This Week In College Viability (TWICV) Special with Jay Keehn: Union Institute and University Closes

Gary (00:03)
Welcome back to another special episode of This Week in College Viability. Hi, it's Gary Stocker back with you again. We have a really timely guest today and it is someone who has a long history.

with a college that just last week announced, first of all, it was going to resign its accreditation. And then of course, a couple of days later, it announced its closure and that is Union Institute and University based out of Ohio. And today my guest is Jay Keene. And Jay has been with Union Institute and University for not quite 20 years, about 18 years or so. And he's one of the guys who does a good job working his way up from faculty up to some serious leadership roles in the organization. Jay, welcome. Thanks for joining me today.

Dr. Jay M. Keehn (00:45)
Thank you very much for having me.

Gary (00:48)
So Jay, how about a history? Just this kind of, you've seen it all at Union and I don't often get the chance to talk with folks who've seen it all over such a long period of time. Kind of give us a reader's digest version of Union Institute from 2003 when you started until when you left last year.

Dr. Jay M. Keehn (01:07)
Yeah, so I was hired as faculty at the Masters of Education program. We had a director and I was the faculty and then we had a couple of other adjuncts and that's all we had. Union had a Masters of Education program that was licensure based here in South Florida. You had mentioned that Union is based out of Cincinnati, Ohio. We have several campuses. It's a national online

program but had several locations, one of which was in at that point, North Miami, Florida. In the later years that I was there, it moved to Hollywood, Florida. And so I was running, I was faculty for the Florida based program. I then moved up to the director and at the time of that I moved to the director role, we had, we had merged them into one master's program. When I say that we had a master's program out of Vermont.

also a certification program there. That was grandfathered in when Union Institute and University purchased Vermont College, portions of it. And we had a campus out up in Vermont. So now I went from faculty in the master's program in the Florida -based program to the director of both the overall

master's program and then we had decided based at based at the time as a recommendation from the Ohio Board of Regents we had decided to have a third branch of the masters of education program and and that was to start an online version of it completely online. In the transition from going from faculty to masters I had a lot of uncertainty that was my first time where I noticed some challenges and there was some

some right sizing with the university and they were had to get rid of unfortunately some several employees

Gary (03:11)
What time frame was that, Jay?

Dr. Jay M. Keehn (03:13)
I'm sorry, so that must have been 2007, 2008 when I started going from the faculty role to the director role. And they were saying every department and every academic program was going to be hit in their budget somehow. And I assumed, given that I was the only full -time faculty that they weren't going to fire the director, that I was going to be let go.

Lo and behold, they moved the director to a different role and I was pulled up to the director's role. And a few years later, they started to teach out the master's program altogether. We had developed the online program. We started to phase out the location -based programs in South Florida and in Vermont. And then we got rid of the online program and...

You know, I remember there were some errors in accounting. You know, they were saying how the master's program was costing more than it was worth. And that's fine. I wasn't at that point, I didn't have the global picture of the university. We had about, I would say about a half a year before the decision was to get rid of the master's program. We had cut tuition in the master's program from, if I remember correctly,

almost $95, $250 credit to $145 credit if I remember correctly those numbers. And my first reaction, you know, was that's great. That's amazing. I'm going out to a camp. I'm going out to events. I'm trying to market the program. And now I can say, Hey, look at it. We're much more competitive in the pricing. However, we didn't have a budget that matched what we were planning to build in. We weren't meeting the numbers. And so now

You know, we needed more students to make up the budget. Go ahead.

Gary (05:17)
So, Jaylen, I'm going to jump ahead a little bit to the last four or five years. All of us who follow higher education are generally aware of Union Institute and universities many, many issues. At what point in the last five years or so, whenever that was, did you realize this may not end well?

Dr. Jay M. Keehn (05:21)
Yeah, please.

Right. So it's a good time when you jumped ahead because right after what I was saying happened, we had started to have success. We started to build up again. I was moved from the master's program into student services. We merged everything into one. I moved my way up to the dean. And then sort of when in 2017, 2018, we had a presidential change, right? Dr. Sublet.

was very strong in understanding the budget and finances and bringing in some money. When he started, there was some pro -academic issues that was before my time and he got us out of those issues and really brought us in. And when he was leaving, Union was at $6 .3 million in cash with $3 million in endowment. And under the first year in that transition, revenue declined to $15 .8.

and they posted a $1 .7 million loss. They spent 1 .1 less on salaries and $290 more on contract services, a lot more on consulting services than on salaries. And so that's when we started really started feeling some sort of financial challenges. You know, I can talk about some other things that happened that was beyond our control with numbers, things that were happening in higher education anyway. For example, Union was always reliant on tuition dollars. Their endowments were always small.

