a $2 million— that there is $2 million in the scholarship. I don't believe that's the case. That's the case, but we do financial transparency here at College Viability. We do it with actual data. And college leaders, if you're taking liberties, if you're taking qualifications, making qualifications, I'm going to point them out. Not every time, I can't catch them all, but I'm going to point out the ones that I find. And I have search engines tracking this stuff for me day in and day out. And feel free, feel free to take the chance that nobody listens to this podcast. I can tell you though, I I wouldn't be doing it if I didn't get results. Hundreds, hundreds of folks do listen to this podcast each and every week. 7,000 downloads in 2025 just on the main distribution arm. And it doesn't include listeners on Spotify that I use, on Apple that I use, and on YouTube that has another 4,000+ listeners in 2025. So ignore me, that's fine. That's, that's fine, but the data is out there, and if I'm not sharing it, somebody else is. This is, as I've said so many times, the Moneyball era in higher education. Spin data at your own risk. Harris-Stowe University, St. Louis. This is a story from the St. Louis Business Journal in October of last year. Kate Marozulovic had the story. And Harris Stowe plans an 82,000-square-foot STEM building— science, technology, engineering, and medicine, math, one of those two. The building will include 12 research labs and a 600-person event space, 3 stories across the street from what I'm going to call a prestigious university in St. Louis University. They have some financial issues, but they're a strong university, and Harris Stowe is across the street from St. Louis University. And for those of you that follow this so regularly, I live in St. Louis. I've been in that area many, many times. And so these spaces— this STEM building is dedicated for labs for biology and chemistry and physics, and at least 6 classrooms. It hasn't been built yet, it's just being designed. Plans for the third floor event space so it can be divided into classrooms. The building is also slated to have offices, study spaces, a cafe, and most importantly, he says with great sarcasm, a catering kitchen. It's unclear how much the building will cost. A university spokesman declined to comment. Always fun. So to the data we go. Get out your pen, get out your paper. Harrisburg University in 2023 graduated 6%, 6 out of every 100, 60 out of every 1,000 students who started there 6%, and that was the highest reported percentage since 2016. The numbers prior to that were lower than 6%, and the 6-year graduation rate, 19%. So after 6 years, not even 1 in 5 students who started at Harris-Stowe University graduated. Now I understand there are qualifications, there are reasons. It's an HBCU. I understand that. But those are really bad numbers. And, and, and the enrollment is down from 900 students down about 200. They don't award master's degrees at Harris-Stowe. And, and, and they're going to build a STEM building. They are going to take funds. I think some were donated. Some funds are donated. They're going to take funds. It looks like some state funds to build a STEM building. No idea what the cost is. And so let's— to the data we must go again. And I'm going to look at external market share in just Missouri public and private colleges. Harris-Stowe, again, Missouri public and private colleges, 2023 is the data source. Biology external market share, Harris-Stowe, 0.5%. Chemistry, 0%. Engineering, 0%. Math, 0.1%. Physics and statistics, 0%. They had 10 computer information system students, and they had, I think, 20 biology and physical science students. Their biggest majors at Harris-Stowe University: criminal justice and corrections, and some business programs as well. So if you're a Missouri taxpayer or a reporter, this is a story you might want to keep an eye on. Is this really, is this really the best use of either tax or even education dollars on a college that only graduates 6 out of every 100 students? Your call. And over the last couple months, I've had this math story out of the University of California San Diego, and Brian Legate had a post, I believe it was on LinkedIn, a couple days ago, and he referenced the same Wall Street Journal article that I had, um, whenever it was, back in November or December. The link will be in the show notes. And, and the core claim is a significant number of students admitted to the elite university campus, University of California campus San Diego, can't do, cannot do basic math. We're talking fractions, percentages, and simple algebra skills that should be mastered long before college. This isn't speculation. It's based on the University of California San Diego's own placement exam and faculty reports. Now, the Wall Street Journal's argument isn't that these students are lazy or that they are incapable. It's that the system, the education system, failed them. I think they're talking high school, middle school kind of systems. It's the system that failed them, and the column points to several causes. University of California, at least San Diego, is dropping the SAT/ACT requirement. For math, removing one of the few objective measures of math readiness. There's a heavy reliance on high school grades, which vary widely and are often inflated, is the general perception. And there's a broader shift in K-12 math education away from fluency and fundamentals. Yet these students at a relatively prestigious college in California, UC San Diego, are getting in I made this point and this Mr. Legate, same thing. He says the writers argue that the University of California, San Diego prioritized access and equity, get them in equitable numbers without ensuring academic readiness, and that this actually harms students, underprepared freshmen, end up in remedial non-credit classes they still pay for, struggle in gateway STEM courses, and are more likely to drop out of their majors or have a delayed graduation. And I've said this before, I'm going to share it again from the same article. Their bottom line— Wall Street Journal is blunt— access without preparation isn't opportunity. Getting in isn't just— doesn't just cut it. You've got to have the academic skills, the academic preparation, and in many cases some financial capacity in whatever form or fashion to be able to survive. Lowering standards doesn't help students succeed. It sets them up to fail while quietly watering down what a UC San Diego— in this case, what a UC San Diego degree is supposed to represent. And whether you agree with this or not, it raises an uncomfortable question, and that question is: how can a highly selective public university admit students who aren't ready for college-level math, who aren't ready, who are not ready for college-level math, and pretend that's being compassionate? Page 3, after