This Week In College Viability (TWICV) for January 6, 2024

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It is the first Monday in 2025, so that must make it January 6th, 2025. And this is the first podcast for 2025 of This Week in College Viability. Hi, everybody. Welcome back. Thanks, always, as always, for listening. It's Gary Stocker. You know, go figure. There's not much higher education news the week between Christmas and New Year's Day and shortly thereafter. But my extensive alert system and many higher education connections

have sent me some good stuff to use on today's podcast. And so on the show today, Guilford College president steps down amid financial challenges. Yeah, we'll talk about that. Gannon and Ursuline, the close to merging. And talk about how and when the schools hope to unite. And both college leaders suggest equal partners, but I'll talk about how one is much stronger than the other.

I've got some AI-generated college drivel for you today, what to watch for in the coming year and beyond. And I've got a story that affirms what I talk about all the time again. This time it's from Fox News. And then I've got an original. And I'm going to talk about class action suits as a potential way to improve education in America. And this is based on a couple of social media posts I'll talk about. And then Alcino Donadale from University of Business talks about increased competition.

from CTE programs, that's Career, Technical and Education programs for regular traditional college stuff. And I'm going to talk about a college that is doing just that. And again, more details follow. And as always, layoffs and cutbacks and closures, none of those announcements this week. But let's talk about Guilford College President Dr. Kyle Farmery is going to step down. And the headline reads, Guilford College President Steps Down Amid Financial Challenges.

This is from Walter Hudson on January 4th at Diverse Education. Now, what was interesting about this, and there's details in the story, and of course, I had that link in the show notes, Guilford College was already scheduled for tomorrow for the January 7th College Financial Health Show. Coincidence. So I cheated and I took a look at some of the numbers for Guilford. And I'm not going to steal a Matt Hendricks thunder for tomorrow's show. But suffice it to say.

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There are some interesting correlations to Dr. Farmer's three-year tenure at Guilford, and they aren't usually positive. Mergers and acquisitions, Gannon University and Ursuline College will merge. Let me just read the story to you. They're going to be merged by the end of 2026. And this is from Valerie Myers at Eerie Times News on January 3rd. Trustees of both universities,

have approved an agreement to join the two schools, subject of course to required regulatory and accreditation approvals. Ursula and both are in Ohio, along the Lake area, I think. Both have distinct, they say in the news release, distinct academic programs, athletics, and facilities. Well, all right, I'll have to look at that someday. There's only so many academic programs and so many sports. The combined university will be the largest Catholic system of higher education

along Lake Erie. Well, that's an interesting qualification. The article goes on, integration teams from both institutions are working together to determine the best ways to combine the strengths of both institutions. The definitive agreement is expected to be approved by accreditors in June. That's a short timeframe. An 18-month transition period will follow before Erson College becomes an additional location of Gannon.

universities. Gannon and trustees approved the merger on December 17th, Ursuline on December 19th. Now, I use the College Financial Health Advanced Compass for a quick assessment. Gannon University is clearly financially healthier than Ursuline. And I put both on the schedule for the January 14th College Financial Health Show. Both Matt and I will look at those in some detail. the focus of this year is I'll talk about later.

is going to be on financial transparency. And Matt and I will do that for both of these colleges on the January 14th College Financial Health Show. The June accreditor approval is interesting. I'm going to watch to see what the details are behind that. That seems awfully fast. It seems awfully quick of an approval process. So college dribble. So there was really none in the releases this week. So I went to my friend's chat.

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Chad GPT.

and ask it to give me 10 examples of meaningless quotes from colleges. I'm just going to read a couple of them. The first one is, we prepare students for the future. Good, I hope you don't prepare them for the past. Colleges say we are a tradition of excellence. Well, I'm OK with that as a general, generic, overused reference as long as it doesn't apply to graduation rates, as I have shared many times.

on this show, they often are below 50%, sometimes well below 50%. Colleges that want to unlock your potential. Well, good. That's what colleges are for. But again, buzzword doesn't offer any true meaning. A community like no other. And the chat GPT says nearly every college claims this, making it a cliche. I like that. And then I I wasn't good enough. So.

The only thing that chat GPT didn't give me was the best kept secret line used by so many colleges. Again, that wasn't enough. I said, hey, Mr. and Mrs. Chat GPT, give me 10 examples of quotes from college presidents.

that come across as vague or lacking in substantive meaning. Here's one. strive to be a beacon of innovation in higher education. Sign me up. Our mission is to empower students to achieve their full potential. Nothing wrong with that, but that doesn't differentiate anything. Our goal is to cultivate leaders who will make a difference in the world. Again, nothing wrong with that. What does it mean for you in college?

