I’m Afraid, the Start of a Sad Trend
I hate when I'm right… at least in this case.
For the past two years, I have, in my annual December predictions podcast, sadly forecasted that colleges and universities, in particular smaller ones, would begin to close. Last year, it may have been a little bit ahead of the curve. In 2024, as predicted in December of 2023, we're beginning to see an increase of these announcements.
One of the latest news stories in this regard was the announcement that Birmingham Southern College, a private liberal arts institute in Birmingham AL is set to close at the end of May. Even with a 170-year history, the school, mired in debt, announced the board's decision to close the school at the end of the year. This one example is just the latest announcement.
Hodges University in Florida, Lincoln Christian University in Illinois, Magdalene College in New Hampshire, College of Saint Rose in New York, St. John's University Staten Island in New York, Cabrini University in Pennsylvania, and Pennsylvania College for Health Sciences have all announced closures at the end of the spring semester in 2024.
I'm sure there are a million different reasons for the closures for just this limited list. Add to this the nearly two dozen schools in 2023 that have either closed or merged, the reasons and rationale and excuses are endless.
But in the end, the outcomes are the same. It puts students in a terrible position to try to figure out how to transfer without losing credit and achievement already obtained. Communities, particularly smaller ones, who see the university as a vibrant part of their overall economic engine, suffer with these changes. People who are employed by these institutions no longer have jobs and we'll have to make adjustments, most of the time in quick order, to survive. And alumni/donors who have supported the schools may believe that their financial contributions were for not.
The cost of education is getting to the point, whether you look at it from what families pay or what universities charge, where the economics won't work either short or long term. This is just the beginning. There will be more announcements. Endowments that weren't raised decades ago are part of the problem. Building too many buildings as we've moved to more of a video distant learning process is part of the problem. Bad leadership and management are part of the problem. Less kids going to college is definitely part of the problem.
In the end, it's just sad. I feel bad for all involved. In our nonprofit world, it's increasingly important to be thinking strategically decades ahead to try to ensure our organizations are vibrant participants in solving our communities problems well into the future.
