TWICV for Aug 28 2024 with Ben Unglesbee from Higher Ed Dive

Gary (00:01.486)
Hi, it's Gary Stocker. Welcome back to another special episode of This Week in College Viability.

Gary (00:13.154)
Hi, it's Gary Stocker, welcome back. I'm going through late onset puberty, my voice is changing. Really, really, really late onset puberty.

Ben Unglesbee (00:16.567)
I'll get in it.

Gary (00:25.543)
Actually, believe it or not, when I do this, I actually, my wife's next door, sing to get my vocal cords. I forgot to do that now, so I may have to fight my way through it. Okay, here we go. Hi, it's Gary Stocker. Welcome back to a special episode of This Week in College Viability, where my guest today is Ben Unglesby. And Ben is a senior reporter for Higher Ed Dive. And Ben, welcome. Thanks for making time to join me.

Ben Unglesbee (00:34.261)
Okay.

Ben Unglesbee (00:50.413)
Yeah, thanks so much for having me, Gary. Happy to be here.

Gary (00:53.696)
You are a busy man. I worry that you have calluses and blisters on your fingers, Ben, from all the stories that you type about higher education. Ben, with all the research and reporting that you do, just give us your unique sense of the stability, really of private colleges, as we just now get started with the current academic year.

Ben Unglesbee (01:16.119)
Yeah. Well, right off the bat, Gary, I'm going to hedge a little bit because, I started in this B in April. So I don't have a sort of a deep frame of reference for how this year compares to past years. For most of my career, I've been a business reporter, although my very first job coming out of J -School was I was the university reporter.

covering University of Kansas and for the Lawrence Daily Paper. So I'm kind of back on the higher ed beat after a hiatus. But yeah, it's tough out there. As I'm sure you know well. I mean, everyone is, especially in the private nonprofit world, everyone is trying to fight over a declining, you know,

Gary (01:56.566)
Hahaha!

Ben Unglesbee (02:12.915)
declining student base. And then you throw the FAFSA debacle into there, which I think debacle is just the technical, become the technical word for what happened this spring. They might even, you probably even use that word internally at the Ed department. It's pretty hard to deny. But I mean, given all that, folks could be in even worse shape

Gary (02:24.97)
It's become an official word, think, a Pafsa debacle. Yeah.

Ha ha ha ha ha.

Ben Unglesbee (02:43.731)
more broadly. But I know everyone is sort of struggling and very carefully trying to manage their costs, manage their retention. We've seen some pretty tough college closures and a whole lot of layoffs and restructuring actions.

Gary (02:56.802)
Yeah.

Ben Unglesbee (03:11.263)
It could be worse, like it always could be worse. It's tough. It's been a tough year.

Gary (03:13.922)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And then you've got a reporting background in retail as well. And just kind of for the listeners compare and contrast what you saw when you're reporting on retail and what you're seeing now in higher education.

Ben Unglesbee (03:33.463)
Yeah, I know it's interesting because I draw on that reporting a lot. I so I spent, gosh, five years probably with our retail dive publication. It's sort of a sister publication under the same company. retail has been through a lot of difficulties over the past six, seven, well, almost

you know, almost a decade now. People caught it a bit over dramatically, the retail apocalypse. And I covered a lot. I covered many, many bankruptcies. It's, you know, and I think about it a lot. You know, one of the big differences in retail is you do not see the sort of overnight shutdowns very often, partly because they think, you know,

Gary (04:05.101)
Yeah.

Ben Unglesbee (04:30.627)
retail companies have more of an option to go through chapter 11 and try to do a sort of structured process. Whereas, you know, in the for -profit college world, and now we're seeing it more, maybe a little more in the nonprofit, we're seeing some of those overnight closures. you know, it is very different. One of the biggest differences I see is just the way, it's just sort of the emotional

landscape. mean, people do get sad when a chain store that they grew up with closes and the employees, you know, can feel sort of, you know, let down. You do see some of that emotion in retail, but boy, in college, I mean, these are multi -generational projects that some of these colleges that are closing now are 100, 150 years old.

