This Week In College Viability (TWICV) for Feb 17, 2025

TWICV For Feb 17 2025 (00:01.71)
It's this week in College Viability News and Commentary for Monday, February 17, 2025. Hi, everybody. Gary Stocker back with another week's worth of news and commentary to share for you. An interesting and anecdotal trend has been recently observed here at the Bedroom Turned Office, National Headquarters of College Viability. Faculty.

at colleges mostly from the Midwest and East have started to reach out to me and ask for guidance on all things financial about their colleges. Now, it's an early trend. My phone is not ringing off the hook and my email is not exploding with inquiries, but I am seeing a trend change. Clearly, in my mind, an increasing number of public and private college faculty are concerned about their disciplines.

their colleges, their careers, and much more. And then on the February 18th College Financial Health Show, Matt Hendricks and I are going to discuss some of the types of questions we are receiving from college faculty. So if you get a chance, join us at 10.30 a.m. Central Time every Tuesday morning. You can find the link each week on my LinkedIn post, and we also record that and post it to the College Viability YouTube channel. This week, college drivel.

focuses on position descriptions for some high level leadership positions. It's possible. It's possible. I might have some fun with those. Wells College can't sell its campus. Interesting side story on that. The University of Arkansas Little Rock spins its enrollment. And you know me, I am here to unspin that story. And sarcasm alert.

A public college in Illinois is about to solve all of its financial issues by adding D1 football and as always much, much, much more. Layoffs and cutbacks. Franklin and Marshall. Franklin Marshall College is to lay off workers in April 2025. This story is by Chris Spiker from MSN reported at MSN on the day before Valentine's Day last week on the 13th.

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Here's some news, here's some lines from the story. Franklin and Marshall College is expected to lay off some employees as part of a broader financial restructuring. The Lancaster Pennsylvania College is planning for the layoffs in April. The school hasn't said how many employees will lose their jobs or what departments will be impacted. Now they've got time to address that but it always concerns me when that information isn't available up front.

The job cuts come as Franklin and Marshall had with some 1,800 undergraduates in 2024, 25, that's seen the enrollment drop considerably in the last decade. So I looked at the data and we've talked about this before.

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This is another quality college, Franklin and Marshall, a quality college with strong graduation rates, but still has financial issues. Now, a couple of notes from going to the data, there are unfunded institutional discounts. Of course, you and I call that merit aid and most scholarship. It's up about $12 million, and that's from 2016 through 2023. I've got the 2025 version of the college viability app almost ready for release. And so the data is a year newer right now.

enrollment is down, their FTE enrollment is down about 300 students, 15 percent, from 2016 to 2023. Their four-year graduation rate averages around 80 percent. Phenomenally good. And that's what concerns me. Such a strong college actually graduates students. And you've heard me consistently rant and rave about those colleges that don't.

Franklin and Marshall graduates around 80 % in four years. Kudos, commendations, congratulations to them. And from the college advanced compass from prospective data science, endowment draws are a little high in six of the last eight years, about 5.5 % some of those years. That's a smidge high. Their endowment growth is just below the 50th percentile, and that's because they've been doing, in large part, it's because they've been doing the draws a little bit higher than most. The total revenue is down about 2%.

But total expenses are down about 5%. So many, many of my news and commentary stories are about colleges who can't even graduate half their students. Franklin and Marshall graduates 80 % in four years. They should have students lining up outside their doors to get in. They don't. And from my perspective, it's a concern about the overall quality.

of the higher education industry. And I've talked about these kinds of colleges before. I Drake is one of those, St. Louis University, have been some others. They graduate folks and they still struggle. Still struggle. College dribble. We're focusing on Headhunters, on Recruiter College dribble today. So again, I'm not gonna name the colleges, although I'm getting increasingly close to changing my mind on that.

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This is a college seeking a new vice provost for enrollment management and dean of admission to build upon an impressive trajectory, it writes, and continue to advance a new model of enrollment management, providing the vision and leadership for a strategic approach to enrollment planning, demographic shifts, access and affordability, and the broader higher education market. This is a college that has good graduation rates, a steadily increasing

unfunded grants, aid, and their long-term debt is up a lot. I got to wonder if that's part of the issues they're facing. And then the second one, this is a college, I this is a president as I recall, this is a college seeks an inspirational, dynamic, visionary, forward-thinking, student-centric, and community-minded president to lead the institution into the next phase of its continued success. I'll dispute that in a second.

