This Week In College Viability (TWICV) for May 27 2025

It is Tuesday, May 27th, 2025. Time for another episode of This Week in College Viability News and Commentary. Hi everybody, Gary Stocker. I didn't just do the regular Monday broadcast on Memorial Day. I spent much of the day reading military histories. And while I was in the Army Reserves for 8 years, I was never ever even close to a combat scenario. I still cannot imagine, cannot imagine the challenges and bravery of those who have fought in military battles. Just is something that gets me all the time. But back to my role as your college, your college financial quality control advocate. This week on This Week, Buffalo State University to cut some programs. And staff to help balance its budget. State university systems in Maryland and Oregon also announced cutbacks or potential cutbacks. Let the Colleges Fail— that's a book by Richard Vedder. It's an opinion piece on The Hill. Penn State faculty— the Penn State Faculty Alliance calls on the university to stop campus closure processes. Nothing new there. And of course, much, much more on this week in in college viability layoff and cutbacks. Canisius University in New York to lay off all public safety department employees. Okay, this is a story at WKBW by Maki Becker on May 21st. Interestingly, they plan to replace the 8 folks, 5 officers and 3 support folks, they plan to replace the department with a private Alaska— is that a New York college? A private Alaska based security company. Interesting story, I'm sure, behind that. Those who currently work, those 8 employees at Kinesis, are going to be welcome to apply to the contract company. No word on what their compensation will be like. Buffalo State, also in New York— there's a pattern— Buffalo State University to cut some programs and staff to help balance its budget. All right, we see that kind of story all the time. They aim to balance their budget in 2027. -28 academic year, and they're focusing on student academics and student retention. This story comes from Kim DeGeorge on WGRZ News, the NBC Channel 2 outlet, on May 21st. So Buffalo State has also implemented a voluntary separation program, and that resulted in 60 staff members retiring. They also said the changes to academic and operational changes could result, could result in up to 63 full-time positions being eliminated. So you know me, even on the day after Memorial Day, I am going to the data. I could, I could start with 4-year graduation rates less than 30% at Buffalo State, but I won't. I will note that the enrollment has decreased more than 2,600 students, down 2,600 since 2016. And in the story they said they had an 83% retention rate. In 2024. I don't know what they're spending there. IPEDS data shows it was only 55% in 2023 and hovering around 60% over the last 8 reported years. So I, I'd have to follow up to see where that 83% retention number comes from in the story. I will note, interestingly, that New York State appropriations went from $87 million in 2016 to, get this, $127 million up $38 million in 2023. So the state has contributed its fair share, more than its fair share. And I will also note that tuition and fees at Buffalo State have decreased more than $15 million. That's of course what students pay to the university to attend college classes there and to get their diplomas. And there's a long, long list of cuts. I'm just going to throw out a couple. There was an art and design cut, an Applied Economics, a Master of Arts, Art History, a Bachelor of Arts, a bunch of minors, I'm not going to list them, and then a Physics Bachelor of Science, a Physics Bachelor of Arts— not much physics interest at Buffalo State— and Sociology Bachelor of Arts as well. And no details on this, it's just a headline because I make a point here. State university systems, state college systems in Maryland and Oregon also announced cutbacks or potential cutbacks. This was during the week of May 26th, last week. I, I note this because it's just part of the trend. There were no details behind this. Most, both stories were written in, in, in soft language. It didn't make any commitments to the number of cuts or when that might happen, but it's, it's, it's, it's, it looks like it's going to happen in these two states, and it's happening in other states as well. I do have college drivel College drivel this week. Here's the quote: As part of this year's process, some contracts have not been renewed. We recognize the impact this has on the individuals affected and remain committed to supporting our faculty and advancing student success. This from a university that just announced layoffs for 10 full-time faculty, but they're going to take care of their faculty. On to page 2. Richard Vedder writes a lot of opinions and does a lot of historical research on and with social media posts. And he has a story, he's got a book out and it's called Let Colleges Fail. And there was an opinion piece from Mr. Vedder on The Hill as a source, and this was last week also. And I'm going to read from the quote in this story from The Hill. In my new book, Richard Vedder says, that's V-E-D-D-E-R, I argue that the dulling of incentives and ambiguity of ownership have contributed to the recent decline in support for our universities. Fortunately, the incentive system of markets, he continues, while heavily diluted by government and philanthropic subsidies, are still somewhat present in higher education. And the threat of severe retrenchment or even closure will lead to needed reforms as more colleges realize their very existence is in peril. So he's making the point, who really is the boss? Who really runs a college? And he makes an effective argument that is it the president? There are issues with that. Is it the board? There are issues there. Is it faculty? And what are the incentives to change for each? Now, I did post this review from The Hill to my social media accounts, and I did get a couple of— on LinkedIn, I did get a couple of nasty grams when I posted this. So Mr. Vetter hit a couple of nerves, at least, with this opinion piece. The Penn State Faculty Alliance— Penn State Faculty Alliance calls on the university to stop campus closure processes. I've had this on the show, the story on the show. Many, many others have had it as well. Jeff Rushton at statecollege.com on May 21st reports that the Penn State Faculty Alliance— not particularly well defined— the Penn State Faculty Alliance has a petition that argues there are many questions left unanswered by these proposed campus closures and public college closures in the state. Pennsylvania. Let me read from this story from Mr. Rushton. There has been— this is from the faculty— there has been no analysis, the faculty say, this faculty group says, of this plan's financial, educational, or community impact, raising many questions about the legitimacy of the administration's, in quotes, data-driven decisions. Furthermore, the Faculty Alliance goes on, there is no transparent or reasonable plan for how impacted faculty, staff, and students will be treated, leaving the door open for further unethical decisions to be made. Reactively, quite a few judgments being made there. Closures that go on will impact hundreds of Penn State workers, including those at campuses that remain open. Employees from other locations may be relocated in ways that displace those at safe locations. Now, members of The Penn State Faculty Alliance delivered a petition to the university president, Neeli Bendapudi, on Wednesday protesting the proposed closure of 7 Commonwealth campuses. The petition garnered more than 500 signatures. 