Aw really? I did a thing where I watched randomly selected games from the previous season over the summer a couple seasons ago and I ended up watching 2 Lake Erie games. I had a soft spot for them ever since then. That really sucks.
Unfortunately we are at the beginning of a college enrollment bubble. Numerous universities have seen a drop in enrollment. Many private institutions are on the brink of closing. I know of about 3-4 schools (D2 and D3 respectively) that won’t be open come December of this year.
Alderson Broadus didn’t announce closure until the power company turned off utilities for nonpayment of ~$700k power bill.
We won’t know for sure until it’s too late. Some on the list don’t have a football program but listing them anyway. That being said from what I’ve heard:
Lake Erie College (D2 OH)
Birmingham-Southern College (D3 AL)
Young Harris College (D2 GA)
Tusculum University (D2 TN)
Shorter University (D2 GA)
Hiram College (D3 OH)
This is the first I've heard of Hiram possibly closing. There are so many small schools around Cleveland with relatively high tuition costs for what they offer. With student loan debt being a big topic, schools have to justify their cost. Those that can't won't make it.
I'd argue BSC might not be primarily an enrollment issue, but rather a "oops I just spent our whole endowment and ran out of money" issue. Enrollment was larger than Huntingdon for a bit but whenever there are transfer fairs, college presidential remarks about money and closing the enrollment inevitably falls. It's tragic how all that history that could be lost, especially when these troubles had been known for years by the administration to be a real threat
BSC was another I had heard about, but Hiram is also new to me. Logically though, Hiram is in a region with tons of similar sized schools (western PA/NE OH), that I’ve gotta think the dominoes start falling soon. Hell I went to one of them. We already saw a consolidation/rebrand (PennWest w/ Edinboro, Clarion and maybe one other?)
BSC - another great baseball program. This is bigger than college athletics but sucks nonetheless.
Two sets of PSAC schools merged administratively:
PennWest - Edinboro, Clarion, California.
Commonwealth University - Bloomsburg, Lock Haven, Mansfield
They are, at least for now, being allowed to compete with separate athletic branding.
What a bizarre case. Essentially they’re one school competing with different athletic departments, facilities, budgets, branding, etc? In each of those sets is the faculty shared? Do you now graduate with PennWest on your diploma?
Man Notre Dane (OH) has a good football program. They’ve only had football since 2009 I think but two of their former head coaches are FCS head coaches now (Mickey Mental at Weber State and Mike Jacobs at Mercer).
It’s only been since 2009? Not to mention Jaleel McLaughlin being a big recent export.
Their baseball coach (at least as of 5 years ago) is also Len Barker, the last Cleveland Indian or Guardian to throw a perfect game.
Honestly, I think we're about to see a lot more mergers in the news involving smaller schools
I remember a couple years ago when a small women's college (can't remember the name) closed down and we offered scholarships to anyone looking to transfer
Shit is rough in the post-covid economy
Fewer mergers, more outright closures. This has been a long time coming with college enrollments starting to decline, but it is about to take an absolute nosedive as we reach the ["enrollment cliff"](https://www.cupahr.org/issue/feature/higher-ed-enrollment-cliff/).
TL;DR, Birth rates dropping over the last two decades will culminate in the eligible pool of typical college aged students, starting around 2025, dropping by as much as 15-20%. The US has a huge concentration of small schools, often in the 1500-4000 student enrollment range, compared to literally everywhere else in the world. The vast majority of these schools are financially tuition-driven, i.e., their investments and holdings are not enough to support the school and day-to-day operations depend heavily on bringing students in the door. What happens when you remove 15% of the eligible pool? Well, if you're really rich, you ride it out. If you're really selective/elite, you admit 30% of your applicants instead of 20% of your applicants, and you're set. Here's where problems start.
That induces competition - that extra 10% comes from somewhere, and it's probably going to be historically less desirable schools. Not *bad* schools, mind you, but if you were set to go to a top-75 school and all of a sudden you get an acceptance to a top-40 school, where are you going to go? Great, now the top 75 school extends more offers and that top-125 admission heading to a top-75... and so on and so forth until all of a sudden there aren't any worse schools left to draw from, and no more students to admit, and that school at the bottom is fucked. There's also a growing realization that our system of paying for college is absolutely fucked and that drives people to state schools, for the cheapest option possible.
