This Week In College Viability (TWICV) for May 13, 2024

It is May 13th, 2024. That makes it a Monday, and that makes it time for another episode of This Week in College Viability. Hi everybody, it's Gary Stocker again, back with you this week. Where are we headed? How about a look at St. Cloud's— St. Cloud State's plan to cut 46 degrees. This is after years of watching enrollment plummet. We're going to talk about I-Dotters and T-Crossers again. High schools are bracing for widespread teacher layoffs. This is the first topic for the podcast, and I'll talk about why. And we have another spin, spin, spin, this time at Illinois Institute of Technology here in Illinois. And then the St. Louis Post-Dispatch quoted a source and predicted some college closures in this region. I'm going to talk about that. And then up where it's probably still cold, up at cleveland.com The editor at Cleveland.com had a headline that read, "Buffoonery, Incompetence, and Lies." And he went on to say, this is in the context of a couple of politicians up in Cleveland. He goes on to report that our job, though, is to call them out. So we do. And I'm going to draw a connection to what the editor at Cleveland.com does and what we do here at CollegeViability.com. And no way am I going to call college leaders buffoons, incompetent, or liars. That's not the case, but to call out some other things, that's really what we do here at College Viability. Layoffs and cutbacks. I have no actual closures this week. That's kind of a first for quite a while. Uh, a matter of right-sizing. St. Cloud State, but that's Minnesota, plans to cut 46 degrees. That's the headline. And according to the acting president, that always tells me something, the acting president at this Minnesota university Says they still have a strong revenue base, and they do. They've got 10,000-some-odd students, so that provides some tuition and fee revenue, but face too high expenses. Again, that again is according to its acting president. This is a story from Ben Unglesby at Higher Education Dive on May 8th. They want to cut 46 degrees. This is from 136 down to 90, and they want to cut minors from 85 down to 35. This is from Ben McGulbee's story. Boys and girls, for effectively a decade or more, the leadership— and I presume it predates the acting president— the leadership at St. Cloud has sat back and watched as enrollment plummeted. It's down 44% and did nothing. And that is a typical commentary on higher education today. Wait, wait, don't act, don't act. Wait some more, wait some more, don't act. And when there's a public push or they get so far down the financial drain that they have to do something, that's when it's a day late and a dollar short kind of approach. Now the folks at St. Cloud State have to effectively take an academic bulldozer to almost 100 programs. How many lives of faculty and staff students and others will be negatively impacted. How many, how many other public and private colleges are in the same situation? Now I know the numbers for St. Cloud State. It's, they're cutting 56, they're proposing to cut 57 full-time faculty and 42 staff positions. Stay tuned, stay tuned for the faculty response and the inevitable vote of no confidence in the acting president. Goodness gracious. Uh, number 2, the accreditor Keystone College. I might have touched on this last week. The Middle States Commission on Higher Education warns of misleading information circulating about Keystone College in Pennsylvania and they're in their dire straits. And students— the subheading reads in this title, this is from Ryan Quinn on Inside Higher Ed— students can't be sure their college will exist come this fall. So the day after Middle States says, hey, college, Keystone College, are putting out misleading information. Keystone's president— this is the current president, not an acting one— Mr. John Pulo— I hope I pronounced that right— sent letters to the faculty, staff, and students about the situation, and the college posted a statement on its website, and I'll read that. You should remain hopeful about your ability to continue your education at Keystone in the days ahead. I wonder if he meant to say days ahead. That's pretty short. He wrote to students. This is the president, John Pluhill. And the college's April 26th post said that the college is— get this now, we've heard this before— is continuing to pursue discussions with an unnamed— my word— an unnamed investment partner to secure an agreement which would be in the best interest of Keystone, its students, and the entire college community. Okay, folks, do you know how many— you don't know, but how many social media notes I get agreeing with me that these colleges on their financial death's doorstep should go ahead and close? I get lots, lots. Keystone College, and the real president, not the acting one, Keystone College, please join, currently please join Northland College in Wisconsin. Do your faculty, your staff, your community, your students a favor and find someone, someone please, to turn off the lights. Geez. Page 2. On the other hand, I don't get that much affirmation from others. Unlike the Keystone College before— East Keystone College story before, I don't get that much affirmation from others on my belief, and I've said this many times, that accrediting agencies are not much more than I-dotters and T-crossers. Now, this story comes from an email message that I was copied on, and so I don't have a link to this. I'm not going to share the email with you, and it was from someone that was working with the college and they were, as I understand it, putting together a proposal to get this college into a partnership. And the folks at Middle States, the Middle States College Commission we talked about a minute ago, were so busy, were so involved with college closings, that they made looking at a partnership for whatever college this was, it was way down on their action list. And so this person was intimating that that this particular accrediting agency, Middle States, doesn't really seem to have their priorities in disarray. They're doing postmortems, they suggested, or preparing to do postmortems on closing colleges instead of focusing on systems, processes, and methods for other colleges that don't— maybe don't have to close, to stay open. And finally, this person adds he's not confident— he or she, I can't remember— I was not confident that they even look— that the accrediting agency even look at the financials in a meaningful way. And I've shared this