This Week In College Viability (TWICV) for Aug 11, 2025

Gary D Stocker (00:01.294)
Hello everybody, it is Monday, August 11th, 2025, time for yet another episode of This Week in College Viability News and Commentary. And of course, this is the podcast that talks about the financial health and viability of public and private colleges with data, with details and perspectives offered nowhere else. This podcast is the alternative media source for colleges and students

and their families and communities. And I work every week, every single week to expose the spin, the stalls and the silliness that too often parades higher education in America. Hi everybody, Gary Stocker. Thanks for making time to join us. And hey, while listening to the podcast, think of those who you can share the link with. This is a unique approach to podcasting and many, many others would love to hear some additional perspective, a new perspective.

on higher education. This week, a bellwether, I'll talk about that in a minute, a bellwether warns of school closures and consolidations ahead. You will be surprised when I share what part of the market this headline addresses. And Peter Query, we've had him on the podcast, his stories on the podcast many times before, has a social media post this week on LinkedIn, I believe, calls it the manufactured crisis, college closures,

are not abrupt, they're allowed. And we'll talk about that. Elite colleges are still, still accepting students for the academic year that starts almost today. And a day late and a dollar short on public college in Illinois. And again, please feel free and I would encourage you to share the podcast link with many, many others. Layoffs and cutbacks every single week. have them. Cuts looming at the University of Nebraska.

I think it's 20 almost 28 million dollars in a budget deficit. They're going to have to cut back Stanford University to eliminate 363 workers amid federal funding cuts. Details are in the show notes that I'll make available. That story is from Audrey Tomlin on Bay City News. The University of New Hampshire to lay off 23 employees and cut 13 unfilled positions. That's from their student president. That's Ian Linehan.

Gary D Stocker (02:22.806)
on the Portsmouth Herald on August 7th has that stories. And again, details on all of these stories, links to all of these stories in the show notes. Page two, Peter Corey. Some excellent content and excellent perspective, exceptional experience from Dr. Corey. The manufactured crisis, college closures are not abrupt, although we believe them to be. College closures are not abrupt. They're allowed, Dr. Corey says.

And he says, this is an expose on the false theater of surprise and the institutional rot we keep pretending not to see. This is not for me, although I like the words. This is from Dr. Peter Query. And the performance begins the same way, he says, in quotes, shocking announcement. Students blindsided, faculty devastated, and no one could have seen this coming, except we could.

We do, we always do. And so he says, let's stop pretending. And that's what we're all about here at College of Viability. We know, I know the ones that aren't going to make it. I know by looking at the data. And he continues, this is not a tragedy. He makes the case it is theater, executed with precision, protected by plausible deniability. I don't use that term much, but that's clearly what's happening when college leaders have provided sanitized public consumption.

information by foundations and consultants and a media class, news reporters in too many cases who are more invested in the narrative of the closure heartbreak than the discipline of accountability. And we're about accountability here at College Viability. And that's why we have so many listeners listening to this show, 10,000, while we have 50,000 in the last year on the College Viability channel on YouTube.

Dr. Corey goes on, I'll get back to that. Dr. Corey goes on, the real surprise is not that these colleges are closing. The real surprise is how long we collectively pretend they were not already closed. This false theater of surprise and institutional rot, we keep pretending not to see. And to be clear, and I've said this before, Dr. Corey says to be clear, people will always need to learn, that's gonna happen. There are millions that have, they...

Gary D Stocker (04:46.668)
that gain and earn great value from their college experience. And learning will continue. Skills will be acquired. Credentials will emerge. But if colleges, Dr. Corey adds, if colleges cling to legacy models that reward inertia over innovation, they will be replaced by institutions and platforms willing to meet learners where they are.

and where the world is going. We'll have more on that later in the podcast. And the pattern that we pretend not to know, Dr. Corey notes, in 2024 alone, at least 16, one-sixth nonprofit colleges closed. Headlines always described them as sudden. Students were devastated. Donors were blindsided. But the data was there. He cites the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia showing with great accuracy

the predictability of these closings. And the warning signs Dr. Corey adds are not complex. We know that here at College of Viability. They are obvious. They are clear for years and years in advance. Years of consecutive operating losses for details, frequent leadership turnover. I've teased the best leading indicator of a college in troubles. How many leaders have the word interim in front of their name?

We see rising tuition discount rates, giving more of the store to get students in the door and a revolving door of consultants in place of strategy. The institutions know, Dr. Corey adds, their boards know, the finance teams know, I know. And yet the world is stunned. The world is shocked when this happens. Coverage of these closures, Dr. Corey adds, tends to zero in on the immediate pain and there's pain for sure.

Students displaced, faculty blindsided, and communities mourning the loss of a campus and all of its associated trauma.