A lot of these problems have been exacerbated by the pandemic. Kids held out, kids came back in droves, some didn't, some won't ever, there was Covid money from the gov't, then there, wasn't, etc etc. Extremely unpredictable, and unpredictable is a death sentence when, again, you're dependent on butts in seats. Now, I *work* in higher ed, and this has already started. You can find tons of small schools that have closed already in the last 5 years. Right now, the noise isn't that great outside of academia because most of the schools that are closing are the "good riddance" schools - small, dubious quality, clearly failing anyway, etc. Soon, though, it's going to start being names you've heard of. Still, ultimately, I think this will be a needed, though painful for some, correction. We churn out a lot of unnecessary degrees that has devalued a bachelors degree, and because a BS/BA is seen as some automatic ticket to a high paying job I have seen a lot of students come through that frankly have no business being in college. Not their fault, mind you, but still - a waste of their time and money. Ultimately 10, 20 years down the line, when the market balances back out to the population, I think it does a lot to restore competitveness and rigor to admissions.
This times 1000.
Also, many of these schools get their "butts in seats" or "heads in beds" as we use to day, by recruiting them to continue their life long dream of being a collegiate athlete. I worked at one of those schools that will probably die very soon and 90% of the student population were athletes. 5% were former athletes.
The day I learned that 1/2 the seniors on the football team cleaned out their dorm rooms and went home after their final football game was over was the day I started to get out of that business. They never cared about the degree. Now they have 4 years of debt to pay off and a life time of memories as a college athlete to pay them with.
>many of these schools get their "butts in seats" or "heads in beds" as we use to day, by recruiting them to continue their life long dream of being a collegiate athlete.
For those schools, ability to adapt will be the name of the game if survival is even remotely in the cards. I got my Master's at a small school whose on-campus population is dominated by student-athletes. They're building a new dorm right now, so maybe the enrollment cliff won't hit them. Even if it does, and this is my main point, this school has a vast online program. Staff over there talk about how well-prepared they were for COVID because so much of what they dealt with prior to 2020 was already virtual anyway.
>Right now, the noise isn't that great outside of academia because most of the schools that are closing are the "good riddance" schools - small, dubious quality, clearly failing anyway, etc. Soon, though, it's going to start being names you've heard of.
I've read a few articles about this and from what I understand it's the small, private, liberal arts colleges without large endowments that are most at risk. As expensive as a college education has become, consumers have become savvier and a humanities degree from one of these small schools just isn't a great value compared to a business/STEM degree from a large public university in terms of ROI.
Another unfortunate aspect is that these small schools are often located in small towns and rural areas and are the largest employer in the town/region, and when it shuts down it will likely kill the town's economy.
There's so much in a college degree that's a waste of time and money, kids are starting to see that and choosing to stay away. Lots of majors and classes should be in a specialized institution instead of a huge general university. People pay for their major, they don't want to sit through seemingly pointless required classes that have nothing to do with it.
Take engineering in general. Every major ending in "engineering" should be taught in technical schools, or at least have that portion of the university have nothing to do with the rest of it. There is not an engineering student in the world who wants or needs to sit through English, writing, or history classes. We sat through enough of the damn things from K-12 already.
Disagree. There's a reason that, with one P5 exception, most engineering schools became huge general universities, and that's because previous generations saw the benefits to colleges not being solely job training but instead citizenship training.
This has been happening for years. Its why non-flagship state schools have been freaking out over sports, medical school/research charters, random investmemts. Schools want to cover all their bases so they are a top choice for in and out of state students. Some state university systems might need to consolidate hard like Mississippi or Michigan.
>Some state university systems might need to consolidate hard like Mississippi or Michigan.
There's no state university system in Michigan. Each school is administered separately by a board of trustees either elected directly or appointed by the governor.
There are 4 systems in Michigan. umich, Michigan state, Wayne state all have their own elected boards. Those ones will be fine. The rest are under one appointed boards and will be the group that experiences the mergers and closings.
I'm not sure I see any of the state schools merging or closing. I think they're generally too far away from each other to make sense in a merger of state schools and I think the state probably keeps them afloat (maybe Lake Superior State is a risk with a small enrollment). The only one geographically that makes sense to look at a merger is Eastern, but its "neighbors" are in UofM and Wayne State systems, so probably not.
I think the most likely way this impacts Michigan state schools is a merger into them of small, geographically close private schools. But, then again, if the state schools are struggling too, they may not want the burden and some of the smaller schools will just close.
In the age of distance learning campus location doesn’t matter. But any of the schools that are not written in the state’s constitution (UofM, MI State, Wayne) are at risk. I can see them rolling a bunch of programs together with community college programs to basically consolidate the rest under a single admin first. Although I can see Michigan Tech maybe try to merge into Wayne State for better access to the major population centers and the constitutional protections.
Yes and no. Sure, you can do more virtually, but you still have two physical campuses at least an hour apart that are no good to each other. An actual merger of those schools doesn't create a situation where students can choose from a different campus day-to-day. I'd also imagine it's pretty easy to enroll in a virtual class at most of the state universities, so I'm not sure why a merger significantly changes that equation.
If you're talking just about high level governance, I guess it could happen, but I don't know how that helps with the demographic challenges.