Right. And Union was, is a adult institution. One of the few in the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, right. Until all the other colleges started catching up in the adult education world. Right. We were degree completion. And so one of the things that was happening with technology and the learning management systems was that some of the schools were starting to also have online. And, and so if a student who had to step out because life in life got in the way.

Let's say they lived in South Florida, they went to University of Michigan, life got in the way, they would have to come back home and drop. When I say life got in the way, maybe their family had any crisis, they had to come home to help out their family. Well, that was years and years ago. Now, if they have to do that, they can still go online and take college classes anywhere, even at the University of Michigan, anywhere. So the pool of adult learners shrunk. And a lot of the colleges that...

are experiencing their financial challenges felt that. A lot of community colleges, two -year colleges, went to four -year colleges. And so that took away some of our feeder programs. So there's a lot of things that have, and of course, the bigger, more traditional colleges, the state colleges that had 60 ,000 students on campus were now saying,

In addition to that, we can get another 15, 20 ,000 people online. So they will open up online programs. So our competitors were growing to not just, you know, other online institutions or distance education, but to anybody and anywhere. So that's the stuff that was beyond our control. Although, you know, we weren't innovative to keep up with them, right? And we didn't do much to do that. But yet we still had a good program.

Gary (08:36)
Ha ha.

Dr. Jay M. Keehn (08:59)
solid faculty, no matter what the challenges were, were always, you know, really strong faculty and everything was good until some of the decisions that were being made in 2018, 2019 and the data behind it, the numbers going down and the income, well, I should say the expenses rising based on consulting and other decisions. That's what really more of the recent administration.

Yeah.

Gary (09:31)
So as things started to, in your mind, denigrate a little bit, go down a little bit, was there any faculty movement to start looking at the finances of union from the faculty only, or was it just kind of you took what the administration gave you?

Dr. Jay M. Keehn (09:37)
Mm -hmm.

Yeah, so unfortunately there was a lot more taking what the administration gave us until it was too late. You know, my... Again, like I was saying before, there was years that we had challenges and there was restructuring and what have you, and that worked. We built ourselves back up again. But my first real understanding of how bad the challenges were this time around was when I started getting calls from vendors. Now, we were still getting payroll.

Gary (09:58)
Okay.

Dr. Jay M. Keehn (10:17)
And we were still getting paid, but suddenly I was getting calls from vendors, hey, we're not getting paid. You used to be good, you used to pay us, but we're not getting paid. And some of that was

Gary (10:26)
What time frame was that Jay?

Dr. Jay M. Keehn (10:27)
like I would say the summer, like spring of 2022, summer of 2022, our first, our first miss pay period was December of 2022. So a few months before that, half a year before that, and I would get a vendor calls, but it was, some of it was really serious. I was getting calls from, from places that were providing us with, sign language or transcription services for our students with disabilities. And they were threatening.

Gary (10:34)
Okay.

Dr. Jay M. Keehn (10:58)
to no longer provide services. How can we be a university and not have services for these students? And same goes with the library. Our library vendors were threatening and we had, we were an online institution with an online library with sources that were being connected to the classroom. And so that was my indication, my first indication that things were really getting bad. And what I was told was, not by my direct supervisor, because I'm not so sure he actually knew all the...

But everything being trickled down was, you know, there's a lot of turnover in the business office. We have to catch up. We have bills being behind, but we have the money. Don't worry. We just don't have to organize again. Okay.

Gary (11:36)
They might not have been telling you the truth.

Dr. Jay M. Keehn (11:39)
Yeah, I'm pretty sure I figured that out by now. Because then a few months later we're told the same thing, like, okay, if that is the truth, then why has it been taking months and months to fix it? Why are you taking months to find that bill and not pay? So those were the first indications. We didn't get paid the first pay period in December. That's the first time that payroll was missed in all of my time there, ever.

Gary (11:41)
Okay, okay.

Dr. Jay M. Keehn (12:06)
No matter what other challenges, like I said, we described challenges earlier on in my tenure there, never got to a point where we missed a paper. Never. And also at that time, what was going on was that they did not yet give out the benefits. This was December, 2022. They had not yet sent out benefit information for 2023.