Gary D Stocker (06:51.04)
And these reactions, he's right, these reactions are real. They matter. But too often the coverage treats each closure like a natural disaster, sudden and inexplicable and outside of human decline. But the pattern is there. The pattern is always there. And he concludes, stop treating college closures like weather events. They are not acts of nature.

They are the end result of choices and systems that prioritize preservation over adaptation and reporters who engage in just flattening these dynamics and keeping the public trapped in a loop of reaction instead of reflection.

And finally, if we want to break that cycle, the stories must evolve. We need journalism to that sees the whole picture, the whole financial trauma leading up to closures and not just the final scene. So again, I've done this many times over the past years. Journalists, even media outlets who are not journalists by profession or trade. I'll give you free access to the 2025 College Viability app.

and the 2025 College Majors Completion App to see what majors are working and not. If you're a legitimate journalist, you can get free access to the Private College Advanced Financial Compass that Matt Hendricks developed at Perspective Data Science. Drop me a note to gary at collegeviability.com and we'll authenticate your credentials and get you those links, those apps right away. Clark's Summit.

closed about a year ago. And David Turner on LinkedIn had a post on, had a post on LinkedIn on August 7th of last week. And he's talking in general about Christian education, but kind of reinforced as what we just talked about. And he writes, Dr. Turner writes, or David Turner writes, I'm not sure he's a doctor, David Turner writes, Christian colleges, universities, and seminaries continue to struggle with unsustainable tuition-driven income models.

Gary D Stocker (09:07.724)
More mergers, retrenchments, and closings are inevitable. Thank you for joining the club, Mr. Turner.

especially when trustees, he adds, and administrators have their heads in the stand. He cites my work. And then he talks about the closure of Clark Summit University on July 1st of last year, a little over a year ago. And he notes that the administration gave an explanation, or gave the impression that they had exhausted every possible solution for an acute financial problem.

And they tried to portray the school as do all colleges. They tried to portray it as a sudden crisis. But analysis by my peer, Jeff Spear, a CFO colleague, as well as some folks at the Middle States Commission, show that the CS, that the Clark Summit University had been trending downward for a period of years. And it's obvious, it's just plain obvious. That's why looking at the app today is more important than looking at the app after your college.

announces exigency after announces the possibility of closures of closure after announces the possibility the actuality of layoffs and cutbacks get the apps today I'll have links in the show notes for those

And Clark's Summit is the same story, different details. And that's what I just told a reporter a few hours ago, who I was talking to about another college. Same situation, different details.

Gary D Stocker (10:37.806)
And Mr. Turner concludes about Clark Summit that their only hope, this is a year ago, more than a year ago, there was no hope that things would improve in the future apart from a divine intervention. And he concludes with divine intervention is not divine intervention is not a business plan. Bellwether indicator warns of school closures, consolidations ahead.

Anna Marad had this on K-12 dive on August 7th. Now, when you hear that headline, thinking, great, Stalker has another college closure store. No, no, I would do, but not this one. No, this one is on kindergarten through 12, on K-12. Let me read you some of the bullet points from Ms. Marad. School closures and consolidations could occur more frequently in the coming months and years as student enrollment continues to decline.

The analysis of 9,300 school districts found that 68 % experienced declining enrollments between 2019 and 2024 school years. And despite the tumultuous combination of drops in enrollment and funding for a majority of districts, not all, but a majority, very few were actually closing school buildings, even given the high cost to maintain them when under capacity.

And again, these are not colleges, these are K-12s. And here's my take, this is the future.

This is the future of college enrollment. Actually, it's the present and the future of college enrollment. And folks, you may think this, but I am not an alarmist. I can see where you can make the case. But I look at the data almost daily and sometimes many times, many times during a day, there will be without a doubt more consolidation, closures now and mergers later when I'm not able

Gary D Stocker (12:40.962)
to know what I'm not able to say with any confidence is when.

I believe we are already well into the closure phase. The large scale merger phase that I've talked about many times before will come when colleges that barely survive now realize that growing to scale across both academic and non-academic operations is the best and most likely route to continue. And if you disagree, certainly there will be those that do. Drop me a note to Gary at College Viability. We can chat.

I'll even invite you on the podcast. Page three. This is from James Murphy, and it talks about this from Remove Paywall. I don't know what that is. Why elite colleges are still accepting students from their wait lists. With less than a month before school starts, some colleges and universities are reaching out to students way later than usual and offering them spots in their freshman class. Here's why. In a typical year, the story reads,

College admissions forums are usually taken over by rising seniors about this time of year, actually a little bit earlier in summer. And yes, their parents are part of that as well. And they're talking about the next admission cycle, which would be those students starting college in August, thereabouts of 2026. This summer, the wait list chatter, he writes, went deep into July. Independent counselors have been gossiping in group chats about how many students were still

getting admitted in these high-level, IVs, Power 4 kind of colleges in June and July.