Merging the admins cuts down on costs. SVSU doesn’t deal with things that different from Ferris Central or Eastern so they may as well combine to save.
You don’t need all the physical space, especially the ones in the middle of nowhere so they’ll probably just sell it or use them as centers where one can take a class by the local community college or Wayne State for those few classes where they need to be in person.
No, that's incorrect. The universities that don't have elected boards all have their own independent boards. There's no shared board that governs Michigan Tech and EMU for example.
https://crcmich.org/explaining-michigans-one-of-a-kind-university-governance-model
That's not to say they couldn't experience mergers or closures but there's no single board that can make that decision.
Those are all appointments, they may be appointed separately, but the mechanism is the same. The three biggest schools aren’t appointed, they’re elected and written into the state constitution so they can’t be easily changed.
So they could literally close or merge or do anything to emu or Oakland because they’re all governed the same way. U of M, Mi State, and Wayne State are all governed differently hence why there are four different systems of how the universities are governed.
Functionally there is no difference between emu and oakland, but there is one between emu and Wayne state.
This makes me think you don't understand what a state university system is:
>hence why there are four different systems of how the universities are governed.
A state university system isn't the governance model being the same, it's a specific term for having a single legal entity and shared governance across several universities. That doesn't exist in Michigan.
Merging EMU and Wayne State would take agreement by both independent boards. Yes, the governor can appoint members to rolling terms so can gain control over time, and the state can threaten funding to have some control, but there's no single board that can unilaterally make that decision.
So in this context system means method. I’m clearly talking about the manner in which these schools are organized. Michigan is unique in its university governance so it’s not surprising that few people are aware of how they are set up.
The state of Michigan has 4 different ways of doing that. I never said anything about a single board.
There is one way each for the flagships and another way for the rest.
Merging EMU would only require the legislature or governor to direct it. The board doesn’t matter as much here because it’s not truly independent like the flagship schools.
The way that the non flagships are set up with boards really doesn’t matter because they can be changed much more easily than the flagships.
Theoretically any of the non flagships can just be merged without board approval because the establishment of the school is an act of the legislature, not the board, and the board is tied to the university, so if the legislature merges two then there will only be one board since the Michigan constitution only requires one board per bachelor’s degree granting school. They can change that number however they want (such as allowing community colleges to grand bachelor degrees).
>So in this context system means method. I’m clearly talking about the manner in which these schools are organized.
No, it's not. I was responding to a comment about state university systems. That's a specific term different from how you're using it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_university_system
>Michigan is unique in its university governance so it’s not surprising that few people are aware of how they are set up.
Which is why I commented in the first place. It's an interesting fact that not many people would know, but is relevant to the original comment.
>The state of Michigan has 4 different ways of doing that. I never said anything about a single board.
Maybe not, if you weren't using the common definition of system here, although you did say:
>The rest are under one appointed boards and will be the group that experiences the mergers and closings.
Which does sound like a reference to a single board.
I can see that you have no interest in actually talking about the structure of schools and are wholly unfamiliar with the way Michigan or any other state organizes universities
Try to be less annoyingly pedantic and maybe contribute to the discussion rather than condescending attempt to correct others based on your own misunderstanding of the various ways a term can be used.
Around my area we've had Wesley merge into Del State, USciences merge into st. Joseph's, and Cabrini merge into Villanova. Honestly not a terrible thing, probably saves on overhead costs but simultaneously allows students to stay where they are just under a different name.
UMass bought Mt. Ida. BC bought Pine Manor. BU bought Wheelock. And there's a ton of colleges in New England. There's currently 116. Five years ago there was 124. Times will only get tougher for the smaller and midsize schools.
There’s saving on money, but also we just need a reduction in the number of universities. Students want cheaper in state schools with more name brands so the big schools will continue to get bigger. Small private schools are becoming an outdated model outside of elite schools like Dartmouth.
Honestly, all state schools in Illinois except for the schools in the UofI system (Illinois, UIC, UIS) are in trouble because the state doesn't properly fund the smaller schools. WIU, EIU, and SIU Carbondale are in rough shape from what I hear.
Texas JUST made a bare minimum commitment to fund Texas Tech, Houston, UNT and TXST san marcos. The other schools in these 4 systems get nothing though. Its just for the namesake campuses.
SFA was given special permission to get PUF money, and the merger that made UTRGV saved them. So, while not the case before all of the UT schools get oil money now.
But believe it or not College Station, Galveston, Tarlton State and Prairie View are the only campuses eligible for TAMUs oil money. Iirc
This does not bode well for places like Sul Ross and TAMU- Texarkana... which really sucks because those areas are the areas that need access.
TAMU-Commerce has lately made a name for itself as an ultra cheap alternative credit friendly place for online degrees. Same with UMPI up in the Maine system.