They played a formative role in the lives of the people who went there and they have, I mean, every retail brand in the world would kill to have the kind of customer loyalty that colleges do. And they just can because a college is supposed to serve something a little bit higher than a store chain. So, I mean, it really is just tough.

Gary (05:43.272)
Yeah, that's a good point.

Gary (05:49.068)
Yeah.

Ben Unglesbee (05:57.343)
on a community when you see something close. it is also, there's a lot of similar issues happening. Retail for years, one of its struggles has been pricing. You'd see it in the apparel and the department store world. Everyone is in this sort of discounting war because they're trying to move inventory.

In college, see it a little bit, you see the same, I mean, it's not exactly the same, but it's kind of similar discounting on tuition prices. And that's creating a lot of revenue pressure. They're discounting tuition to try and keep their enrollment figures stable. But at the same time, they're losing revenue and no one can really do anything about it because competition is so tough.

Gary (06:31.906)
Yep.

Gary (06:51.854)
Yeah, man. And the poster child for that was Iowa Wesleyan. And this was about, it was last spring, spring of 2023. They had actually grown their enrollment 300 students, but they closed because they had discounted tuition so much that they didn't have enough revenue to pay the bills and keep the lights on. You you talk about the emotional piece. And that's a good point that I hadn't thought of. And to tease you for a second, Ben, if you want to write even more stories, you can find all sorts of people willing to share. Here's what damage.

Ben Unglesbee (07:07.554)
Yeah.

Gary (07:18.742)
my college closure did to my career, my family, my income, all that kind of stuff. Because I see them all the time. A college closes and the next day the story is about students mostly and sometimes faculty. We'll talk about that and the trauma that they go through. But I want to go next to the virtual elephant in the room. And we talked about that at the opening of the show and that's this FAFSA debacle. And this standard line so far this year is about one private not -for -profit college per week.

Ben Unglesbee (07:39.363)
Yeah.

Gary (07:46.36)
has closed, it's not quite one a week, it's slowed down over the summer. And in lot of the writing and media that I do, I'm doing an estimate of two or more starting this October, because those Title IV funds will start coming into colleges late September, early October. And that's when colleges will realize they don't have enough to make it. When you're talking to colleges about whatever stories you're working on, Ben, does the FAFSA debacle play...

a rationalizing role in their excuse for financials or is it a big deal?

Ben Unglesbee (08:18.723)
You know, it's a really good question. I guess to go back to retail for a minute. So, you I was covering retail and retail bankruptcy in 2020. Pandemic hits. Every chain store in the country closes its doors. By that summer, I mean,

the chapter 11 dockets are pretty full. Now, and every single retailer that filed for bankruptcy mentioned the pandemic, which is not surprising at all. But then you look at the ranks of who filed and it's all companies that have been on our watch lists for years. So the issue with financial aid, it's like...

Gary (08:49.821)
Interesting. Interesting.

Gary (08:57.923)
Yeah.

Gary (09:07.278)
Hmm.

Ben Unglesbee (09:13.067)
On the one hand, it's the last thing anyone needed who was sort of on the brink. I think it's probably more like, you know, one analyst I was talking with kind of said it might be like the straw that broke the camel's back. If you are financially strong, if you have resources, if you're resilient, you'll be able to absorb it.

Gary (09:17.293)
Yeah, man.

Ben Unglesbee (09:34.935)
better, but if you're kind of on the margins, it could be the thing that kind of knocks you out. you know, I've been talking with consultants since the summer who are saying like, we're hearing from people, you know, we are hearing from colleges that this is going to kill them. We haven't seen a ton of it yet. We've seen a few closures or restructurings mention it. I was expecting maybe a little more by now, but maybe we'll see a delay.

but it's something we're watching really closely. Like I said, it's the last thing small colleges need.

Gary (10:05.862)
And one thing you know that

Gary (10:10.766)
For sure. And here's a question that I'm going to be spontaneous on this one, Ben. What happens if those closure rates increase and we're looking at a catastrophe of closures? Nobody's really thinking about what happens on the other side of that. And again, educated speculation. 100 colleges closed between now and next May, graduation. What impact does that have?

on higher education. It's not meant for a question for today's podcast, but it's one I think not very many, if any people are talking about. And yet it's realistic. It may not be likely, but it's still realistic.