This place is an open, inclusive, comprehensive, polytechnic university period, thankfully, end of sentence. This university has enjoyed rapid growth over the past decade, through significant program expansion, and it goes on beautiful campus and on and on. goes well. I'm not going to quibble with the data. It looks like it's probably accurate. I will note that.

I will note that nowhere, nowhere in this solicitation for this public college's new president does it cite the fact that their four and six year graduation rates are absolutely pathetic.

hovering barely above 10 % over four years and less than 25 % over six years. This isn't even a college in my mind. You've heard me say this before. This is a tuition collection agency. Real colleges graduate their students in numbers considerably above what this public college is doing. Sheesh, sheesh, sheesh, sheesh, full, full transparency please. And colleges aren't gonna do that, I know. I know colleges are not gonna be transparent.

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That's why I'm here. But I'm going to have some fun with this. Here's how I would have written that presidential position overview position description. Quote, this is from me now. It's not from anybody else. Growing public college seeks someone, anyone to help us graduate our students. While we have added programs and our enrollment has grown, we still can't seem to graduate anyone.

Candidates must be able to demonstrate significant graduation rates from previous colleges where they worked double-jeesh time to move on. Wells College faces hurdles in a campus sale. Apparently there's an alum, I'm not gonna give the name of the alum, who has a first refusal agreement on a purchase. And so Wells College in New York, it's closed a year or so ago, hasn't been able to sell its property. Now, the only reason I bring this up is I've had these kind of stories before.

And Wells College has reached out to, the story says over 400 other colleges or schools and interest has been minimal. If colleges close and they can't get any kind of sale price at all or well below what the property assesses at.

You've got to wonder how long the bondholders who see this news, who see this trend, are going to hold on to the assets of colleges who violate covenants. Now, this is just educated speculation by Gary Stocker. Wells is just an anecdotal event, but what if that pattern has happened before? What if that pattern becomes more consistent and bondholders react?

It's not going to be a positive development for the industry. So I did a LinkedIn post, and this was on February 12th, and you can find my profile on LinkedIn. And the first part of it is a quote from Yellow Springs News. And this is from an Ohio college. Here's a quote, in late November, the Higher Learning Commission, or HLC,

TWICV For Feb 17 2025 (09:38.478)
a regional agency, they're defining it, a regional agency that offers evaluation and accreditation to colleges and universities, alerted Antioch College in Ohio that the school had been assigned a financial distress designation. I'm going to give you the source again. The source is the Yellow Springs News, not a major metropolitan in Ohio, not a national publication, but the Yellow Springs News.

And the story was broken by Lauren Shows, who's a reporter for the Yellow Springs News. Her source was a student. Yes, her source was a student at Antioch College. So again, we see HLC again, effectively playing hide and seek with the news that a college is in dire financial stress. November, late November.

That would be December, January, and most of February, half of February, two and a half months, 10 weeks, give or take. HLC sent out that designation and it took a student and it took a news publication to break the story. Colleges and accreditors continue, continue, continue to avoid any serious effort to provide financial transparency. Students and their families and faculty and staff.

and communities are continually left in the dark until someone stumbles upon the news of financial distress. Now, Matt Hendricks and I will have more on Antioch College during our February 25th College Financial Health Show. And this college has been on the radar as financially unhealthy for a long time. Some of the comments on my post suggested as much, confirmed as much. But there was a note in the 2023 audited financial statement.

I'm going read the note. This is from the auditors. The colleges, this is Antioch College, the colleges' significant decreases in net assets, reliance on contributions and borrowings from its endowment fund, raise substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern or as a viable business. The required management response in that same 2023 audited financial statement.