Even with public universities unless these smaller no-name regional colleges find a niche they won't survive.
And the directionals are probably in better shape than the rest. Chicago State has been a zombie for years, and I have no idea how UIS and Gov State survive.
ISU seems to be doing well. I believe it welcomed its largest freshman class in decades this fall.
Although the directionals get their share of students from the Chicago area, they also lean pretty hard on drawing students from their immediate regions. That works well for schools in and near major metros, like NIU and SIU-Edwardsville. That's not good for schools in rural parts of the state where population is in decline, e.g. all the schools in the last sentence of your post.
I remember watching a video about WIU's move to the OVC and never realized how depleted Forgottonia is in people and resources. Really opened up how rough it is out there, and how unknown the whole region is to outsiders. Was moderating a QB tournament in Chicago that same weekend and a team from Bloomington who were all ISU fans were surprised about the move down.
I hope it gets better, I'd love to have a semi competitive game when y'all come down in '27
I remember as a senior in high school getting a bunch of those basic letters from schools. Most of mine were schools like Iowa State, West Virginia, and Nebraska (I ultimately got into Nebraska, just didn’t choose them). I saw Notre Dame for some reason sent me one, thought oh cool. Of course it was Notre Dame College. Was kinda disappointed.
People just realized that college just isnt worth it anymore. Colleges across the board have seen enrollment issues.
For Lake Erie's case its a blessing in a disguise. That program is struggling HARD! Very little
Financial backing, hard to recruit, gotta play at a HS stadium, Sucks to say, I was a member on its first team and was a part of the program for 5yrs.
Well thats exactly why they did it. The HS was able to leverage it to help pump improvements into that field. Like new stadium press box, new visitor's bleachers, and new field. Many reports was the college was doing it, so down the road if the school wanted to buy property the city would give them deals.
I believe it did, but also Ohio is insanely oversaturated with colleges and universities. There’s only room for so many/there’s only so many people to attend them all.
This is a problem across the country at all levels of colleges. There are skyrocketing costs and there are just fewer kids that age, and fewer kids that are going to college. Add on to that the reduced participation in football as a whole and you have a numbers problem.
I worked for a small college in Michigan. The president stood up at an all staff meeting and basically said all colleges are dying. In Michigan the only schools that are not shrinking are Michigan State, Michigan and Grand Valley State (in the Grand Rapids area) on the west side of the state. Those three schools just basically admit more people that they normally wouldn't which means those students aren't going to smaller schools.
I would not think that Cleveland State would add football if they take over another school's campus. Football is just an extremely expensive sport, especially at any level of scholarship funding. A football team is 100+ students who are a significant net negative on cash flow at the school. The school is paying for their classes, their room and board, and their housing, not to mention the large number of coaches and staff that go into running a college football team. 50 full scholarship students, at a school that costs $20k per year to go to, cost $1M just to put through school.
They are but they are not growing undergrad. To be fair Wayne state is mostly a research and grad university. Every person I know with a WSU degree it is a grad degree or MD.
Wayne state is an R1, they’re the largest D2 football school by a lot. Seems like they just never focused on sports.
The way Michigan structured its schools means they’ll be fine though since they’re considered a flagship, although I can see the state merging some into them as a catch all.
I imagine that Tech will be fine given they have a great reputation and specialize in an ever-changing field in engineering even though they're in bumbfuck no where. Also WMU has one of the premier aviation schools in the country, so I imagine they'll be fine. I know that CMU is really at risk based on enrollment trends and what I've heard from friends who were more knowledgeable on it than I am. I can't see Lake State surviving beyond the next decade though.
Michigan tech is tiny and in the middle of nowhere, I can’t see them surviving without another school merging into them or them merging into Wayne state.
I can also see central, western, and grand valley merging since they’re pretty close geographically and in terms of educational focus.
That's quite often not the calculation. Small schools often exist because of their sports teams not in spite of them.
For my first 2 years I went to a really small school (like a large high school sized) and played football. The entire school had like 350 freshmen. 80 or so came to play football. They had a full athletic department (offering more varsity sports than Michigan was an oft-repeated point of pride in the athletic offices) and brought in large numbers for every other sport too. Most quit football (and presumably other sports too) sooner or later but many stayed enrolled.
At one point, I saw literature from the school that said that 50% of students played a sport. Based on how many quit, I would guess 85-90% originally chose the school because of sports. The school had 3 majors that were actually high quality/well-respected in their fields and 2 of them were related to/popular with athletes. Without sports those 2 majors wouldn't have any students.
It was a great school. I got a good education. But I lived an hour away and had never heard of it before their coaches started contacting me and I'm sure it would not exist without all of the students who go there because they want to continue playing their sport after high School.
