Answer: About One College or University Per Week

A review of the book—Colleges on the Brink: The Case for Financial Exigency

Rundown:

FTI Blog Post 109 is a Book Review. This post includes a Rundown, a Reading, a Rating, a Review, personal Reflections from George, and questions for your Reaction.

Reading:

Charles M. Ambrose and Michael T. Nietzel. Colleges on the Brink: The Case for Financial Exigency. Kindle Edition. Roman and Littlefield, 2023. See the book on Amazon: HERE.

Rating: Ten out of Ten

Rating Scale: One to Three means do not waste your time. It is just mediocre information. Four to Seven says the book is worth a quick read to harvest some learnings. It enhances your knowledge. Eight to Ten suggests the book is worth underlining, highlighting, and quoting. It increases your wisdom.

Review:

Answer: About One College or University Per Week

Question:

How many degree granting schools of higher education—not counting for-profit schools—are closing each week in the United States?

One.

That is 50-plus per year for the slightly less than 4000 schools. The rate of closures may increase without warning. It is highly unlikely to decrease based on current trends.

The USA averaged 26 colleges per year closing in the period of 1970-2020. More than 40% of these in the period 2015-2020. (Kindle edition page 14)

(Note: This exceptional book that I highly recommend, by Charles M. Ambrose and Michael T. Nietzel, addresses the issue of financial exigency in colleges in an exceptional manner. I know Charles (Chuck) Ambrose and have regular conversations with him. Some of my statements are from my interpretation of what he said. Let’s begin by addressing the Answer and Questions stated above.)

Why?

This is happening as colleges and universities reach a point of financial exigency and cannot continue. They experience near financial failure. They do not have the financial resources to stay open. Some will be down to less than a month—or even a week—of financial resources before they close.

“Between 2017 and the end of 2022, enrollment in American colleges declined by about 1.8 million students, with most of that loss occurring in the wake of the pandemic. Since 2010, overall college enrollment in the United States has decreased by approximately three million students, a slide that’s continued despite intense, annual efforts by higher education leaders to turn it around.” (Kindle Location 51/52)

“The 1976 version of Regulation 4(c) in Statement of Principles on Academic Freeman and Tenure provided *AAUP’s most complete description of financial exigency up to that point in time. It defined financial exigency as an “imminent financial crisis which threatens the survival of the institution as a whole and which cannot be alleviated by less drastic means.” (30)

This statement was revised (by *AAUP) in 2013 to say, “a severe financial crisis that fundamentally compromises the academic integrity of the institution as a whole and that cannot be alleviated by less drastic means.” (30)

*AAUP—American Association of University Professors

How Long Have Colleges Known This was Coming?

The breadcrumbs showing the pathway to this crisis have been dropping for almost 80 years—since the end of World War II. At first, they were hard to see. Many colleges never saw the breadcrumbs. Or they denied their existence through years of pressing harder rather than working smarter.

What Activities Contributed to This Situation?

The direct, indirect, and a collection of cultural causes are many:

GI Bill. Expectations that people will go to college. Expansion of colleges to respond to a growing student population that is now a decreasing. Exploding costs. Too many colleges. More choices than going to a traditional college.

The growth of community or technical colleges that offer the first two years of college courses less expensively and near home, including for high school juniors and seniors. Seventy percent of costs for colleges are for faculty and staff. Too few credit hours now taught—especially by tenured faculty.

Whose Fault is This?

If looking for people or situations to blame, their name is Legend for there are many:

COVID Pandemic. Government funding. FAFSA mismanagement. Less international students coming to the USA. More virtual instruction. Student loan debt and fear of it by potential students. Employers no longer requiring a college degree.

Impatient students with an unwillingness to endure four years of college to get a degree. Tenured faculty and their professional unionization.

“If you build it, they will come” mentality of colleges. They raise money and construct new buildings for which they do not have day-to-day, year-to-year, and decade-to-decade funds to operate and retrofit.

The 2008 recession from which colleges investments have not recovered. Willingness of government to keep funding colleges with larger grants so they will not fail. Ineffective college presidents and administrators who remain in denial too long. Trustees who do not know or are unwilling to ask the tough questions, and to hold the college leadership accountable.

What is the Future of Higher Education?

Throwing money at the schools is not the answer. The problems are deeper and more complex. Here is part of what I have heard or perceive to be possible:

Aligning learning with what the community needs. College/Career/Context/Business coalitions. Paid internships with businesses and organizations throughout college. Not requiring college degrees for jobs that really do not demand them.

Helping students get focused on what they want to do earlier. Or get focused on what they want to do and then attend college. A gap year between high school and college. Life planning in high school.

Let me leave you with the five “R”s of moving forward from exigency: Recover, Renew, Re-Allocate, Restructure, and Re-imagine. (159)

Reflections from George:

Is the Difference College Offers No Longer Worth It?

It is absolutely worth it for the 20 percent of current college students who partially because of their college experience will make a significant and positive difference in our world. The challenge is we do not know who those 20 percent will be until during or after their college experience.

Therefore, we likely need some type of college for at least 50 percent of the current people attending college and alternative learning pathways for the other 50 percent.

Remember as you consider this: There is a difference between colleges and universities emerging out of financial exigency, and ones that are capable of fulfilling their mission in the years to come. That may mean at some point in the future we have 2000 colleges rather than 4000.

What Are Some of the Things We Are Currently Experiencing?

We are experiencing college demonstrations, protests, occupation of buildings, and camp-ins where insiders and outsiders live briefly on campus grounds. They believe their cause is just, and disrupting their campus and community context is justified.

We see the reality that the leading elite universities now have a rack rate for a year of schooling close to $100,000. This often focuses on the top one percent of academic ability students. Also, students whose parents are high income or wealthy populating these schools.

The FAFSA process with the US Department of Education broke down this year as the federal government decided to do a full restart of the process—rather than a phase-in—and it blew up in their face. My granddaughter’s response on FAFSA from the college she is entering as a freshman just came in the middle of May.

Many compassionate, caring, and student-focused faculty abound. Helping students develop competencies and well-defined dreams for a future where they can make their best contribution to society. We also see faculty for whom tenure, research, writing, and speaking come before nurturing students.

We see the presidents of colleges and universities dragged into televised debates with US Congress committees. Some ending up being fired following attacks by strident elected officials who probably could not lead those colleges and universities themselves.

Multiple rounds of student debt relief and forgiveness abound from the White House in an attempt to relief former college and university students from long-term debt they cannot pay off. Perhaps also to secure their vote in the next election.

A couple of dozen state governments no longer require a college degree for employment in positions which have typically required a degree. They cannot find people who qualify to fill important roles.

What are you seeing?

Reactions:

You are invited to share some reactions (comments) to this book review and my reflections. Here are three questions to guide your reaction:

1. What is the health and vitality of the college(s) you attended?

2. Should everyone go to college? (Explain your answer.)

3. What is your thinking about the future of colleges and universities, or the more more generic idea of advanced or high educaton?