before, the accrediting agencies could serve a role to give students and families, faculty and staff for that matter, a heads up when a college is in trouble. But it's always a last-minute kind of thing, or they get in the way of potential mergers or partnerships. And you saw my letter to the crediting agencies a couple weeks ago when I suggested— I asked, knowing it wouldn't happen— that they get out of the way of colleges that want to merge or otherwise find partnerships. All they're doing is slowing down the process and almost guaranteeing more college closures than we're going to see anyway. So we've talked about Google Alerts, and I have a lot of them, and so I get a lot of email posts. Some are garbage, but many of them have some value. And one that's been popping up the last 6 to 12 months or so is associated with one of my Google Alerts, is high school layoffs. Now there was a story on May 11th this past weekend from Washington CNN, from CNN in Washington, Katie Labosco. And the essence of her story, I'll read, paraphrase what she said: schools across the country are announcing teacher and staff layoffs as districts brace for the end of a pandemic aid package that delivered the largest one-time federal investment in K-12 education. Many districts, she continues, have warned of layoffs as the current school year comes to a close and next year's budgets are planned. The local headlines about teachers likely won't help Americans who remain stubbornly pessimistic about the economy. And it goes on with some more details that are political, and I'm not going to go to politics. And this is the heads-up story. The reason I threw this in today's podcast is I've seen this over the last many months, as I shared, because its impact, if true— and I have to believe it's true in, in some substantive form or fashion— its impact, it impacts future college enrollment. Across the country. And I, I don't know where it's going yet, where this college or this high school layoff is going yet, but I do know that I'm going to be paying a little bit more attention to my Google Alert links to see, to look more closely at what trends might be developing with, I guess, private high schools in particular, maybe publics as well, with layoffs of faculty and staff. Moving on, Illinois Institute of Technology. Sees unprecedented growth as undergraduate applications and admissions surge 35% year to year. Now, if you've listened to me before, you're any kind of a consumer in any substance of higher education, when I said the words applications and admissions, you probably had a frown cross your face because in both cases they don't mean that much. Applications are one way Admissions are one way. The college admits someone doesn't mean they're going to show up. And of course, colleges are welcome to spin things any way they want. I have no issue with that, but that's one of the reasons I'm here to say, hey, you know, as your college financial quality control advocate, I'm going to give you the data unfiltered with PR spin. And this is— it's not false marketing. Because the, the data is true, but it's delusional marketing. It's an internal PR release, so they're entitled, and nothing wrong with that. So I'm going to go to the data here in a second, but they, they start off— the good folks at Illinois Institute of Technology, they start off patting themselves on the back for increased applications. I've talked about this before. Applying to college today is, is as easy as adding another topping on your pizza. Click a box and an extra ingredient, or in this case, application is on its way. Most, but not all, colleges have increased applications. That means nothing. That means they've got more folks clicking a box, just like when you order pizza. So let's look at the data at IIT, Illinois Institute of Technology, and this is from 2022. For every dollar in expenses They had 80 cents in revenue. So doing the math, for those of you that skipped math class in high school and college, they're losing 20 cents for every dollar they have in expenses. That's not a good number. Their expenses per student, per FTE student, the standard that I use, were about $10,000 higher than the revenues per full-time equivalent student. All right, that's reflected in the previous one where they're earning only 80 cents on the dollar invested in expenses. And over the past 8 years, the— this is from 2015 to 2022— their FTE enrollment is down about 1,000 students. All right, nothing new there. They're interestingly— their 4-year graduation rate's not too good at 37%, but their 6-year graduation rate is at 72%, almost double. I don't know if that's me missing something or them not reporting it well. That's quite the jump from 4 years to 6 years. I might look at that down the road. Trustee and free revenue has decreased $39 million. That's not good. But IIT, the Illinois Institute of Technology, does have a strong endowment, really strong endowment, $300 million. And their retention is also pretty strong, really is quite strong, at 90%. And, and here's a quote from Malik Sundaram, the Illinois Tech Vice President for Enrollment Management and Student Affairs. He says— I'll try not to giggle— this remarkable surge in applications and admissions is a testament to the growing recognition of Illinois Tech's multidisciplinary degrees, which are centered on experiential learning pedagogy and yield exceptional career outcomes for graduates. Applications and admissions mean nothing. They don't cite any data on career outcomes and experiential learning pedagogy. I'm not even sure what that means. So folks, here's the bottom line. IIT is not, not gonna close. They've got some good offerings, they have a niche, and they're certainly gonna have to make some budget adjustments, content adjustments maybe. I'm just baffled why they let, let the PR folks put out such a weak, weak story when they're, they're really probably not in that much trouble. Now, maybe 2 months ago we had the story and that was across the wires, that Fontbonne University here in St. Louis is closing. The Post-Dispatch ran another story here in St. Louis last Friday. Fontbonne University is closing, which we knew. Which other colleges are at risk of shutting down? I'll include the link, although it's behind a paywall, in the show notes. Now, I don't know that St. Louis is quite yet, quite yet a hotbed for college closures, but the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, God bless 'em, is certainly on the leading edge I believe, of