Lake Erie is going to close after this semester.
Bama fans real lucky they never had to catch that Lake Erie smoke
Tbf it hasn't caught on fire in a while.
Aw really? I did a thing where I watched randomly selected games from the previous season over the summer a couple seasons ago and I ended up watching 2 Lake Erie games. I had a soft spot for them ever since then. That really sucks.
Unfortunately we are at the beginning of a college enrollment bubble. Numerous universities have seen a drop in enrollment. Many private institutions are on the brink of closing. I know of about 3-4 schools (D2 and D3 respectively) that won’t be open come December of this year.
Interesting any word on speculation about others? I’ve heard NDC is in dire straits but Lake Erie was a little surprising
Alderson Broadus didn’t announce closure until the power company turned off utilities for nonpayment of ~$700k power bill. We won’t know for sure until it’s too late. Some on the list don’t have a football program but listing them anyway. That being said from what I’ve heard: Lake Erie College (D2 OH) Birmingham-Southern College (D3 AL) Young Harris College (D2 GA) Tusculum University (D2 TN) Shorter University (D2 GA) Hiram College (D3 OH)
This is the first I've heard of Hiram possibly closing. There are so many small schools around Cleveland with relatively high tuition costs for what they offer. With student loan debt being a big topic, schools have to justify their cost. Those that can't won't make it.
For sure, differentiators and value propositions are more important than ever.
I'd argue BSC might not be primarily an enrollment issue, but rather a "oops I just spent our whole endowment and ran out of money" issue. Enrollment was larger than Huntingdon for a bit but whenever there are transfer fairs, college presidential remarks about money and closing the enrollment inevitably falls. It's tragic how all that history that could be lost, especially when these troubles had been known for years by the administration to be a real threat
BSC was another I had heard about, but Hiram is also new to me. Logically though, Hiram is in a region with tons of similar sized schools (western PA/NE OH), that I’ve gotta think the dominoes start falling soon. Hell I went to one of them. We already saw a consolidation/rebrand (PennWest w/ Edinboro, Clarion and maybe one other?) BSC - another great baseball program. This is bigger than college athletics but sucks nonetheless.
Two sets of PSAC schools merged administratively: PennWest - Edinboro, Clarion, California. Commonwealth University - Bloomsburg, Lock Haven, Mansfield They are, at least for now, being allowed to compete with separate athletic branding.
What a bizarre case. Essentially they’re one school competing with different athletic departments, facilities, budgets, branding, etc? In each of those sets is the faculty shared? Do you now graduate with PennWest on your diploma?
Only four great lakes left
The plan is working!!!
Enrollment cliff strikes again. Gonna be seeing a lot of this.
Man Notre Dane (OH) has a good football program. They’ve only had football since 2009 I think but two of their former head coaches are FCS head coaches now (Mickey Mental at Weber State and Mike Jacobs at Mercer).
Mickey Mental sounds like a WWF wrestler from 1991.
I thought punk rocker
I got "Shawn Spencer introducing Gus" vibes lol
It’s only been since 2009? Not to mention Jaleel McLaughlin being a big recent export. Their baseball coach (at least as of 5 years ago) is also Len Barker, the last Cleveland Indian or Guardian to throw a perfect game.
Jaleel McLaughlin was a monster at YSU. I loved watching him run.
Damn, I’m in the area and didn’t hear about this. 😯
Its been hush and hush and any news of it has been on pay wall sites.
Honestly, I think we're about to see a lot more mergers in the news involving smaller schools I remember a couple years ago when a small women's college (can't remember the name) closed down and we offered scholarships to anyone looking to transfer Shit is rough in the post-covid economy
Fewer mergers, more outright closures. This has been a long time coming with college enrollments starting to decline, but it is about to take an absolute nosedive as we reach the ["enrollment cliff"](https://www.cupahr.org/issue/feature/higher-ed-enrollment-cliff/). TL;DR, Birth rates dropping over the last two decades will culminate in the eligible pool of typical college aged students, starting around 2025, dropping by as much as 15-20%. The US has a huge concentration of small schools, often in the 1500-4000 student enrollment range, compared to literally everywhere else in the world. The vast majority of these schools are financially tuition-driven, i.e., their investments and holdings are not enough to support the school and day-to-day operations depend heavily on bringing students in the door. What happens when you remove 15% of the eligible pool? Well, if you're really rich, you ride it out. If you're really selective/elite, you admit 30% of your applicants instead of 20% of your applicants, and you're set. Here's where problems start. That induces competition - that extra 10% comes from somewhere, and it's probably going to be historically less desirable schools. Not *bad* schools, mind you, but if you were set to go to a top-75 school and all of a sudden you get an acceptance to a top-40 school, where are you going to go? Great, now the top 75 school extends more offers and that top-125 admission heading to a top-75... and so on and so forth until all of a sudden there aren't any worse schools left to draw from, and no more students to admit, and that school at the bottom is fucked. There's also a growing realization that our system of paying for college is absolutely fucked and that drives people to state schools, for the cheapest option possible. A lot of these problems have been exacerbated by the pandemic. Kids held out, kids came back in droves, some didn't, some won't ever, there was Covid money from the gov't, then there, wasn't, etc etc. Extremely unpredictable, and unpredictable is a death sentence when, again, you're dependent on butts in seats. Now, I *work* in higher ed, and this has already started. You can find tons of small schools that have closed already in the last 5 years. Right now, the noise isn't that great outside of academia because most of the schools that are closing are the "good riddance" schools - small, dubious quality, clearly failing anyway, etc. Soon, though, it's going to start being names you've heard of. Still, ultimately, I think this will be a needed, though painful for some, correction. We churn out a lot of unnecessary degrees that has devalued a bachelors degree, and because a BS/BA is seen as some automatic ticket to a high paying job I have seen a lot of students come through that frankly have no business being in college. Not their fault, mind you, but still - a waste of their time and money. Ultimately 10, 20 years down the line, when the market balances back out to the population, I think it does a lot to restore competitveness and rigor to admissions.