Ben Unglesbee (10:46.008)
Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, it would be a shock. I mean, a lot of people talk about overcapacity, and certainly it's playing a role in everyone's struggles here. To lose 100 colleges in a short period of time and to lose them suddenly,

I would just do, I think it would do psychological damage to everyone, including other college presidents. I mean, you want, even for those that are struggling and have to, you want to give everyone enough time. You want everyone to have enough time to downsize if they need to downsize, to merge or have the opportunity to try to merge and having time is like critical.

Gary (11:16.258)
Yeah.

Ben Unglesbee (11:40.055)
there. And that's something I hear again and again and again. You don't, when you're under financial duress, when you're already in a distress situation, it's not the time to go looking for a merger partner. It's too late then. The time to find a merger or some kind of partnership is years before that. however higher ed is going to deal with the capacity issue,

Gary (11:41.165)
Yeah.

Gary (11:54.872)
Yeah.

Ben Unglesbee (12:09.579)
We really want to see it in an orderly way and in a way that preserves as many institutions and as many legacies and as many, you know, as many student careers and whatever as possible. And people need time to innovate. They need time to change. They need time to partner with others. If there is just this hit mass, you know, this massive of college, it'll be good for the remainers in some ways, but I think it would be bad.

Gary (12:36.834)
Yeah,

Ben Unglesbee (12:38.305)
it would be tough for the sector overall. And you don't want it to be indiscriminate. Because man, we've lost some good important colleges this year that were really, really important to higher ed and really important to their communities.

Gary (12:52.632)
Yeah. And one of those was University of the Arts. And let's talk about that one for a second. University of Arts, if there was a big news story this spring, it was UArts because of their short notice closure. And that's really what I want ask you about, Ben. So I have noticed just this year, since the start of the year, anecdotally an increase in the short notice closures. Wells was one of those. UArts is one of those. I don't know if Goddard was or not, but

Ben Unglesbee (12:56.994)
Yeah.

Ben Unglesbee (13:03.373)
Yeah.

Ben Unglesbee (13:16.545)
Yeah.

Ben Unglesbee (13:20.403)
It was a shock to people. I did some pretty deep reporting on that one and they were taking students for the next semester up until basically they announced their closure. shocked faculty. Yeah, it was another surprise. I mean, they didn't close as fast as you parts, was, no one saw it coming.

Gary (13:42.099)
Right. Yeah. And what's disconcerting about that, and you know the work I do with the college viability app, is I can tell you right now which colleges are greatest risk. And I will never publicly say these are going to close, but I know which ones are likely to close. Why am I one of the few that can say these set of colleges? You know, in our college financial health show yesterday with Matt Hendricks, we had three colleges from Ohio. I'll show you the names. One was Kenyon.

Ben Unglesbee (13:57.101)
Yeah.

Gary (14:09.65)
One was Defiance and the other was Wittenberg. And Wittenberg has been in the news recently. Two of those three, I don't know if they make it. Kenyon is very strong. That gives away the answer. Kenyon is very strong because we like to role model positive financial colleges. Ben, the short notice closure, could that do even more damage if the public recognizes that the college they pick may close on Monday?

Ben Unglesbee (14:16.728)
Yeah.

Ben Unglesbee (14:38.135)
Yeah, mean, again, I mean, those sudden closures are, I mean, they leave a bitter taste in the mouth for everyone. I mean, I was just in Philly last week talking to people about University of the Arts. And I mean, they're still trying to figure out what happened. I mean, first of all, no one knows what happened.

Gary (15:00.642)
Yeah, right on.

Ben Unglesbee (15:07.667)
People feel very betrayed because they're like, I mean, people, there is a lot of passion for that institution still. It's not like it had become totally irrelevant. It was an important piece of the Philly arts environment. I mean, Philly is a good, it's a strong arts town and University of the Arts played an important role in that. It was, I mean, it was in the heart of the city. It was on the avenue of the arts.

working artists taught there, it produced artists that gave back to the city. And one of the things that I heard again and again again is like, well, if we had known this was coming, someone could have helped. The city, people with the city said they could have helped. People at the state government said they would have liked to have tried to help. And we've seen some, it doesn't happen all the time. We do see some colleges come back from the brink.