a no-confidence vote, the University of Nebraska chancellor is to resign. I had this story, I think, a little while ago. Mike Nitzel had the story in January 5th article at Forbes. And just a sidebar, Mike Nitzel and Chuck Ambrose have a book coming out in April about the history, impact, and responses to college faculty no-confidence votes for their leadership, presidents and boards typically. And the president at University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Rodney Bennett, had initially recommended the elimination of 6 programs, and I had them in the previous story. I won't read those now. And of course, faculty created stiff opposition, and they even had a consultant says, no, you don't need to do this. And the chancellor steps down because of the pressure he faced in trying to change things, right or wrong, in trying to change things, the faculty didn't want to even talk about it. They got together in whatever building and room they have, and they said, "Nyet." They said, "No." They said, "Nada" to keeping confidence in Dr. Bennett. And I'm not going to pretend to assess the details here. Number one, they bore me, and I see them so many times. The bigger picture point is that a college leader proposed to do something, to financially do something, to cut programs and courses. And we have seen this, I've talked about this many times, and the uproar, as we almost, almost always see, was immediate and fierce. So now what do other college presidents think when they have to ponder when they have to ponder adjusting their business model and operations in the face of financial realities, and they have to look at cutting faculty, staff, services, programs, majors, they're going to be scared. They're going to be scared to professional death that their fate will be the same as University of Nebraska-Lincoln Chancellor Rodney Bennett. Courage, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, is in the data. Dr. Bennett had the data. Clearly it wasn't convincing to the faculty at University of Nebraska-Lincoln. And if you want to see more on that, uh, Ricardo Aziz's book, Leading Existential Change in Higher Education: Mergers, Closures, and Other Major Restructuring— I actually wrote a section in that book called Courage Is in the Data. And there are many reasons to use that data, but the most important one, you can use it to convince your audiences of the logic and the reality of considering financial adjustments to college budgets. Page 4, couple stories here. One is Rose Horowitz in MSN on January 5th and Matt Barnum at chalkbeat.com on November 11th last year. Both of the stories in essence are trying to say higher education is okay. Now, generalizing, I understand, And, and I'm starting to sense a trend here. I'm starting to sense a trend that there are other writers trying to defy the logic, rationale, and data about higher education. I've noticed an increase in the number of higher education folks spinning enrollment numbers, enrollment trends, and college costs for students. And these stories, like I just shared, these stories are trying to refute the higher education is in decline. They make gross data, gross data generalizations about both the students and the colleges. Now, they're welcome to do that, and I'm guessing it's easier to make big picture, draw big picture conclusions than it is to do what I do, which is look at individual colleges at individual opportunities for students. Generalizations about trends don't help. They do not help individual students in individual colleges. It is the individual data points and individual trends that matter to colleges and their students. And I went to the trouble when I first put together the first College Viability App, I used data resources and I grabbed the unique identifier in the IPEDS data system for every public 2- and 4-year college and private 4-year college. And that enables me to let you— to create tools for you to look and compare the financial health outcomes, operations of some 3,000 public and private colleges in the United States. And that's what I do here at College Viability. I make the data available for anyone, whether it's my app or Matt Hendricks' College Financial Compass The data is available for presidents and CFOs and provosts and faculty and students and parents, community leaders. Anyone can look at the data I have compiled and the apps I created and the apps I use, both the good trends and the bad trends. And there are strong colleges out there, hundreds of strong colleges. The bad part and the sad part is there are hundreds more not in good financial shape, and I talk about those regularly, and the data shows it. You don't need me to look at these numbers, look at these charts, and say, whoa, that's not good. And those folks who take limited data points, macro data points, and try to spin them into universal trends ignore the reality that the story really exists at the micro level, the individual college level, not the macro level, higher education. No one at the recently closed Martin University that I talked about earlier No one there really cares about overall trends. Those students, those faculty, families, they needed to know the specific data about Martin University. That's what I have. Which leads me to a wrap, I guess, for this week's podcast. And I think I referenced this briefly last week. I'm restarting another podcast or renewing a podcast called Beyond the College Brochure. And I did it, I believe it was in 2024, with a college student who asked me questions from the perspective of students and parents about college financial health and things like that. And it's a major part of my focus. The major part of my focus in 2026 is, is on students and their families. I have special apps and reports for them, and I just finished a resource that will help students and families think about think about college in general from a different perspective. It's kind of an entertaining look at the decision about college and which college, and to really question the marketing machine that is higher education. Each episode in Beyond the College Brochure takes a headline either from this podcast or from other news sources and explores the hidden details that could change, should change, how you view your students, a student's shortlist of colleges to consider. It is quick, it is insightful, and at the end of each episode, it is always revealing. Take a listen. I'll have the link in the show notes. It's a different style podcast than what you're listening to now. It's different than This Week in College Viability. It might even, he says, hopefully it might even be qualified as entertaining, and that's tough. To do in higher education. Hey everybody, thanks for making time to listen to the podcast. This is Gary Stocker at College of Viability. Until next Monday, thanks again. We'll be back in