tracking the status and risks of private colleges in the region. Now, the reporters went so far, using another source, they went so far as to list colleges in trouble, at risk was the term they used, and this was according to the Scholarship Foundation of St. Louis. The Scholarship Foundation released a watch list in March of this year of 37 Midwestern colleges, although I think it went beyond the Midwest, in danger of closing due to significant financial distress in the past 5 years. I went and looked at their website. The best I can tell, all they're using is the Forbes financial grades of colleges to identify those colleges at risk, 'cause the list included some that I would never put on an at-risk list, 'cause I don't think it's substantive. But the story reads, I'm gonna read from the story, the at-risk campuses according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch story include Maryville University, Missouri Baptist, and William Woods Universities. Schools in the region listed as especially perilous: Harris-Stowe, McKendree University, which is on the Illinois side, and Quincy University, also on the Illinois side, Webster, and Fontbonne. And of course, Fontbonne had announced their closure in March of this year. Now, I've said this before, and I'm going to say it again. I am not about, and I won't predict which colleges will close. I have my own list, it's 230-some-odd colleges long. I have my own ideas, but I, I don't care for the pushback and the potential litigation that would come with me making a prediction that any given college will close. That's not my job. My business model at College Viability is to provide the College Viability series of apps for both public and private executive users, faculty and staff, students and their families, to let those folks compare colleges, whether they're running those colleges, teaching those colleges, or just considering those colleges for a degree. And, and that's, that's what I'm here for. Yeah, I poke the higher ed bear. I do that with intent. I do use the app to take colleges to task like I did previously with Illinois Institute of Technology when they spin the "we're okay" stories, and I don't believe that they are okay. And I, I want to go with a slightly different tack here. I, I've shared previously that I am increasingly concerned about uptaking college closures this fall because of the FAFSA mess and the general downward trend in higher education. If you're, if you're a college leader, get the app, spend the bucks to compare your college against others across more than 30 IPEDS reports. And don't tell me you've got folks to do that because they can't or they don't or they won't. If you're in faculty and staff, spend a couple bucks to look at the 9 reports so that you compare either your public or private college against your peers. Students and family, 5 reports. Spend $30 students and families to compare colleges across 5 reports over the last 8 years. Page 4, Cleveland.com, in a letter from the editor Chris Quinn, the headline reads, buffoonery, incompetence, and lies. Now this has to do with two politicians in the Cleveland area, actually more than that, but the essence of it is politicians in the Cleveland area caught in demonstrable lies. And the Cleveland.com folks did exceptional work in demonstrating these lies, and, and the details are unimportant. You can imagine them. The details are unimportant for this podcast, but the reason I latched onto this story is the final quote from Chris Quinn, again, the editor of cleveland.com. His quote is, "Our job, though, is to call them out." He's talking about politicians. "So we do. Our job, though, is to call them out. So we do." Now I am not about to call college leaders or faculty buffoons, incompetent, or liars. In almost all cases, they are not. But you've heard me call them out as spinners, and they are certainly guilty of that. Nothing wrong. It's not completely first class, but, you know, we're entitled to have that spin. That's why I'm here, to, to make sure that when they spin it, I can add the actual data to it. It's just, it's, that's why I'm here, to call them out. Just like Chris Quinn at Cleveland.com, when colleges are sharing stuff that's not completely true, or they're using data points that are not, are not reflective of their true situation, that's what I'm here for. I am your quality control specialist on this end of the microphone. So let's wrap this episode up. And I'm, I'm hearing more, more and more informed speculation about a federal bailout of private colleges this fall. I think it's in conjunction with the FAFSA mess and the overall bad market trends we talked about earlier. And the details, if it even develops, are not important for now. I have no idea what those details would look like. But what I would do want to do is I want to look beyond the bailout, just kind of a scenario planning. Or whatever it's called, bailout, whatever, and its impact on the market, probably not right away. So first, it will cover— it will cover a bailout, will cover the FAFSA calamity. All right, that's logical. The government broke it, you buy it. You broke it, you buy it. All right, I can, I can understand that. But the real issue that, that I want to look at in the coming weeks and months after any kind of bailout is what happens afterwards, whether it's a federal or maybe even state bailout. The basics of the market will not have changed. Culture— cultural perceptions of colleges will not have changed. Interest or lack of interest and a college degree will not have changed. And as, as I sit here in mid-May 2024, I, I don't see any long-term value of an election-year bailout for colleges in trouble. Like the COVID funds, once they are used up, whatever they look like, college closures are almost certain to start up again. This is just a market that is consolidating. Any artificial involvement by public entities, federal or state, even local, aren't going to change the market dynamics. I'm still going to be developing college viability apps. I'm still going to be tracking graduation rates, which are abysmal, and enrollment numbers. Think about that in the coming weeks. What happens? If the predictions, developing predictions of massive numbers of closures, dozens of closures per month, happens, and whether there is or is not a federal bailout. Until next Monday when we do this again, my name is Gary Stocker with This Week in College Viability. Thanks for making time to listen. We'll do it again in 7 days.