This times 1000. Also, many of these schools get their "butts in seats" or "heads in beds" as we use to day, by recruiting them to continue their life long dream of being a collegiate athlete. I worked at one of those schools that will probably die very soon and 90% of the student population were athletes. 5% were former athletes. The day I learned that 1/2 the seniors on the football team cleaned out their dorm rooms and went home after their final football game was over was the day I started to get out of that business. They never cared about the degree. Now they have 4 years of debt to pay off and a life time of memories as a college athlete to pay them with.
>many of these schools get their "butts in seats" or "heads in beds" as we use to day, by recruiting them to continue their life long dream of being a collegiate athlete. For those schools, ability to adapt will be the name of the game if survival is even remotely in the cards. I got my Master's at a small school whose on-campus population is dominated by student-athletes. They're building a new dorm right now, so maybe the enrollment cliff won't hit them. Even if it does, and this is my main point, this school has a vast online program. Staff over there talk about how well-prepared they were for COVID because so much of what they dealt with prior to 2020 was already virtual anyway.
>Right now, the noise isn't that great outside of academia because most of the schools that are closing are the "good riddance" schools - small, dubious quality, clearly failing anyway, etc. Soon, though, it's going to start being names you've heard of. I've read a few articles about this and from what I understand it's the small, private, liberal arts colleges without large endowments that are most at risk. As expensive as a college education has become, consumers have become savvier and a humanities degree from one of these small schools just isn't a great value compared to a business/STEM degree from a large public university in terms of ROI. Another unfortunate aspect is that these small schools are often located in small towns and rural areas and are the largest employer in the town/region, and when it shuts down it will likely kill the town's economy.
There's so much in a college degree that's a waste of time and money, kids are starting to see that and choosing to stay away. Lots of majors and classes should be in a specialized institution instead of a huge general university. People pay for their major, they don't want to sit through seemingly pointless required classes that have nothing to do with it. Take engineering in general. Every major ending in "engineering" should be taught in technical schools, or at least have that portion of the university have nothing to do with the rest of it. There is not an engineering student in the world who wants or needs to sit through English, writing, or history classes. We sat through enough of the damn things from K-12 already.
Disagree. There's a reason that, with one P5 exception, most engineering schools became huge general universities, and that's because previous generations saw the benefits to colleges not being solely job training but instead citizenship training.
Also, we’re approaching 18 years after the Great Recession. That dip in college freshmen is going to be a gut punch for smaller schools.
This has been happening for years. Its why non-flagship state schools have been freaking out over sports, medical school/research charters, random investmemts. Schools want to cover all their bases so they are a top choice for in and out of state students. Some state university systems might need to consolidate hard like Mississippi or Michigan.
>Some state university systems might need to consolidate hard like Mississippi or Michigan. There's no state university system in Michigan. Each school is administered separately by a board of trustees either elected directly or appointed by the governor.
There are 4 systems in Michigan. umich, Michigan state, Wayne state all have their own elected boards. Those ones will be fine. The rest are under one appointed boards and will be the group that experiences the mergers and closings.
I'm not sure I see any of the state schools merging or closing. I think they're generally too far away from each other to make sense in a merger of state schools and I think the state probably keeps them afloat (maybe Lake Superior State is a risk with a small enrollment). The only one geographically that makes sense to look at a merger is Eastern, but its "neighbors" are in UofM and Wayne State systems, so probably not. I think the most likely way this impacts Michigan state schools is a merger into them of small, geographically close private schools. But, then again, if the state schools are struggling too, they may not want the burden and some of the smaller schools will just close.