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regarding the college continuing as a going concern or legitimate business is just plain delusional. It relies on a set of responses that experience suggests have no reasonable chance of changing its downward financial path. Each of their proposed responses to the going concern designation is based on anticipated results. We see this with Webster University, for example.

is based on anticipated results with no demonstrated data to support their dartboard approach to managing this crisis. Now, College enrollment, 2022 FTE enrollment of 127 students. In 2022, they had 127 students. So it's not going to have any materially significant impact on higher education in the higher education market in Ohio, let alone the country. However, as I've shared before, it will be materially significant.

to the 100 plus students who almost certainly will have to find another college. Page two, get out your 33 LPLPs. Spin is coming your way. The University of Arkansas at Little Rock sees record breaking enrollment for the spring of 2025, says Ryan Turbeville in a Fox 16 news report on February 12th. Now, in this story.

I've got part of it here in a second. In this story, the University of Arkansas at Iraq actually worked hard not to give a number of total students. They threw out lot of percentages, percentage change data, but didn't really give us any numbers with which to apply to those percent changes.

I'm just guessing and having some fun here. They must be listening to this podcast and fearful of what I would do with it if they actually gave real numbers. So you know what I did, right? Yeah. Let's put the enrollment numbers into context. The full-time undergraduate enrollment at University of Arkansas Little Rock is down almost 1,800 students from 2016 to 2023.

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The FTE enrollment is down about 2,500 students in that same time period. So to those great spinners in management and public relations at the University of Arkansas, Little Rock, please, please share with your deserving public the actual enrollment numbers, the enrollment totals, and also graduation rates. University of Arkansas, Little Rock graduates around 20%, two in 10.

200 and 1,000, 2,100, for those of you that skipped math class. And here's the quote from the chancellor at the University of Arkansas, Little Rock. And I'm going to read the quote. This historic growth is not just about numbers. Well, yeah, it is. It represents more students, the chancellor continues, it represents more students choosing UAL, Little Rock as the place to pursue their dreams.

build their futures and become part of our vibrant community college dribble, here we come. This is Chancellor Christina Estrella said, it's a direct result, she continues of the hard work and dedication of our faculty, staff and enrollment teams who go above and beyond to support students every day. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So Mr. Turberville, excuse me, Mr. Turberville at Fox 16, this is just regurgitation reporting.

You didn't do any research. You didn't do any background. You didn't look at the data. But I'm still here for you. As always, drop me a note. No judgment. Drop me a note and I will give you a courtesy link to the 2025 College Viability App. I'll even set up a Zoom to go over how to use it. It's not very tough, but I'll show you how to use it. And I might even be able to show you some other tricks on holding these colleges, making these colleges more transparent about their enrollment, their finances, their graduation rates.

and all that stuff. Let's just call this one college drivel and move on page three Kent State. The Kent State academic consolidation plan inches closer to approval. This is Ideastream Public Media, Connor Morris on February 13th. While the plan called Transformation 2028 does not directly call for layoffs or programs to be eliminated, it does merge some colleges and schools.

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Melody Tankersley, who's executive vice president and provost at Kent State, in an email to faculty that had been last week said the reality is that the university needs to reduce spending by at least 8 million annually in the academic affairs unit. I presume that's academics teaching. Tracy Lau, L-A-U-X, chair of the Kent State Faculty Senate.

said that before the faculty senate vote that programs being consolidated under one roof could be could be a good thing for both students and faculty. I've got a lot of college drivel coming up here. Ms. Lau continues. This would create certain synergies, unnamed and unspecified, this would create certain synergies between academic programs and academic apartments so that they could work together.

like they have never worked together before. And that started exciting people in the academic sector more than the cost reduction part, of course. Now there's no specific details here, just throwing some stuff out against the wall and see what sticks. And this is just plain delusional.

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I'm using the word delusional a lot. This reporter offers no critical analysis, is still regurgitation reporting, and does not challenge the statements in any significant form or fashion from Kent State University. If I had a sound for the next story, I would play that sound. We have a serious sarcasm alert coming up.

The headline reads, and the story in the Peoria Journal Star on February 11th by Wes Hewitt, Chicago is one step closer to adding an NCAA Division I college football team. Chicago State is the college being referenced. To the data, we go at Chicago State from 2016 to 2023. The FTA enrollment is down about 500 students. The four year...

