The recent closing of Cardinal Stritch University seemed to catch a number of people in this community by surprise. Colleagues in education, alums and business people have all commented on how surprised they were to see the school shutter its doors.
It won’t be the last.
The college enrollment crisis has been going on for more than 10 years and there have been plenty of signs of the apocalypse.
The first to go was adult education, the stalwart of so many colleges, this cash cow was the lifeblood of schools in the area for decades. When businesses were flush with cash and they could dictate what they needed in employees, these programs sprung up like dandelions in spring. Rooted in low-cost adjunct faculty, and tuition-reimbursing students, the adult education centers tailoring to returning adults provided a necessary oasis for schools that struggled with traditional enrollment. The adult ed market dried up during the Great Recession and has never returned.
The second of the four horsemen of the college apocalypse are traditional enrollment numbers in decline. Schools with steady 18- to 21-year-olds began to feel the effects of a declining number of high school students eligible for traditional schools. Schools then began competing by offering deep discounts to the stated tuition rates in an effort to capture a greater share of a declining market. But demographics continued to play a role in the continuing downward spiral for many schools, and especially those schools without a non-traditional student buffer began to feel the effects early. Schools then did several things to try and stave off the crisis: cut staff, which Stritch and others did several times, or draw upon their endowments. Then the next crisis hit.
The third horseman was the COVID-19 pandemic. A huge blow to most businesses, education was particularly wounded as it had been languishing with enrollment challenges in both traditional and continuing education, the two core enrollment centers. Schools that went online, if they were even capable of making such a transition, missed out on residual cash flow from resident halls and food services. The public relations nightmare did not help as schools were trolled for continuing remotely or choosing to stay open – a damned if you do, damned if you don’t decision. When schools did reopen, the students were not eager to return, and haven’t. This created another crisis: the burst of the international student bubble.
International students have long been sought after for more than their intellectual acumen and the diversity they bring to the classroom. Not eligible to work, except at the school, they bring inexpensive clerical aid and cash, as most are not scholarship students. When the pandemic hit and borders were closed, the international student stayed away and has yet to return. The largest provider of international students, China has been at odds with the U.S. politically and, therefore, its students have been going to more desirable and welcoming nations for their schooling. This fourth apocalypse is the death knell for many schools, some of which errantly think they can cut their staff in order to get back to profitability.
My dire prediction is that we will continue to see colleges and universities continue to flounder for years if not decades to come. While the high school demographics are improving after bottoming out in the past few years, new challenges arise. High employment rates are not good for the continuing education market, with employers being dictated to by the employee what they will accept in compensation and benefits rather than the other way around. It is a seller’s market and the buyers, employers, are not flush with cash in order to pay for tuition reimbursement and other perks.
Continuing geopolitical unrest also makes the U.S. less appealing to large numbers of students, and our struggle to come to an expeditious decision on the debt crisis did not help warm those prospects internationally.
Closer to home, colleges have not been immune from the social justice issues challenging businesses as professors have spoken out on one side of the political extreme or another, with the college getting the blowback ala Bud Light.
Besides Stritch, Upper Iowa has closed their Wisconsin centers and Lakeland University has joined forces with Waukesha County Technical College in an effort to lower center costs and provide a curricular pass-through for associate degree students looking to get a bachelor’s degree.
And even my own longtime employer Concordia University Wisconsin has lowered their tuition for cash cow programs, like the MBA, in an effort to capture more of the waning international market.
Until a necessary number of schools and universities close, I do not see a return to good times for colleges and universities in the foreseeable future.