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Here's one, maybe the last one I do. We are dedicated to providing a transformative educational experience. And again, the notes in my show notes here say, OK, does that include graduation? Because again, the graduation rates are just, just, just awful. Why do leaders say these things? They are trite and almost meaningless, especially in context.

Page two, class dismissed. Colleges expected to close as enrollment numbers tank. And this is from Ted Jenkins on Fox News. The subheading is colleges could see enrollment numbers fall to record lows over the next decade. This is not a news story, but yet this in my mind is yet another Gary is right reaffirmation story. And I don't even cover most of these stories anymore. Sarcasm alert.

If you haven't heard, I won't tell anybody else, if you haven't heard, there have been many colleges that have closed and predictions are that many, that the pattern of closures will continue. This is hardly breaking news, but I guess it says how many outlets, national, regional, local, how many news outlets continue to carry stories like this? And at what point do students and their families assign a high risk

to choosing private colleges in general, and particularly less selective and clearly financially challenged ones in particular. And maybe it's already happening. I have a sense, it's very transactional, very anecdotal. I have a sense it's already happening, but we won't know for another year or two or three if and when we see enrollment has moved away from privates in general toward publics or at least toward larger private colleges around there.

Again, as I shared before, consider me as your alternative higher education media source. I'll go beyond the headlines and I'll get you the financial transparency this industry needs more than ever. It needs it for colleges and for their faculty and staff and students and their families and their communities. I don't do politics. I don't do sex. I don't do religion on this show. And this one starts with one that could suggest politics. The headline reads

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The one Biden education policy Trump should keep.

There's not a lot of politics, if any, behind this. It's by Preston Cooper from AEI ideas. That's kind of a play on words on January 2nd. And AEI is the American Enterprise Institute. It's a public think tank. And it talks about something called FVT, financial value transparency. Let me read from Preston Cooper's story. FVT, financial value transparency, requires colleges to report detailed information on the net tuition prices their students pay.

the cost of textbooks and equipment, and when students complete or drop out of college. FVT also requires colleges to disclose subpar outcomes, bad outcomes, or excessive debt burdens to their students in certain circumstances.

In those cases, students must affirmatively acknowledge they have received this information before they can enroll. Thus ends the quote from Preston Cooper at the American Enterprise Institute. Now, I just mentioned this a moment before 2025 is the year that I'm really, really going to ratchet up the financial transparency focus of college viability of this podcast of the College Financial Health Show.

And it'll be on this podcast and a financial health show and a five-minute daily show I will have out shortly that I focus on these things. Now, I've done it a lot in the past. I hope I've done it a lot in the past years. This year, I will extend that focus to more colleges, more creditors, more public entities, banks, bondholders, and many, many more. And then that FVT, that financial value transparency rule, is consistent with what I want to do.

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Regular listeners know that I have never and never will I suggest that a college should close. Never will I suggest an individual college should close. Just not going to do it for lots of reasons. I've talked about that before. I will note and I have noted and will continue to note that financial results, operational results, enrollment, graduation results, those kind of things, when they're not sustainable. Doesn't mean a college will close. It means they have to change things.

And I will regularly suggest that more colleges need to close. I will specify. And I'm a late in life data guy. I'll admit that. But I will be using the 2025 college majors completion app. And I just released a preview of that yesterday to show which colleges have strong completion rates, undergraduate completion rates for 67 common majors and which have low numbers. And I'll be talking about that more in coming weeks and months.

The app will also allow users to look at market share for a major from any group of colleges they choose, public, private, two-year, four-year. We'll also do this on the College Financial Health Show with Matt Hendricks and Gary Stocker. I am a self-proclaimed, I'll admit that, I am your college transparency guy. And I've had many people tell me that in those words or others, and that ties in nicely with my role, again, self-proclaimed role as college financial quality control advocate.

Jeff Selingo, always, always posts good stuff. And he had the story about Western Interstate Commissions for Higher Education, the report knocking at the college door, and it noted a trend of decreasing students for colleges. And you've seen this kind of stories before. And that's not what I'm going to focus on. Michael Gargano had an interesting reply in the thread to Selingo's post. And Dr. Gargano said, there is no logical reason for any student

To leave high school not able to read, write, and perform basic math at the 12th grade level. That's a big statement. To pass those students on, Dr. Gargano continues, to pass the student learning problem on, first from primary grades, then to the middle school grades, and then to high school grades, is too many people neglecting their responsibility. He's talking teachers, faculty, administration at grade schools, middle schools, and high schools. He concludes, what is this last part I'm going to read.

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He concludes with passing the problem to higher education, allows every other supposed stakeholder, that includes parents, governors, legislators.

