This Week In College Viability (TWICV) for August 26, 2024

It is This Week in College Viability for August 26th, 2024. Hi, it's Gary Stocker. You know, as, as college students move on to campuses over the last couple weeks, and I think including this week, there's much excitement, as to be expected, about the new academic year. And some colleges even made announcements about good enrollment numbers. In general, it was an expected slow week in bad college news stories. However, Late Sunday night, I saw a Twitter/X post from John Bakkenstedt from Oregon State University, and John's post stated there were many colleges announcing fabulous enrollment numbers. His post included an image of an old plane with lots of red dots on it. I immediately recognized it as an image from a World War II research project on how to better protect fighters and bombers. The dots on the airplane image represented where returning aircraft had holes from anti-aircraft fire. The military, of course, wanted to protect those areas with the most holes. However, there was a sampling bias. Think about it. They were only looking at returning planes. They, for obvious reasons, were not looking at planes that were shot down and crashed. John confirmed through some back-and-forth Twitter posts he and I had that that was his point in announcing that colleges that had returned with strong numbers, that there was a sample bias. Of course, if there's good news, you're going to shout it from the mountaintop. But the sample bias here is those colleges without good news, those colleges with bad enrollment numbers, and that's a preponderance of them. They're the ones that need to be analyzed, not the self-proclaimed good news colleges with great enrollment. So they say. I'll talk about that in a minute. And as I shared with John, and I've shared on previous podcasts, this is the time of year for colleges when no news— when no news is bad news. Now, I have some of these enrollment stories teed up for later in the podcast, and some claims are indeed valid. I did the research, I checked the data on all of them, but some are spinning the data so much, spinning the data so much, I needed to rush out to my Walgreens to get some anti- spinning pharmaceuticals, and I found there is no such thing, of course. Other stories this week: Alberto College up in Wisconsin, it's in Milwaukee, received an HLS— Higher Learning Commission— financial probation letter, and nobody knows about it. We'll talk about that. It must be Wisconsin week because the University of Wisconsin, the public regents closed a college and laid off 32 tenured professors. We'll talk about that, and we'll talk about those spinning fall enrollment stories. And I'm going to wrap things up today with a story from a guy by the name of Marc LaBranche, uh, about, about from inside higher education, about survivability is not sustainability. We'll talk about that toward the end of this week's podcast. Welcome, as always. I'm always interested in your questions, comments, observations, concerns. You can certainly drop me a note at gary@ at collegeviability.com. You drop me a note, you drop me a question, you drop me a concern, they go to the top of my list. Page 2, Alberto College and HLC financial stress probation. Now there was a document at the HLC, the Higher Learning Commission website, they're out of Chicago, that was dated August 1st, and I'll read what the first part of the letter said. The Higher Learning Commission has assigned a financial distress designation, a financial distress designation, to Alverno College in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, based on the institution having declared financial exigency. So this is the institution saying, hey, we're running out of money, not the HLC saying, hey, where's your money? Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, this was 6 weeks ago. I only stumbled across it because I have so many connections in higher education. Somebody dropped me a note that happened to include a reference to this, and I looked it up. And HLC says in their letter that a financial distress designation is a consumer protection mechanism. HLC says, okay, it's meant to apprise the public I guess the public that dives deep into the archives and catacombs of their website. It's meant to apprise the public that current conditions at an accredited college or university raise potential concerns about its resource base to support its educational programs. They had one other sentence that I don't know what it means. It says, and I quote, HLC does not undertake any independent evaluation of the institution in advance of assigning a designation. HLC does not undertake any independent evaluation of the institution in advance of assigning a designation. I— if you know what that means, HLC, drop me a note, gary@collegeviability.com. If anybody knows what that means, I get— I'm gonna guess that it means that I can't tell HLC, maybe the other I-dotting, T-crossing accrediting agencies. I can't tell them the financial or enrollment graduation rate facts or other data about Alverno