Gary (15:47.835)
Yeah.

Ben Unglesbee (16:04.707)
We saw that with Northland in Wisconsin this year. Did a big fundraising push. They didn't quite hit their target, but they were, no, they didn't. That's true. They're like 10 % of the way there. that and doing an exigency restructuring seemed to help. So yeah, when it happens overnight,

Gary (16:16.488)
they weren't even close!

Ben Unglesbee (16:33.431)
I mean, students probably bear the brunt. They get burned. But faculty, mean, faculty are left without jobs. I mean, I talked with people at Goddard College who had been there for decades and they're not gonna get severance because they weren't, know, some people had their status changed from full -time to part -time in preceding years and.

Gary (16:41.474)
Yep. Yep.

Ben Unglesbee (16:58.541)
for whatever reason, they're not gonna get much or any severance and they're at the end of their careers trying to figure out how they're gonna make an income. I mean, it is brutal. So that is the worst kind of closure and any way that it can be avoided, but yeah. And I know that accreditors are trying to, or at least some accreditors are trying to figure out, get better at predicting it because, you know,

Gary (17:11.288)
Yeah, absolutely.

Ben Unglesbee (17:28.035)
You just need to know, if it happens overnight, it's just devastating. We got to get faster at predicting it from the outside and we really need as much transparency from leadership as they can manage.

Gary (17:41.91)
Yeah. Well, Ben, have those accrediting agencies call me. I'll tell them.

Ben Unglesbee (17:46.355)
Yeah!

Gary (17:48.29)
That's, I'll tell them in about five, I can bring it up right now. We can look at all the colleges are gonna be, are in tough shape. But I wanna change the tone of the questions a little bit. decades ago when I went to college and I assume when you went to college as well, the culture for that search has always been on the college, the campus, the amenities, the majors, the minors, the tuition fees and that kind of stuff. And from your reporting, do you sense that we might be reaching another tipping point?

Ben Unglesbee (17:55.361)
Yeah.

Gary (18:17.674)
where students and their families, maybe the first thing they start to look at, especially for private spend, is financial health before they look at anything else.

Ben Unglesbee (18:26.691)
I think it's very possible. In fact, just like a couple weeks ago, I was talking with someone I'm close with and their son plays soccer and might go play for a school and they're thinking probably a private school somewhere. When I told them what I've been covering lately.

They're like, could you maybe help us look at some of these schools? I'm like, sure. mean, I can take a look at their enrollment and financials and give you some kind of idea. So even people who don't think about this every day, look at this every day, it's very much on their minds. And it's, I mean, it's gonna make it all the more difficult for the schools that are struggling. I mean, you do have to be concerned. I mean, there could...

Gary (18:58.88)
Yeah.

Gary (19:13.452)
Okay, interesting, interesting.

Ben Unglesbee (19:26.287)
It could, in distress situations, a lot of times you see sort of death spirals. So, I mean, these are colleges that are already struggling with enrollment. Well, if people start taking a sharper look at financials and decide not to go to schools based on what they look like, it can make things even worse. But if you're a student, you have to protect yourself. Or if you're a parent, you have to protect your student and whatever.

Gary (19:42.317)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Ben Unglesbee (19:53.335)
So I think it would be totally rational for students to take a close look at finances to the extent that they can.

Gary (20:04.78)
Yeah. And again, that's one of the things that the college, the college viability app does. I've got a student and family version just for simple comparisons. again, kind of a different spin here. So this is the time of year when colleges spin their enrollment. They've either got really strong enrollment, they make that pronouncement, get Google or it's just rolling out as you know, I speak even. The colleges are saying our enrollment is good. And I've always said that this time of year, no news is bad news.

if your college is having bad enrollment, you're not telling anybody about that. But the spin question, I'm guessing as a reporter that you have to fight your way through a lot of spin. Has that increased much in the few months you've been doing this in higher education?