Gary (12:10)
Okay.

right.

Dr. Jay M. Keehn (12:28)
So the president calls a meeting and I said to my boss, I said, my supervisor, I said, listen, I can only go on for 20 minutes. Well, as it turned out, that wasn't the worry because the meeting itself ended up being five minutes. She came on and she said, benefit information will be sent out on Monday. I understand payroll wasn't made. Human resources forgot something or did not submit it on time. So you'll get it. Now, of course,

vice president of human resources eventually did share with me personally that that wasn't true that they were delayed and waiting for the money to be in the bank and I would say the first time it happened we did get paid by Tuesday the second time it happened two pay periods later we got paid by Tuesday so okay if you're just going to change the day of when you get paid from every other Friday to every other Tuesday tell us that's fine as long as the money's there

Gary (13:03)
All right.

Dr. Jay M. Keehn (13:26)
People are working hard. People are actually relying on this money to pay their rent.

And so that's what happened. We did get paid every pay period between January and February and then came at the end of March. We didn't get paid. And then the next pay period we didn't get paid. And then the next pay period. And... Good.

Gary (13:47)
So clearly there was a pattern here, Jay, that leadership was misleading you. Is that fair? about when, about what year, about what month or year did that start, do you think, in hindsight?

Dr. Jay M. Keehn (13:52)
Yeah.

well, you know, started to be more noticeable to the faculty and staff was around the time that the pay periods were being missed, right? Or that's when we start going to retroactively start saying, wait, did she also say this back then? Or did some other administrator say that? Right. But to be really impactful, and maybe that's why it was only then, because now all of a sudden it's hitting us, you know, the people who are working the hardest, the people who are providing the service, the ones on the front line.

And you know, my job was very flexible, but I looked at it as flexible. Saturday night, if I saw a student who was working and these are adult work learners, our adult students worked, you know, did their work whenever, right? Because they were working, they had adults, they were families, they probably had to take care of their parents. So whenever they had a chance to do their assignments, so there were often times, Saturday, Sunday, right? You know, there were times that they had to...

do their work and if they would send me information or they needed help or whatever support services I was able to provide, I was responding. So to feel like you're working seven days a week, again, flexible for sure, but seven days a week and responding to students, but then not getting paid for it. So that's when it was impacting us. That's when we started noticing. And the lies, again, first she said that it was the human resources. The second time she kept on saying that students weren't paying their tuition if we can only collect more from students.

Gary (15:24)
there.

Dr. Jay M. Keehn (15:28)
Right. But we've, that's been going on for years. Not students don't always pay a hundred percent of their tuition and you have to wait for the financial aid. And the third, the third line, let me, let me allow me to say this is back when it started happening in March was around the same time that a few of the major banks had failed. And one of the banks, she said, she, the reason why we didn't miss pay pay period, because they were expecting a loan from this big bank that shut down.

Gary (15:34)
So, sure, sure.

Dr. Jay M. Keehn (15:55)
The problem with that story was that that bank also was taken over and the bank that took over honored all the loans. So if Union did take out a loan from that bank, they would have had the money. It was a story. Go ahead.

Gary (16:09)
So the details at Union Institute and the other colleges that have recently closed are similar. That's not true. They're different. The outcome is the same. And in the cases of Union Institute and University of the Arts in Philadelphia last week, Wells last month sometime, in each case, it's reasonable to suggest, reasonable to note

Dr. Jay M. Keehn (16:17)
Mm -hmm.

Gary (16:37)
that leadership failed. Do you see your intimate experience with Union Institute and University? Does it concern you, Jay, that it's not just happening this leadership or lack of leadership is happening at too many private colleges? What are your thoughts on that?

Dr. Jay M. Keehn (17:00)
It really is concerning. I was just on another call where someone said, it seems like there's one every week. And you would know better what the exact numbers It is about right. It's a crazy part of Harvard education that we're in right now. And it is concerning because there's certainly a place for the small privates. And they're not the only ones. Some denominational

Gary (17:09)
Yeah, yeah, that's about right.