or other colleges. And Alverno remains accredited. Alverno College remains accredited while it pursues efforts to address the circumstances that have led to the designation. Now, why is it that HLC, and I think other accrediting agencies as well, why is it HLC plays hide and seek with these announcements? You have to go, you have to know where to go deep inside their website, in the catacombs of their website. You have to know where to go. In this case, somebody provided me the link. I wouldn't have looked at this anytime soon. I go and look at those accrediting websites on occasion, but not often. Why is it that a public service announcement is buried. Why is it that this is not front page on the website? And maybe it is, HLCA, maybe I missed it. If so, let me know and I'll correct it. But to me, this is yet another indication that accrediting agencies are really not much more not much more than I-dotters crossing the I's, T-crossers crossing the T's. And when you go to the data, you know, Matt Hendricks and I on our College Financial Health Show, I think it was 2 weeks ago, had Alberto on. It's one of the few we've done so far. We'll be doing a lot more. And, and one of Matt's visuals shows that the— one of the, one of the key indicators cash. Uh, Alberto's pattern followed very similarly to those colleges' income patterns, the net income patterns of closed colleges. That can't be good. Their enrollment is down 500 at Alberto, 27%. 4-year graduation rates are abysmal. It was 40% in '22, much lower in earlier years. The tuition and fee revenue is down $11 million from 2015 to 2022, the last reported data. Total expenses up $2 million. The endowment as a suboptimal $35 million. Total revenue down $13 million. The total revenue to expense ratio— for every dollar in expenses, yes, for every dollar in expenses, Alverno College brings in 73 cents in revenue. Why is it that HLC and other accreditors don't share these numbers in a timely fashion Some nondescript announcement buried deep in their website catacombs does not, in my mind, meet the standard of consumer protection. And what happens this fall if predictions of more closures associated with the FAFSA debacle hit these financial monitoring-challenged agencies? Will they bury more probation announcements in their website catacombs? Will they continue to protect their dues and fees-paying colleges by undercommunicating the real financial and viability challenges? And it must be Wisconsin week here at This Week in College Viability. Here's a headline: In a precedent-setting vote, University of Wisconsin Regents close a college and lay off 32 tenured professors. And this is a story from Kelly Meyerhofer at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on August 23rd. The board overseeing Wisconsin Public Universities laid off 32 tenured faculty. It was from a college that was part of the University of Milwaukee, and I believe the Washington County campuses at the end of this school year. Maybe it might have been the Waukesha campus as well. And the 32 faculty, I believe, were at those two campuses and the Board of Regents said, "We don't need you," and laid them off. Here's a quote, and I'll follow up on this here in a second, but here's a quote from Tate Zabo, and he's an associate professor of philosophy from one of the branch campuses. He says, Mr. Zabo, Mr. Tate Zabo says, "It's always the people who make the least who get cut first, right?" he asks. Mr. Zabo said he had given 17 years to the University of Wisconsin System, and ended his academic career earning about $56,000. Credit to him for sharing that. He goes on to add Milwaukee isn't brimming with other philosophy faculty jobs for him to apply for, but his family has established roots in the area, leaving Zombo and his family in limbo. This sad— this has happened and will continue to happen. It is sad It happened to me in a different industry many years ago. It happens to many, and these sad stories are true. They are depressing, and yet they are necessary. They are necessary for higher education as an industry to scale back to a size where the supply of colleges, college courses, college seats meets the demand from students for those courses. Mr. Szabo and his $56,000 after 17 years, you know, decisions or no decisions have consequences. I feel bad for all those in that position, including Mr. Szabo, but it will continue to happen to all of the Mr. Szabos or Dr. Szabos it might be. In the world. Decisions or no decisions have consequences for all of us. Page 3. All right, let's have some fun spinning enrollment. Like I said at the top of the podcast, there are many announcements this time of year when colleges are welcoming their students back in a variety of different stories. And I get, I bet, 2 or 3 dozen of these a day on my Google Alerts form that I have in place. And the first one is Missouri Baptist University, actually just down the street from me, welcomes the largest number of new students on campus. And again, as always, the links will be in the show notes for this. So Missouri Baptist, in a long