500, huh? How many tens of thousands of faculty are there in the entire Penn State system? And the entire comment from this Faculty Alliance shows yet again, yet again, that faculty in this organization have no awareness of the economics of higher education. Too many colleges— Faculty Alliance— too many colleges in Pennsylvania in particular, New York, and other states, too many colleges and too few students willing to pay even subsidized or heavily discounted tuition to go to those colleges. That's what's causing these closures. Your attempts to pin unethical decisions on these leaders are a stretch for sure. Page 3, this is from a LinkedIn post. Cassia Lundy, who is, I believe, a consultant for EY Parthenon, posted an opinion piece, um, on May 22nd. And in that opinion piece, Ms. Lundy noted that only 1 in 4 current college students were enrolled at financially risky colleges. She thought that was good news, and I guess to an extent it is, but here is my comment to her post. Again, one— only, only, she said, one in four students were enrolled at financially risky colleges. So I said, let's do the math using the data from this report. So for every million college students at four-year colleges 1 in 4 would mean 250,000 of them are attending financially at-risk colleges. For every 1 million, about 250,000 are statistically attending financially at-risk colleges. There are 19 million-some-odd undergraduate students who were enrolled in these colleges in 2024, and my source for that is the Education Data Initiative. So let's do the math. So something like 4.75 million college students attended financially at-risk colleges in 2024? 1 in 4 is a big number, boys and girls. That's a lot of students at risk for having programs cut back, layoffs of their faculty members, of their teachers, their instructors, and even at risk of having their college close. In the coming weeks and months and years. Kean University, K-E-A-N, and New Jersey City University signed a letter of intent in the next step toward a historic merger. Now I bring this up, this is on a New Jersey City University internal document. I'll have the link as always in the show notes. And I talked about this recently, and this is just another indicator in my mind that publics are way ahead of privates in merger activity. If you haven't heard me talk about this before, my operating premise is, as we go through the next period of significant college closures, that will be followed by an equally intense period of mergers of private colleges in particular, and maybe some publics, as those private colleges who survived the closure period recognize that they have to grow up and be like other industries and consolidate in the form of mergers and maybe some acquisitions to get the scale of cost, scale academic offerings needed to survive. Page 4, America's college towns go from boom to bust. This is a story from Conrad Putzier, Douglas Belkin, and Anthony Navarro on MSN, but I think the story was originally in the Wall Street Journal. I'm not gonna read you any details on the story. The story does focus on Western Illinois University, and for those of you that follow the podcast regularly, I've had them on the show, I've posted on their social media. If there is ever to be a reasonably large public college that closes, Western Illinois University in Macomb, Illinois is one on the top of my list of at risk for that. And so it's not a new story in that, in that sense. The issue of college closure impact on their communities has been addressed countless times, but this, this is an important story because it is one that is going to continue to develop and almost certainly grow in the coming months and years because, yes, when businesses leave smaller communities in particular, they suffer. But businesses have always left smaller communities for decades and decades and more decades. If there's not a financial capacity to perform, a financial capacity to survive, yes, more colleges will close and impact those communities. It is ugly. It is not fun. I wouldn't want to be part of it. But just because those things are true does not mean that it will not happen. And those communities, if you're not looking at the data, reach out. If you're the mayor of a community with a college at risk, reach out. I'll have my contact information in the show notes. Reach out, I'll show you your college. We'll talk about it. I'll show you the risks. You can have an informed discussion with those college leaders So it's— let's do a wrap. And it's summertime, of course, is essentially upon us. School's out almost everywhere, and it's going to be interesting to see how many colleges held off with their cutback and layoff announcements until faculty and students left for the summer. Of course, they do that because there's less protests when everybody's gone. I did think that those kind of announcements, even though there were many, I did think they were— it was kind of a pretty slow pace this spring given all of the financial challenges I've talked about and many others have talked about for so many colleges. And there's just, there's a new project that I'm working on called College— it's called the College Financial Transparency for Students and Families. I'm working with some other folks to create educational and college comparison awareness for students and families. It'll be something like the Kelley Blue Book for cars or our college Consumer Reports, something like that. If you have ideas on what might be helpful, what might be useful, drop me a note to gary@collegeviability.com. That's gary@collegeviability, one word,.com. As always, thanks to those hundreds who listen to the podcast each and every week. I'll be back next Monday with another episode of This Week in College Viability.