Gary D Stocker (14:24.13)
And it's not just how late these admissions officers are going to their waitlist, it's who's doing it.

In mid-June, there was a Soros College confidential reported that their kids had received emails from Columbia asking whether they wanted to stay on their extended wait list. Harvard has done something similar. Stanford reportedly did the same. Duke, gonna have a story about Duke here in a moment.

And why? It's because they are worried about their budgets. They have lost, for sure, least some portion of federal funds from public policy changes. And they're going down to reach into the next level of students that they weren't able to accept for whatever reason the first time around. And the next story is Duke reopens its wait list, enrolls roughly 50 more students to the class of 2029. Ryan Killigallen had that story in the Chronicle of Higher Education on August 6th.

And I'm using this story to reinforce what I've been saying and what many others have also suggested. The big boys at Duke and the IVs and Power Fours, well, they're gonna get their students. The higher education quality food chain will grab additional students and will trickle on down until it gets to the low end of that quality food chain, that perception food chain. And those...

Those at the end of that chain will be the colleges most directly impacted by public policy changes in terms of revenue. The enrollment slope will be a part of that and just basic supply and demand will be a part of that. The Dukes of the world will be fine. It is those with a thousand students or fewer, or even three thousand students or fewer, who those last five or ten or twenty students make or break their financial year matter and they may not

Gary D Stocker (16:18.176)
and in many cases won't get those students this year. And I will add it will. It's going to get very ugly very quickly. And I'm talking about this week, next week, this month, next month and the months that follow. Southern Illinois University Carbonyl. The story is a day late and a dollar short. SIU Carbonyl enhances efforts to recruit and support international students. That's fine. They're certainly welcome to do that. Many colleges have done that. And this is an internal document.

from SIU Carbondale posted to their website. Kim Renfeld wrote the story. And here's the part that shows a day late and a dollar short. As part of the Imagine 2030 strategic plan, SIU Carbondale has enhanced its efforts to recruit and retain international students. In the past two years, the university has established partnerships with more than 60 international students. Do they read the newspapers? Do they read the webpages?

At Southern Illinois Carbondale, the number of international students headed to the United States could reach catastrophic decline.

And here's my point, again, day late, dollar short, but if I'm at SIU Carbondale, I don't know that I want this press release to go out. kind of suggest you don't know what the heck's going on. Page four.

And I'm going to do a wrap on this. We had the Ryan Craig newsletter story last week. That's why I kind of did the wrap and I was running long, so I cut it off. And you'll recall that Craig cited a story about how CVS, the pharmaceutical chain, drugstore chain, locks many of its products in plastic cases. And he went on to add, or draw a connection that colleges are effectively doing the same thing. And he made the case, and you can listen to last week's podcast, to...

Gary D Stocker (18:09.58)
show that colleges were not giving easy access to what students needed. And he goes on, this is the new part this week, Ryan Craig goes on to add, if more colleges and universities led with science, they'd launch more economically relevant programs. And he cited one study where only 15 % of new programs were STEM, 75%, again, those that didn't pay attention in math class, 75 out of 100 new programs from the arts, humanities,

and social sciences. And he also adds schools would be more likely to discontinue unproductive programs like those in arts, humanities, and social sciences. They might also, Ryan Craig writes, focus more resources on higher value programs. One of the higher education, and this is an important part of the story, of the higher education's unsung scandals is enrollment caps for the most remunerative, for those that make money.

remunerative majors, remunerative majors, namely the technical and the scientific. He knows while student demand for these quantitative programs has increased.

Colleges and universities have added faculty slower than it now takes to shop at CVS and get behind those locked plastic counters, locked plastic shelves that we see. And the result, not nearly enough seats, particularly at public institutions. Okay, we'll take his word for that. And then he adds, and this is the indictment part. Ryan Craig notes that many publics play a bait and switch game.

admitting students as freshmen, then rejecting them from higher value technical programs as sophomores and juniors. And they do that through outdated prerequisites, weed out courses, really tough courses, and GPA requirements. have to have a 3.5, whatever, to get into this program. But they do it, he suggests, he notes, he reports, but they do it actually due to lack of capacity to seat those students in the classes.

Gary D Stocker (20:19.818)
So nearly half of all students who say they want to complete these programs never ever do.

And what, sadly, what an indictment, what sarcasm alert, what a fine higher education beast we have created. And it appears to be one that will fight for every proverbial hill to maintain its current ways on the business of teaching, the business of educating college students. Jish, double jish. Hey, I'm out of time again this week. Always.

I'm grateful for those that make time to listen to the podcast. Make sure to drop me a note at gary.garyatcollegeviability.com. And like I said, at the top of the show, at the top of the podcast, share the link with friends, family, and relatives. We need more people aware of an alternative news source, alternative media source that college viability provides. Hey, I'll be back next week. This is Gary Stonker for College Viability. We'll talk then.