Dr. Jay M. Keehn (17:29)
colleges are closing. Some of the bigger online institutions are cutting back. And yeah, even the ones that aren't closing are making significant cuts to salaries to faculty. And those are the first steps to maybe they'll be on this list and see how viable those colleges

Gary (17:48)
One of the things I note in all the research and reading and podcasts and posting that I do is that in almost every case, Jay, the faculty respond when a closure announcement or a cutback announcement, layoff announcement, course closure announcement is made. In hindsight, the faculty really, like you said a minute ago, relied on the administration.

to share data and, you know, in the case of union and other places, the leadership is not, clearly not forthcoming. Do you think there's a need for faculty and staff and middle management leadership, kind of like you were at, to be more attuned to a college's finances, especially at this time?

Dr. Jay M. Keehn (18:32)
Yes, very much. I think there should be a structure. I mean, we had a faculty council. The president should or chief financial officer or someone the president designates to be on that meeting at least once a month, maybe once a semester or once a month to update on finances. I think and I know you've talked about how a creditors

aren't focused on the university's finances until it's too late. I think if they were held accountable earlier, we wouldn't have this, you know, with the university of the arts and some of the other ones that have closed, maybe they're all the same in the same outcome, like you say, but union has been really a zombie institution until it's, it's shut down. They haven't had classes since last summer. The facilities were evicted from, right? They had

that no staff or faculty, someone hung on to make sure that students really devoted her own time to hang on to make sure students got transcripts, right? They had been financial audited. I mean, you know the list of all of what's happened here. The misappropriated financial aid funds. There's so much that has happened. And some of the lies really to me,

were also criminal, you know, about paying the health benefits. You know, it didn't affect me personally. I was kind of gone by that point, but there were people who felt that their benefits were being paid and found out at a doctor's office or in one case at a hospital. So some of this stuff is really massively impactful. You know, thanks to you, I read Jonathan Nichols book, Requiem for College and what had happened there. And one of the things he said was to start, that in retrospect, he thought, what were the little decisions?

that didn't seem impactful, but certainly on the list that could have been the domino effect to lead to this. I remember a decision several years ago about restructuring enrollment and I thought it was okay, but then I thought, okay, well, that's really good for mainstreaming the process and overall picture, but each of the locations lose some personal touches at the enrollment level.

So here in South Florida, in California, in Vermont at that time, we do not have Vermont anymore, or they didn't in the last few years. You lost touches there, so you lost enrollment that way. Was that part, was that a domino effect to lead to other things? Is that part of the reason why enrollment went down? So you start thinking of the little decisions, but each one of this was impactful to people not being able to pay their rent.

Gary (21:08)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Dr. Jay M. Keehn (21:17)
to people not having to pay out of pocket for that. I don't think when you're in that position, you think of that. If you do think of that, you probably would have been more transparent and not loyal.

Gary (21:26)
Yeah. And like John Nichols, who just referenced in his book, Requirem for College, you have lived through the trauma of a college closure. And I know you went there until the very end, but it was close to the very end. And here's my final question. And on this podcast, Jay, I have shared many times with colleges, probably Union Institute, I don't remember specifically, but with Wells and others that were clearly in financial trouble. Most recently Northland College up in Wisconsin.

Dr. Jay M. Keehn (21:40)
Yeah.

Gary (21:56)
I won't share their story. I've done that before on the podcast. Turn off the lights. I tell them, let your faculty, let your staff, let your students, let your community go on because that's exactly what happened at Union. They should have made this announcement at least in 2023, if not a little bit before that. Is that fair to really encourage these colleges to turn off the lights?

when there's almost no hope that they can ultimately be viable

Dr. Jay M. Keehn (22:25)
Yes. Yes. Because what happens is, first off, there's a lot of attrition. Everyone's starting to see at that point, and they start leaving. So what are you holding on to anyway? Secondly, if you're not having classes and the students are leaving, you can't recruit because who's going to come to you? So I believe that the moment that they made the decision to cancel this classes last summer, and their hope was that it would just be a semester's worth, but I think that that...

Gary (22:35)
Great point. Yeah, great point.

Dr. Jay M. Keehn (22:52)
Personally, I think that was already a little too late. Once they started seeing payroll missing and how much they owed the vendors and the numbers that were kept, the parlaying debt to the decreasing income, I think that was the time. On my story, I was given a little bit of a blessing in disguise. When they started missing payroll, I said to my wife, I said, listen, I can't work and not know if I'm going to get paid. So at the end of my contract, I would leave. In between that time, they came to me and said,

and said, well, we're going to try to restructure. So we have to get rid of a few. Now those are the words that I was told. I know there's other stories behind it, which again, it's fine that happened. And I've been told more of the truth from several other people, my own personal director. You know, I should say another hint for me with my supervisor, who also was the liaison for the accreditation with the university, he left.