story, doesn't even use numbers, just percentages. So really makes it tough to do quality control checks, which is one of my main jobs here when colleges put this kind of number out. Good folks at Missouri Baptist and this is an internal communication, I think. If you're doing that, you know, include some data for us. Be upfront. Let us make sure your numbers are the same as the historical trends, the actual numbers you submitted previously. At Aurora University, the headline reads, "Move-in day for new students exciting, emotional." At Aurora, this was a Chicago Tribune story. They say, "We always have the same move-in weekend in August." And this year we are welcoming 700 new freshmen with a total enrollment of just under 6,000. One of the representatives said, in terms of total numbers— here's the qualification— in terms of total numbers, the total is projected to be, uh, the total is projected to be the same as last year. A couple hours north of me in Quincy, Illinois, Quincy University The Quincy Herald-Whig: Quincy University stable heading into the 2024-2025 academic year. I presume they're talking enrollment. There's a picture of Quincy University President Brian McGee greeting students in his graduation day regalia, the gown and all that kind of stuff. That had to be warm in mid-August in Quincy, Illinois. And here's a quote from Dr. McGee, I presume from University, Quincy University President Brian McGee. It's a smaller class than last year's largest in 50 years enrollment. Okay, was it 1 student, 1,000 students? It doesn't say, but still a good number. All right, that's a solid, a solid reference by historic QU standards. This is where I need to run it back out to Walgreens to see if they have some pharmaceuticals for me. My head is spinning as I read all of these qualifications from college, and this happens to be a college president, for crying out loud. Let's go inside baseball for a second. You know, there's lots of different ways— there are different ways to calculate and report graduation— I'm sorry, to calculate and report enrollment. Total enrollment, full-time equivalent enrollment, undergrad enrollment, graduate enrollment. All of these different types of enrollment can be mismatched to make statements like we're hearing from folks at Quincy and other places. And, and all right, spin it. I've said this before, feel free to spin it, but I'm going to catch you. But college PR types or college leaders, please be precise in defining your terms. Is it total enrollment? Is it FTE enrollment? Is it undergrad enrollment? Is it dartboard enrollment? I'm not gonna use a geesh, but I'm tend to attempt it 'cause I have one coming up here in a second. And then there were two that the data checked out. It was McPherson College, a private college in Kansas, and Kansas Western University. They reported McPherson had a new freshman class of 319, that's about where they've been, retention rate of 75%, which is decent. It grew its freshman class by 35%, with total enrollment— thank you very much for defining that term— of 5%. Thank you. Kansas Wesleyan also reported its largest ever incoming freshman class. I don't know what the number is. They share it's 417 students. Um, the retention rate they quote in the story is at 62%. That's not really good enough to report, but they reported anyway. So, you know, Kansas Wesleyan, McPherson, at least giving it the old college try. To get the numbers at least properly defined. Next one, I think I got one or two more. Um, UT Martin, University of Tennessee Martin, seeks 10,000 student enrollment by 2030. This is from Shannon McFarland, uh, and Radio WTN, I presume in the UT Martin area somewhere. They want to have their president or chancellor, I can't remember, wants 10,000 students by 2030. So that's 5, 26, 27, 28, 29, so that's 6 years. I got on my fingers right here. I had a camera, you could see 6 years on my fingers. They're at— they were at 6,200. 6,200 in 2022. That's just a smidge short of 4,000 from 10,000. Jeez, this is my— jeez, do they realize at UT Martin how many students they would have to create or take from their competitors. This is, this is, this is baloney sausage. That I'll leave it at a single G. Welcome Week at Adrian College spotlights 600 new students representing the class of 2028. This is from the Daily Telegram on August 23rd. I don't see a reporter in my notes here, More than 600 students, 603 to be exact, good for them, were welcomed to campus by Adrian College faculty and staff. Let's just go to the data. The good folks at Adrian College, their unfunded institutional grants discounts, if you will, merit aid, is up $16 million, that's 1.6 million dollars, that's 65% in the last reported 8 years. Tuition and fee revenue is down $1.3 million. Expenses, expenses are up $9 million. And the 4-year graduation rate was 40% in 2022. And you've heard me before, if you can't graduate at least 40%, 40% of your students in 4 years, I don't even think you're a college. If you can't graduate at least 40% of your students in 4 years, you are a tuition collection agency. You're