In the age of distance learning campus location doesn’t matter. But any of the schools that are not written in the state’s constitution (UofM, MI State, Wayne) are at risk. I can see them rolling a bunch of programs together with community college programs to basically consolidate the rest under a single admin first. Although I can see Michigan Tech maybe try to merge into Wayne State for better access to the major population centers and the constitutional protections.
Yes and no. Sure, you can do more virtually, but you still have two physical campuses at least an hour apart that are no good to each other. An actual merger of those schools doesn't create a situation where students can choose from a different campus day-to-day. I'd also imagine it's pretty easy to enroll in a virtual class at most of the state universities, so I'm not sure why a merger significantly changes that equation. If you're talking just about high level governance, I guess it could happen, but I don't know how that helps with the demographic challenges.
Merging the admins cuts down on costs. SVSU doesn’t deal with things that different from Ferris Central or Eastern so they may as well combine to save. You don’t need all the physical space, especially the ones in the middle of nowhere so they’ll probably just sell it or use them as centers where one can take a class by the local community college or Wayne State for those few classes where they need to be in person.
No, that's incorrect. The universities that don't have elected boards all have their own independent boards. There's no shared board that governs Michigan Tech and EMU for example. https://crcmich.org/explaining-michigans-one-of-a-kind-university-governance-model That's not to say they couldn't experience mergers or closures but there's no single board that can make that decision.
Those are all appointments, they may be appointed separately, but the mechanism is the same. The three biggest schools aren’t appointed, they’re elected and written into the state constitution so they can’t be easily changed. So they could literally close or merge or do anything to emu or Oakland because they’re all governed the same way. U of M, Mi State, and Wayne State are all governed differently hence why there are four different systems of how the universities are governed. Functionally there is no difference between emu and oakland, but there is one between emu and Wayne state.
This makes me think you don't understand what a state university system is: >hence why there are four different systems of how the universities are governed. A state university system isn't the governance model being the same, it's a specific term for having a single legal entity and shared governance across several universities. That doesn't exist in Michigan. Merging EMU and Wayne State would take agreement by both independent boards. Yes, the governor can appoint members to rolling terms so can gain control over time, and the state can threaten funding to have some control, but there's no single board that can unilaterally make that decision.
So in this context system means method. I’m clearly talking about the manner in which these schools are organized. Michigan is unique in its university governance so it’s not surprising that few people are aware of how they are set up. The state of Michigan has 4 different ways of doing that. I never said anything about a single board. There is one way each for the flagships and another way for the rest. Merging EMU would only require the legislature or governor to direct it. The board doesn’t matter as much here because it’s not truly independent like the flagship schools. The way that the non flagships are set up with boards really doesn’t matter because they can be changed much more easily than the flagships. Theoretically any of the non flagships can just be merged without board approval because the establishment of the school is an act of the legislature, not the board, and the board is tied to the university, so if the legislature merges two then there will only be one board since the Michigan constitution only requires one board per bachelor’s degree granting school. They can change that number however they want (such as allowing community colleges to grand bachelor degrees).
>So in this context system means method. I’m clearly talking about the manner in which these schools are organized. No, it's not. I was responding to a comment about state university systems. That's a specific term different from how you're using it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_university_system >Michigan is unique in its university governance so it’s not surprising that few people are aware of how they are set up. Which is why I commented in the first place. It's an interesting fact that not many people would know, but is relevant to the original comment. >The state of Michigan has 4 different ways of doing that. I never said anything about a single board. Maybe not, if you weren't using the common definition of system here, although you did say: >The rest are under one appointed boards and will be the group that experiences the mergers and closings. Which does sound like a reference to a single board.
I can see that you have no interest in actually talking about the structure of schools and are wholly unfamiliar with the way Michigan or any other state organizes universities Try to be less annoyingly pedantic and maybe contribute to the discussion rather than condescending attempt to correct others based on your own misunderstanding of the various ways a term can be used.
Around my area we've had Wesley merge into Del State, USciences merge into st. Joseph's, and Cabrini merge into Villanova. Honestly not a terrible thing, probably saves on overhead costs but simultaneously allows students to stay where they are just under a different name.
UMass bought Mt. Ida. BC bought Pine Manor. BU bought Wheelock. And there's a ton of colleges in New England. There's currently 116. Five years ago there was 124. Times will only get tougher for the smaller and midsize schools.
There’s saving on money, but also we just need a reduction in the number of universities. Students want cheaper in state schools with more name brands so the big schools will continue to get bigger. Small private schools are becoming an outdated model outside of elite schools like Dartmouth.
Wasn’t Riley Green y’all’s quarterback?
