This Week In College Viability (TWICV) for July 28, 2025

It is summertime. It is hot summertime, and it's July 28th, 2025. Hi everybody, Gary Stocker back with This Week in College Viability podcast. Let's start off this week's podcast with the continuing observation that I'm not seeing any of the summertime positive college enrollment announcements that I have seen in previous years. You may recall in years gone by, I would note the positive announcements. Sometimes I would ridicule them, along with the observation that many colleges, that no news about enrollment growth was bad news. And so far this summer, I should have seen some positive enrollment news, and I've missed it. If it's out there, I've missed it. But I'm worried that there's little to be happy about in terms of enrollment numbers for the fall of 2025 for a number of reasons. With that in mind, what do we have on the show today? Even more layoffs and program cutback notices, some of those from big, big colleges across the country. And we have a college president who must be dizzy, must be dizzy with the spin she is trying to impart on a very difficult financial situation at her college. And I've got a story about technical and trade schools, and they're not sitting sitting by idly waiting for students. They are marketing to them aggressively. And I have a story and a point to make on that. And Inside Higher Education had a story about college business officers in their annual survey. IHE had a story about college business officers and folks are still a generally delusional group. This is my observation from the Inside Higher Education story. I'll have some details on that and it's been a while, but I have another college ambulance chaser story. Chaser story from Michigan. Layoffs and cutbacks. Accreditation agency flags Wheeling University for financial concerns. This is Chris Schultz on West Virginia Public Broadcasting on July 17th. And Wheeling University has had issues before. Their accreditor is saying, hey, be careful, there are concerns there. With the University of New Orleans and the massive enrollment declines they are looking at, officials plan to cut courses and adjunct professors. I've had stories by Marie Falzio previously from NOLA.com, and here's what the story reads from Miss Falzio: expressing grave concerns about a steep enrollment decline, University of New Orleans leaders said Thursday they will slash the number of adjunct faculty members and eliminate some courses with weeks, just weeks, to go before the fall term begins. As of mid-July, the story reads, enrollment down— was down to about 4,000, over 4,000 students, some 2,000 fewer— 2,000 fewer than last fall. This is from officials at the University of New Orleans in an email to faculty explaining the latest cuts. As this university, one of many, slashes funding for adjunct faculty, full-time professors are being told— this is not going to go over well— full-time professors are being told to take on more classes, take on more classes for full-time professors, and warned that under-enrolled courses could be cut entirely. And we have seen this so many times in the last many months. And the story goes on to say the cuts amount to large-scale firings. All right, I've not heard that description before. Large-scale firings of adjunct professors. And this is from the United Campus Workers, and that's the union that represents the University of New Orleans faculty. Staff and student workers. And they finally conclude, with just 4 weeks, just 4 weeks before the fall semester begins, the changes will almost certainly cause last-minute class cancellations, overcrowded classrooms, and the loss of some of our campus community's most beloved teachers and workers, the union said. Sad, of course, for those that are going to lose their positions, lose their jobs, lose the income associated with that. It's just, just yet another story in a long, long line of stories about the financial challenges throughout the higher education industry. Duke, big-time basketball, Power Four. Duke announces layoffs amid federal funding uncertainty. I've had stories like this before. Chase Pellegrini to power on July 25th from IndyWeek. Duke University announced that nearly 600 employees had taken buyouts, so voluntary buyouts, but still Duke says they need to cut more jobs. And in a university-wide message on Friday, Chase Pellegrini DePaul writes, officials warned that involuntary staff reductions, commonly called layoffs— thank you, thanks— are coming next month. Page 2 You know, when I see spin, I see spin. And this is a story from WKRG-TV on July 25th. Akiva McFarland. And, and Ms. McFarland, I am sorry, but you're part of the group, part of the team, part of the club now who is engaging in higher education regurgitation reporting. You are just throwing out what the college shares with you without any substantive critical analysis. President at Spring Hill College, Dr. Mary Van Brunt, was in this story, in my mind, was exuding a level of spin that I haven't seen for quite a while. Her everything will be fine approach is not, not even close to being consistent with the actual data, the actual financial and enrollment data for Spring Hill College in Alabama. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, the most recent Spring Hill audited financial statement has a reference to going concern. And for those of you new to the podcast, going concern is a standard financial statement note that says the college is assumed to be going ahead and operating as a business for the next year. When accountants, auditors say that there is, there is some reason to doubt that a college will be able to be continuing on as a going concern. That's not a good thing. It's a strange use of words, but that's what it is. In the most recent audited financial statement for Spring Hill College in Alabama, in Note 20 to the financial statement, here's what the quote says: The college has reported negative cash flows from operations, and the results of current year operations has resulted in decrease— in a decrease in net assets and therefore substantial doubt was raised about the college's ability to continue. And again, as a going concern, the audit goes on to say management's evaluation of the events and conditions regarding those matters are also described. And the auditors say, no, in spite of the management's explanations, the auditors say our opinion, our opinion is not modified. With respect to that matter, meaning the auditors have financial concerns about Spring Hill's ability to continue. But the president, Dr. Van Brunt, says, hey, we're cool, we're going to make it, we're going to survive. Here are the things we are doing. Well, you can't promise futures in this market. So to the data, as I always do, to the data I go. And this will be posted, the show notes will include the— this happens to be a YouTube video. The show notes will include a link to this video. The net income margin for Spring Hill College in Alabama, in Alabama, decreased more than 66% since 2021. Then the, the end-of-year endowment in 2024 was negative. I've seen that before, but not very often. At the end of 2024, the cash and equivalents of cash, cash equivalents, was a measly $1.3 million. There's a way to calculate these cash on that. I haven't done that for this college. Enrollment was down 33%, a third for those of you that didn't pay attention in math class, from 2016 to 2024. The net tuition revenue in 2016 was $17.1 million, down to $12 million in 2024. And the 4-year graduation rate at Spring Hill College in Alabama less than average, less than 55.0%. The 6-year average was barely in the mid-50%. So not only does this college have serious financial issues, they're still not graduating their students. You've heard me say that before. One thing they're doing well— I should have given you a sarcasm alert— institutional support expense per student has increased almost $2,000 in the last reported 8 years from $6,500 to about $8,300. That's institutional support, essentially management support at that college. So gosh, Dr. Van Brunt, one of us is using actual data to draw our conclusions, to make our point. The other of us is engaging in what I would describe as willful and future speculation not based on anything more than unfounded opinions. Trade schools. Let's go to trade schools in Minnesota. The Alex Jokic at KSTP on July 25th in Minneapolis had a story, Growing Enrollment at Trade Schools in Minnesota. Now there's some specific data here. You can read the story. I'll have the the link in the show notes. But this is an example of a, of a technical and trade college, trade school, aggressively marketing what they do. Just like colleges, just like the traditional 4-year colleges market what they do. So do these trade and technical schools. This is for Dunwoody. This is for Dunwoody. I missed his name here. This is for Dunwoody College of Technology. In Minneapolis, and they're noting that the average starting salary coming out of Dunwoody is $62,000— more than $62,000 per year— and all sorts of numbers that are good. And the reason I bring this up is, is they're not just sitting still, these technical and trade colleges. And maybe they're not all as successful as Dunwoody, I don't know, but they're marketing their education their right-out-of-school income. And it's just yet another, yet another market pressure, another point of market pressure on the traditional 4-year higher education route. Page 3, Risk and Resilience. Okay. That's the headline and the Inside Higher Education story by Josh Moody on July 22nd. The subheading reads, College business officers, CBOs, identify financial threats to their institutions, especially in the near term. They also hint at confidence in their abilities and their institution's ability to adapt. And this is from the Annual Survey of College and University Chief Business Officers. They had responses from 169 institutions in 2025. They're both public and private nonprofits. And responses were gathered late last spring in April and May. And here's some quotes, here's some notes from the story. Amid the uncertainty, amid the uncertainty in higher education, about 3 in 5, not quite 60%, of these college business officers rate their institution's financial health as good or excellent. Okay, that's 60%, a little bit less than that. What, let's see, 100 minus 60, that's what about the other 40%? Those don't, that's a lot of colleges that don't have confidence that their institution's financial health is good or excellent. Maybe it's average. All right, maybe, maybe it's average, but that's 40% of say 3,000 colleges. That's a lot. That's a lot. And despite these challenges in higher education, we've talked about those earlier today. Respondents were much more confident in their institution's 5 and 10-year outlooks. All right, maybe. So 73% of these, of these college business officers are believing that their college or university will be financially stable over the next 5 years. 