Ben Unglesbee (20:51.011)
Yeah, it's really interesting question. And like I said, my very first job, and that was 10 years ago, was covering a major university. yeah, mean, especially the larger universities have very sophisticated communications operations. But also thinking about it as a business, coming out as a... In the intervening time, I've been covering business. I will say...

compared to private businesses, corporations, we actually get a lot more transparency, I think, than we do in the private sector or the world of corporations. It's been kind of refreshing how even at the sort of top levels, there are a lot of just sort of public -minded people out there.

Now, we need more transparency for all the reasons that we've just been talking about. We need a lot more transparency. And what I find at the president level, especially at a bigger public university where the role is educational, it's operational, and it's political because you have to deal with your state legislatures and funding.

Gary (22:13.59)
All right, all right.

Ben Unglesbee (22:16.195)
One of the most frustrating things as a reporter is listening to a president, college president trying to speak to every single stakeholder at once and end up saying nothing at all. But, you know, it's a fire hose of information in the higher ed world compared to what I've been doing for the past, you know, nine, nine years, nine, 10 years, you know, in between my stints as a higher ed reporter.

Gary (22:39.416)
Yeah.

Ben Unglesbee (22:42.939)
And if you're not getting information from leadership, which I've been surprised at how much we have been getting from college leaders and their media teams, know, faculty will talk to you, students will, you know, there's a lot of people who care about the institution and want everyone to know about it. So I actually encounter a lot of information, but we need more. It's still not enough. We need more. we do need less spin and more just

Gary (22:49.0)
Interesting. Interesting.

Ben Unglesbee (23:12.653)
more just like real talk. I mean, think this time now more than ever is probably the time for real talk.

Gary (23:16.718)
Yeah, yeah. And let's do one last question and let's make August 28th our anniversary date. Let's get together for fictional examples. Let's get together again on August 28th, 2025. Ben, what's going to be different about higher education next year?

Ben Unglesbee (23:32.131)
That's a tough question. I hope the financial aid forums are working. Number one, let's hope that's not what we're talking about a year from now. I think we'll be short some colleges. I'm not going to venture a number.

Gary (23:38.088)
Yeah, there you go.

Gary (23:49.397)
Ha ha.

Ben Unglesbee (23:59.491)
ask me in like five years and maybe I'll be able to, I'll be a little more confident in trying to be forward looking. But I think the conversation could still be the same. I don't think we're expecting any enrollments to start searching anytime soon. I mean, we are headed into this demographic shift, which we should have known, I mean, we've known about for 18 years, I would assume like how many babies were born 18 years ago.

Gary (24:15.714)
Yeah.

Ben Unglesbee (24:27.755)
and we'll be going to college. So, but I don't think we're expecting enrollments to start magically surging. It also depends on the outcome of the election. And that could have an impact on a lot of things from international student numbers down through accreditation and every other aspect of higher ed. But hopefully the fast flow thing is settled.

Gary (24:30.648)
Huh.

Gary (24:40.61)
Yeah.

Ben Unglesbee (24:57.485)
We're going to lose some colleges. There's still going to be a lot of, probably a lot more restructurings and program closures and mergers. I think it looks a lot like this year, honestly, and the next few years could, and hopefully not too much worse. colleges need time to figure things out, to innovate, to merge, to experiment.

Gary (25:12.375)
Interesting.

Ben Unglesbee (25:27.203)
or to wind down gracefully if that's their only sort of path. I hope we don't have that hundred colleges closed that you warned about. Yeah, it might not be out of the realm of possibilities, but let's hope everything happens. Everything that's gonna happen, let's hope it's a little more orderly and yeah, we'll see.

Gary (25:42.734)
You

Gary (25:53.142)
Yeah, good point. Good point. Well, my guest today has been Ben Ungelsby, who's the senior, a senior reporter for Higher Ed Dive. And Ben, thanks for your time. Thanks for your perspective. Thanks for your guidance on where this market is headed. I'm grateful.

Ben Unglesbee (26:07.159)
Gary, thank you so much for having me. It's been fun.

Gary (26:10.658)
And we'll have the regular Monday episode of This Week in College Viability next Monday. We'll look forward to talking with all of you then. Thanks for listening. This is Gary Stocker with College Viability.