K-12 education and others to wash their hands. So kudos to Dr. Gargano. Here's what's going to happen someday. And I've talked about this not on the show and not really as part of my work on college viability. Here's what's going to happen someday. A group of parents somewhere fed up with the lackluster performance of their local school district and its demonstrated chronic inability to teach students to grade level.

will file a class action suit against their school district in some form or fashion. I have no idea what compensation they might ask for, maybe a refund of taxes they paid to the schools for 18 years, whatever that may be, and it probably won't be successful. But think about it. Just if that happens and if it gets some media coverage, it could start a wave of similar lawsuits

elsewhere in the country. And maybe, maybe that's the action needed to improve American education from start to finish a little grassroots pocketbook politics. Just a thought, just a thought. Page three.

Pick a college and graduate is headline. This is from Grace Hall as becoming what is becoming one of my favorite sources, the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal. High cost schools don't pay, Grace Hall says on January 2nd. Earning a degree does. Again, I have the link to this story in the show notes. In 2024, Bloomberg News released an analysis of more than 1,500 nonprofit four year institutions and found that many elite

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private schools outside of the eight IVs, Brown, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, and the others, have a worse return on investment ROI than less selective and cheaper public universities.

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and they call these underperforming colleges the 63 hidden ivies. And they gave a specific college, for example, I'm not going to use that. And Grace Hall goes on to say, this is not to say that going to such colleges is a complete waste, but rather that the college one does choose should be as cost effective as possible, where ROI is concerned, reputation is not as important as major. I should probably say that again.

When we turn on your investment, return on tuition, room and board is concerned. Reputation is not as important as major. When students spend more on these hidden ivies, to use their term, they assume they will get a higher ROI. But the Bloomberg analysis shows they might be better off, might be better off going to a lower cost state school and choosing a better major. They talk about STEM fields.

in order to maximize their ROI. Grace Hall continues, so what does this mean for prospective students? Students who are able certainly can and likely should attend an IVIDEA school. This is based on Bloomberg's assessment of return on investment. But those who cannot get into one of those eight should aim for a school they can afford and a major that will earn income. They should not

concern themselves with hidden ivies due solely to their reputation and prestige. That's an important statement. That, I guess, second level prestige will likely not come with the salary students are expecting, particularly when taking into account the additional debt they will incur. And the most important factor of all, Grace Halstead's in this story, students should make sure to finish what they started.

and graduate. So if this message reaches the masses of students and families looking for a college, especially those ones looking for those higher value, more selective colleges, if this message reaches those students and families, what does that mean for the less selective colleges, public and private? Well, these hidden ivies need to make payroll.

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need to keep the lights on. And it's quite safe to assume they will increase their tuition discount rate to be able to do that. This is Gary Stocker speaking. And that price pressure, that increased tuition discount rate, will almost certainly trickle down, trickle all the way down to those already financially challenged public and private colleges. Their ability, those financially challenged

Their ability to generate enough net tuition revenue will be damaged from yet another, maybe newer or maybe more aggressive set of competitors. And yet another factor, yet another factor against the financially challenged colleges. And it all points to that catastrophic set of closures that I firmly believe is inevitable. The only question is when.

And let's go to Nashville, Tennessee, News Channel 5 in Nashville on January 1st. It's been a long year for Tennessee State University. 2025 will be crucial for the school. Now here's some headlines. I'm just summarizing the story here. The budget deficit at Tennessee State is around 50 million plus. They're now using golf carts, not cars, to travel around campus. They laid off about 100 staffers in 2024. There are political squabbles over funding. Some are legitimate, but it's tough to tell.

and the numbers are big, the president was forced out, but is still being paid a reported 1.7 million over a couple of years. And there are charges of unverified student credentials, unverified students with unverified credentials being given scholarships. Now this is a HBCU. I don't know that that matters, but it will be an interesting case study for financially unhealthy public colleges. At the end of the proverbial day,

It will almost certainly be those students who chose TSU, Tennessee State, for whatever reason, who will suffer the most. And I'm going to have more. There's going to be more on this story. And I'm to have more on it in coming weeks and months. Alcino done it out from University Business. And Alcino does some good stuff out there too. was a story published on January 2nd. He had his 20-25 predictions out. Who doesn't? I don't. And here is one though that is not like the usual dribble. I'm using that word a lot.