And I said, you found something else. Where are you going? He goes, nope, didn't find anything else. I just can't stay here anymore. I just can't stay here.

Gary (23:55)
And you know, what's really sad is I've had a lot of conversations with Jonathan Nichols. And as you know, his book is both touching and enraging in many ways. The conversation with you, what worries me, Jay, is that I will have to have conversations with other Jay Keens, with other Jonathan Nichols. And I don't know, maybe you've got a magic bullet. I'll make this the last question. Maybe you've got a magic bullet, because you have lived this. I'm higher education world.

Dr. Jay M. Keehn (24:01)
Mm -hmm.

Gary (24:24)
I want you to address, if you're comfortable doing this, a message to every college president who is having financial troubles. Give them a message from someone who has lived through this higher education hell.

Dr. Jay M. Keehn (24:42)
Yeah. So again, I'll use the word again. It wasn't my word. It was a word that was given to me. Don't become a zombie institution. Right. Be transparent with your staff and faculty. Understand that they're human beings, that they have, you know, lives, they have families and that this impacts them. They need, you know, I was actually given the blessing. I had time to, you know, structure my finances before my last day. I was given the time to look for other things and that's still going on. But a lot of people don't. So understand the human beings.

But also, communicate with other colleges, see what maybe what you can do. Maybe you have to restructure and get rid of a program, but you can build from your strength. Again, something that the union didn't do. We talked about the closures, but there's also a lot of mergers and acquisitions at this time, as you know. And that's primarily because there are leaders out there who don't want to close and don't want to put the effects on the students.

staff and faculty, so they want to work out a program or teach out or something that would allow them all to continue. And so don't just sit there with your ego and say, I'm going to be there. I'm going to make sure I'm going to resurrect this. I'm going to do this. And we're going to make sure this happens. It's not at some point you have to be more under self -aware to understand that that wasn't going to happen. Everyone I've talked to since last week, since the official notice came out, everyone I talked to said,

This should have happened last summer, 2023 summer. At the latest, even probably before that, I always feel that innovation is the enemy of failure. So you should have been innovative a long time ago. But now when you get to this point, be innovative of how you can shut down with dignity. Don't fail as a university and then fail in failing.

Gary (26:20)
Great point, great point.

That's a great, great point. Great, great point. You know Jake, Jake, Jake.

Dr. Jay M. Keehn (26:29)
You know, you noticed this on their, my last point, but you noticed this on their letter of closure where it says, we made an impact in higher education. Years and years ago, they did, you know, the one of the first of distance education. They went from snail mail to fax to emails before all the learning management systems came about. Right. And they were impactful and they had really

Gary (26:38)
and all that, yeah.

Dr. Jay M. Keehn (26:55)
high level. I mean, we have a prime minister of a country, a former prime minister of a country who was a graduate of ours. Then, you know, there are people who are out there who are making impacts in higher education, in education, in criminal justice, in a legal world, business who graduated. We, you know, we were a very respected institution. So yeah, they made an impact. But the last seven years, the impact was the complete opposite. And it hurt a lot of people and a lot of families.

Gary (27:17)
Yeah. And I think that's the moral of the story. And Jay Keene has been my guest today. And here's the moral of the story. If you're a college faculty member, staff member, even community member, and you're hearing the kind of signs similar or identical to what Jay is talking about, don't wait for college leaders.

to share truthful information with you about their finances. They have that fiduciary responsibility, Jay, to protect the best interests of the organization. And one of the reasons, one of the many reasons I created the College Viability app, and I have a version, especially for faculty and staff, is to provide an independent resource for faculty and staff.

even students and their families to look at a college's finances. And you and I both know, Jay, that in decades gone by, checking a college finances was never on the list of things to do when looking at a college. But now you and I both know that needs to be the first thing that any family should look at.

Dr. Jay M. Keehn (28:06)
Mm -hmm.

Gary (28:19)
especially if they're looking at privates and especially if they're looking at smaller privates and really especially if they're looking at smaller privates in non -urban areas. Again, Jay, I'm grateful for your time, grateful for your perspective. It's unfortunate that you had to go through this and thousands, probably thousands of others have gone through this already and I just worry how many more will have to go through this. I wish you the best, sir. Jay, thanks again.

Dr. Jay M. Keehn (28:46)
Thank you. All right, have a good day.

Gary (28:46)
Take care, sir.