paid to graduate students, not just collect their tuition and fee dollars. And reporters, again, you take these stories, that's fine, that's your job. I'll make the offer again, drop me a note with your media suffix in the domain and I'll send you a free courtesy link to either the full executive analysis version for either public colleges or private colleges I get so little response to this, I am probably wasting perfectly good breath on those stories. Page 4, and is the last story that I have, and this is that survivability is not sustainability lead that I talked about at the top of the podcast. And this is from a doctor, I presume a Dr. Mark LaRonche, who is Chancellor Emeritus of the University of Tennessee Southern. He's written a couple books. One is Inside College Mergers: Stories from the Front Lines, and the other was Rebirth of an Institution. And this has to do with a college merger I think he helped pull together. Dr. Lebranch, Mark Lebranch, writes, the existential question of institutional survivability may mask more important questions about sustainability and mission, Mark Labranch writes. Here's a quote from Dr. Labranch's Inside Higher Education article: While many colleges have managed to survive year to year for a century or more, the more important question is whether they are sustainable. Now, this is an interesting thought process from Dr. Labranch. I, I've talked about colleges waiting to act, waiting to move, waiting to change things, change their business model, change your academic model, until their last dollars are circling the financial drain. And at a time when the higher education market is, is shrinking with intense, intense financial, financial and enrollment pressures across the market, just surviving Just surviving is a disservice. Just surviving is a disservice to faculty and to staff and to students and even to the community that your college resides in. Yes, I believe that consolidation of colleges, mostly private but some public, I believe that consolidation of colleges in the forms of both closure Both closure and mergers are needed. I believe that consolidation of colleges in the form— forms of both closure and mergers are needed. That is my voice. That is my position. It's not easy. It's not easy for these consolidations, closures, mergers to take place. In fact, it is and will continue, continue to be quite unpleasant for those involved. There's no question. But this is, this goes beyond the issue of saving your local college, private or public. I make the argument that this is a national economic and that this is a national security issue. Colleges without sufficient financial resources are a drag, are a detriment on the learning and potential of their students, and I argue, of their country. If your college is just surviving, please consider the downside consequences for all of your stakeholders. College leaders, you know, It may be late in the game, but you know if it's time to turn off the lights, please turn off the lights. And I'm going to wrap this up with another line from Dr. Lebranche, Lebranche, and survivability is not sustainability. He asks the question, are your faculty and staff receiving, and I'm going to add materially significant, cost of living raises. He makes a case, makes the argument, that an institution is not truly sustainable if it cannot afford to address the increased cost of living of its faculty and staff. When presented with a financial sustainability plan, Marc LeBlanche writes, the trustees must ask how compensation is being addressed. And are you trying to fix your financial challenges with athletics? Academic recruitment, amenities, academic support, personalized marketing. Marc Lebranch goes through each of these and makes an argument that none is really a practice that will ultimately be successful. And both compensation and adding these programs, faculty adding these programs, athletics, academics, amenities, academic support, These are both, Mark Lebranch argues, and I agree, they are both indicators of a college focusing on survivability, not sustainability. And what damage is being done to the livelihoods of faculty and staff, to the academic and lifetime earnings potential of thousands of students who started a college, find out it's closed, and have to go somewhere else? And the data shows it's only about half continue on. Half, at least in the time being, leave their college degree pursuit. And to those in these leadership positions, be it college leaders, boards of trustees, community leaders, the market will eventually force your decision. It's not up to you. The market will eventually say, hey, you can or cannot survive. There are no programmatic changes There is no marketing genius that will change the basic economic facts. There are too many of you, too many colleges, and not enough students willing to pay even heavily discounted tuition. The light switch is on the wall by the door. For College Viability, I'm Gary Stalker. I'll be back next Monday with another episode, podcast episode, of this week in college viability. We'll talk then.