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the usual dribble most higher education predictors throughout there. One of his predictions, Artino Donadale from University of Business, is increased competition for traditional colleges from CTE programs. And CTE stands for Career Technical Education. From Mr. Donadale's story, lauded as the tool belt generation, I've not heard that one before, the tool belt generation, Gen Z, has shown heightened interest

in learning specialized blue collar jobs. Interest in attending trade school nearly doubled both among teens and adults since 2017. In 2024, search traffic alone is up 27%. In 2025, Alcino Donadale suggests interest in skilled trades will continue to accelerate among Gen Z, who increasingly view these careers as a more practical

and even rewarding alternative to traditional career paths. For a growing number, this is from Tracy Lorenz, who's the president of the For Prada Universal Technical Institute. So she has a vested interest, that's fine. For a growing number, she says, this is Tracy Lorenz, for a growing number, the skilled trades may offer a faster path to a career that aligns with their interest and goals. And we've heard that before. Now, here's the reason that I point this out.

There is a nonprofit private college that appears to be setting up a business model that adds this type of college into its recently created holding company model for colleges. This is one example of a very, very small number of colleges going beyond the trite cut programs, cut faculty, cut staff, and or adding new programs model, which almost all the others do.

exclusively and none of those will work. So we all know cutting rarely works to be successful. Adding new programs is an exercise in futility in almost all cases because the demand versus supply is so screwed up in higher education. The only guarantee for new stuff, new programs, new majors is startup costs. The time to generate materially significant new net revenue is way too long and it can never.

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can hardly ever be accomplished. Now I'm not going to give you the name of the college. I know who it is. I know who it is. But if you're interested, drop me a note, gary at collegeviability.com and we can chat about that. I'll give you the name. Page four, Pell Churning. I mentioned Jeff Salingo earlier in the podcast and this is an article, I think a LinkedIn post from Jeff Spear. this is, Jeff Spear is one of the two Jeffs. I'm going to grow up to be like Jeff Spear and Jeff Salingo. And here's his

a LinkedIn post from earlier, it was last week sometime. Most Pell recipients are paired with a direct student loan as they enter a college, as they enter higher education. Combined with state funds, this can bring a significant amount to the institution. All right, this is from Jeff Spear, the CFO at the president, Jeff Spear is the president as CFO colleague. The feds determine their financial resources. The school determines academic readiness. Say that again, the feds.

determine financial resources, the school determines academic readiness. Jeff Spear says that may be where the equation unwinds. He goes on to say there are precious few schools who proactively address academic readiness as soon as the students arrive. Others, including those who brag about their percentage of first-generation students, invest little

invest little and watch Pell students leave during the first year and Jesper continues and then they recruit more for the next fall.

He says, we call this Pell churning, P-E-L-L, churning, where funds are harvested from students who aren't ready for college every cycle, every year. And when they move on, the students rarely return to college. They're left to service the debt that brought, that bought them nothing, many defaults messing up on their credit.

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Jeff Spear continues, hoping that this practice is exposed with coming legislation. For now, it's frustrating to witness in some 200 plus campuses he's seen it at. He says, if you recruit them, invest in them. They are much more than revenue units. That's a great quote. They are much more than revenue units. And he concludes this, he includes, there's no ethical way, no ethical way, Jeff Spear writes, no ethical way to make Pell turn noble.

So Peltchern is, to use Jeff Spears term and others use that, Peltchern is another example of colleges being more interested in enrolling students than graduating them. And I've said this many times before. Yes, every college in the country says the right things about graduating students. It's all drivel, I guess I'll use that word. It's all drivel, almost all drivel. Because you know, and I said this podcast and probably every podcast and show that I do.

Less than half of these colleges graduate, even 50%.

graduate less than 50 % in four years. Draw your own conclusions.

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Let's do a wrap for this podcast. I don't like being trite.

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Regurgitation reporting, just throwing press releases out there from all sorts of public and private news sources is almost all redundant. It's almost synonymous. The same stories with slightly different titles hit my Google alerts all the time. I bet I delete nine out of every 10 alerts that I get in Google. They're just redundant for the most part. And each week as I put the following week's podcast, the next week's podcast together,

I'm always looking for higher education news stories that you may not have seen elsewhere. Or if you have seen them, I tried to provide a different take to help listeners gain different perspectives on this industry. Yes, I strongly believe there are too many colleges. The market is showing us that. Yes, I work to improve the financial transparency for all public colleges and private colleges. And yes, I continue and will continue to poke

will poke the proverbial higher education bear.

In 2025, I will continue to provide what I truly believe is a needed perspective. Colleges are not ivory towers of excellence, without exception. They aren't. There may be a small number that fit that description. Most are run by career academics with little to no training or experience in running a multi-million dollar enterprise. And I'm sure these folks are good at what they're good at, English and history and science and math and

political science, philosophy, and many more topics. But that knowledge, that academic knowledge is rarely a ticket to leadership or financial success in higher education. And I'm here to point out the good, point out the bad, and to really point out the downright silly. Until next Monday, for College Viability, I'm Gary Stocker. Thanks for listening. We'll do it again next week.