71% say they'll be cool over the next decade. In 2024, it was 85% look good over 5 years. Now it's down to 73% in 2025. And the 10-year outlook was essentially the same, 73%. This year, 71% for last year. And again, that's a fine way to write that, but what about the other 30-plus percent who are not, are saying they're not confident for whatever reasons? And some 11% of these CBOs say they have had serious internal discussions about merging with another college or university, about the same as last year's survey. And most of these say they're doing it proactively, not in the face of imminent closure. All right. I'll take that I'm at their word for that. And 16%, final stat, 16% of these business officers report serious internal discussions, 16, 1/6%, serious internal discussions about consolidating some programs or operations. And this 16, 1/6%, seems awfully, awfully low to me in the face of all the layoff and cutback announcements that we have seen in the last many, many, many months. And just finally, 28%, 28 out of 100, college business officers describe themselves as very or extremely confident in their institution's current business model, not finances, but business model. So they're saying in effect, finances look good, but the model sucks. Again, I'm paraphrasing. That's not in the story and that's not in the story at all. In my mind, that's not a strong endorsement of where the industry is. And that's not a surprise to anybody. And I haven't for a long time had a college ambulance chaser story. I've got one now. Siena Heights University announced a few weeks ago their closure and the ambulances are lining up. This is from Jackie Smith at michiganlive.com. This was on in July, earlier this month. And there were in this story about two dozen College Ambulance Chasers. This is of last week, and, and the story reads, welcome Siena Heights University students. And this is the headline on the web pages for these college ambulance chasers saying, hey, come to our college. I looked at 4 of the colleges listed. Um, there were, I think, 10 or so listed. Just because, you know, you've seen me talk about this before, some colleges engaging this college ambulance chasing for students of closed colleges are not particularly strong themselves. So Ashland College, their net income margin has decreased since 2021. Barry College, all the way down in Florida, not anymore close to Michigan, has been below zero on their net income margin in the last two years. The College of Wooster in Ohio, all sorts of issues, they have been below zero on their net income margin We can call it profit. Colleges don't like to do that, but that's what it is. The College of Wooster has been below zero in 4 of the past 5 years, and Olivet Nazarene below zero on their net margin, their profit, in 5 of the last 9 years. So to wrap this week, to wrap this week, I asked my favorite AI engine, and I use Google Gemini most of the time, to give me a paragraph. A paragraph description on what is happening across all of higher education this summer. So here is my edited version. No sense starting from scratch. So I let the AI tool help me piece the heck out of starting with a blank piece of paper. And of course it talks about lots of transformation going on. It talks about the enrollment cliff and many colleges are engaging in more diverse revenue streams, accelerated degrees, micro-credentialing, monetizing assets, whatever that means, through innovation hubs. All right, maybe, maybe at best, those colleges that are just starting that in the summer of 2025 are a day late and a dollar short. All right, we'll grant them that one. AI, the AI tool told me, is no longer a futuristic concept, but one rapidly gaining acceptance. But it also noted though faculty adoption lags behind student enthusiasm and concerns about academic integrity. What else is new? Faculty lagging when something new and different comes along. And I guess the last one that is worthy of note is merger activity. I mentioned that a minute ago, and I'm not seeing much at all. There's some I'm aware of. And maybe it's happening. Maybe there's a lot of M&A, merger and acquisition, or merger discussions taking place behind the scenes, and that's fine. But given this industry's history, I'm doubtful that that's happening. And what does all of this mean? It means uncertainty many, many times over. And so whatever role you have in higher education, in leadership, if you're faculty, staff, student, parent, community leader, board member, please, please don't lose sight of the economic reality that there are too many colleges and not enough students willing to pay to go to those colleges. No marketing, no programmatic changes, no additions, no cutbacks is going to change. Well, the cutbacks might change that economic reality. And so in my mind, consolidation, and I've talked about this before, consolidation is the functional word. Layoffs, cutbacks, and closures today, followed by massive merger activity, are the facts of life for this higher education industry in the summer of 2025. As always, I am grateful for you making the time to listen to the podcast. I'll be back next week in August of 2025. Up with more of This Week in College Viability. I'm Gary Stocker. Thanks again for listening.