Graduation rates are in single digits. That's right, less than 10 % of students graduate in four years from Chicago State. In six years, the average is around 20%. The retention is around half, 50%. The percent admitted is less than 50%. That confuses me. When you have troubles, you admit more,

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and their admissions yield has sunk to single digits, not on the good side, from 2020 through 2023. And their graduate students are down 400 students. From the story from Mr. Hewitt, he writes, it is unclear where Chicago State will play its home football games.

The school has 161 acres with room for locker rooms and a field for practices. As of that 2023 story this gentleman wrote, Carroll said possibilities range from Soldier Field to Seat Geek Stadium, I don't know what that is, in Bridgeview to local high schools. He continued Chicago State would be the state of Illinois' eighth NCAA One division football program. So turn on your sarcasm alert button.

Certainly, Gary Stocker says, the great state of Illinois needs more D1 football programs. Maybe with great sarcasm dripping from both sides, maybe they should have more college graduates. Maybe they should have more college graduates instead of this management by P.R. Silliness-Page for Jeff Salingo, who I admire for so many things that he does.

had a quick note in his newsletter, I think it was last week, and I'm going to kind of paraphrase what he says, publics are hot, but not the IVs. And Jeff goes on to say, applications to public college members grew at a faster rate, 10 % than those to private members since 2023-24, 2%. Growth in applications was slowest for the most selective institutions. Now, I've speculated on this for a while.

And I don't see specifically that Jeff's data includes small, less selective colleges. I think that's inferred, but I'm not sure. I still believe we will soon see solid data that the market is moving away from small colleges and towards larger ones. I'm not sure that was Jeff's lingo's point, but this is just another small indicator of what I think is happening under our feet as we sit here and stand here right now.

TWICV For Feb 17 2025 (21:08.042)
And the impact is going to be substantial. Maybe somewhere down the road, I'll add that on another podcast. the impact for the colleges that students choose not to go to and for those larger ones that students choose to attend, the impacts are going to be substantial on both ends. And let's do a wrap for this podcast episode. I really struggle deciding whether to join, whether or not to join in on the chorus.

of news stories on higher education since January 20th. I don't do politics on this show, even in my personal life. Politics, sex, are all a public no-no for me. That's my call. Yet I know politics impacts almost, if not everything, that we do. So with my old guy ballet shoes on, I'm going to tip across that political high wire. The market is changing.

I've said this many times on this podcast and elsewhere. It's being impacted by the customer perception of value. It is being impacted by the perceived costs of the education and it's certainly being impacted by changes in government policy, both at the federal, state and local levels. But you know what? All of those and much, more, they're all part of the higher education market. It's changing. There's no way around it. It's changing.

Yet there are hundreds of thousands of students going to college and getting materially significant value for their investment, hundreds of thousands, for whom college is a fabulous investment. But as in all economics,

What is changing is in the periphery of the higher education market. It is the economic model, the economic concept of marginal analysis. We all make decisions. We all make decisions about almost everything we do on the margins. We need a new car, but the color, the price, the features, and much more impact that final decision is those little marginal things. Do we want red or blue? Can we afford 30,000 or 25,000? Do we need...

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real windshield wipers or not. Those are all marginal decisions. The same kind of decisions are being made by students choosing to go or not to go to college. So will federal and state public policies negatively impact enrollment? And more importantly, will the tuition and fee revenue from those students impact, negatively impact higher education almost certainly.

Could that change in four years, in the next four years, after the next four years? Almost certainly. Almost certainly it will. Could we see a catastrophic impact? Catastrophic impact on higher education is something less than four years. I believe it to be a distinct possibility, but only because of the massive market adjustments we are living through right this minute. Will it be good thing? Yeah, from behind the

Dark blue, yeti microphone. Yeah, I believe it will be good thing. Will it be traumatic for those involved? Absolutely. Is it good for this country? Yeah. Yeah. I can't think of any other industry. If you can, let me know. I can't think of any other industry that has not undergone substantial market contraction and adjustments. It appears that now is that time.

in higher education. Do you agree? Fine. Don't like it? Let me know. I'm happy to chat. My email is posted on LinkedIn. I'll post it in the show notes as well. And so let's do this. Let's get together again next Monday. So make sure to sign up and get each week's podcast downloaded so you can stay up to date on this week in college viability. So for college viability, I'm Gary Stocker. be back next week with a new podcast. We will talk to you then. Take care.