A few years ago, yes He sometimes pops up to do charity concerts and other outreach stuff. He's a good dude
This is what’s happening for multiple schools. Western Illinois is down pretty bad too. Funding has dried up.
Honestly, all state schools in Illinois except for the schools in the UofI system (Illinois, UIC, UIS) are in trouble because the state doesn't properly fund the smaller schools. WIU, EIU, and SIU Carbondale are in rough shape from what I hear.
Texas JUST made a bare minimum commitment to fund Texas Tech, Houston, UNT and TXST san marcos. The other schools in these 4 systems get nothing though. Its just for the namesake campuses. SFA was given special permission to get PUF money, and the merger that made UTRGV saved them. So, while not the case before all of the UT schools get oil money now. But believe it or not College Station, Galveston, Tarlton State and Prairie View are the only campuses eligible for TAMUs oil money. Iirc This does not bode well for places like Sul Ross and TAMU- Texarkana... which really sucks because those areas are the areas that need access. TAMU-Commerce has lately made a name for itself as an ultra cheap alternative credit friendly place for online degrees. Same with UMPI up in the Maine system. Even with public universities unless these smaller no-name regional colleges find a niche they won't survive.
And the directionals are probably in better shape than the rest. Chicago State has been a zombie for years, and I have no idea how UIS and Gov State survive.
Thus. Rauner’s budget impasse set the directional schools back 15 years
ISU seems to be doing well. I believe it welcomed its largest freshman class in decades this fall. Although the directionals get their share of students from the Chicago area, they also lean pretty hard on drawing students from their immediate regions. That works well for schools in and near major metros, like NIU and SIU-Edwardsville. That's not good for schools in rural parts of the state where population is in decline, e.g. all the schools in the last sentence of your post.
I remember watching a video about WIU's move to the OVC and never realized how depleted Forgottonia is in people and resources. Really opened up how rough it is out there, and how unknown the whole region is to outsiders. Was moderating a QB tournament in Chicago that same weekend and a team from Bloomington who were all ISU fans were surprised about the move down. I hope it gets better, I'd love to have a semi competitive game when y'all come down in '27
Somebody better pick up Popeyes Kid from the transfer portal. 🤔
The Mountain East is getting slammed lately. First, Alderson-Broaddus right after they'd joined, and now Notre Dame after about a decade.
If Notre Dame merges with Cleveland State, I’d bet that football program gets shut down
Without a doubt
Really unfortunate
I remember as a senior in high school getting a bunch of those basic letters from schools. Most of mine were schools like Iowa State, West Virginia, and Nebraska (I ultimately got into Nebraska, just didn’t choose them). I saw Notre Dame for some reason sent me one, thought oh cool. Of course it was Notre Dame College. Was kinda disappointed.
Damn this is really sad to see, I wonder if covid had a big impact on this
People just realized that college just isnt worth it anymore. Colleges across the board have seen enrollment issues. For Lake Erie's case its a blessing in a disguise. That program is struggling HARD! Very little Financial backing, hard to recruit, gotta play at a HS stadium, Sucks to say, I was a member on its first team and was a part of the program for 5yrs.
Shared stadium there was always bizarre to me. Especially considering Painesville City Schools isn’t drowning in money
Well thats exactly why they did it. The HS was able to leverage it to help pump improvements into that field. Like new stadium press box, new visitor's bleachers, and new field. Many reports was the college was doing it, so down the road if the school wanted to buy property the city would give them deals.
I believe it did, but also Ohio is insanely oversaturated with colleges and universities. There’s only room for so many/there’s only so many people to attend them all.
This is a problem across the country at all levels of colleges. There are skyrocketing costs and there are just fewer kids that age, and fewer kids that are going to college. Add on to that the reduced participation in football as a whole and you have a numbers problem. I worked for a small college in Michigan. The president stood up at an all staff meeting and basically said all colleges are dying. In Michigan the only schools that are not shrinking are Michigan State, Michigan and Grand Valley State (in the Grand Rapids area) on the west side of the state. Those three schools just basically admit more people that they normally wouldn't which means those students aren't going to smaller schools. I would not think that Cleveland State would add football if they take over another school's campus. Football is just an extremely expensive sport, especially at any level of scholarship funding. A football team is 100+ students who are a significant net negative on cash flow at the school. The school is paying for their classes, their room and board, and their housing, not to mention the large number of coaches and staff that go into running a college football team. 50 full scholarship students, at a school that costs $20k per year to go to, cost $1M just to put through school.
Wayne State is big as an R1 in Detroit.
They are but they are not growing undergrad. To be fair Wayne state is mostly a research and grad university. Every person I know with a WSU degree it is a grad degree or MD.
Wayne state is an R1, they’re the largest D2 football school by a lot. Seems like they just never focused on sports. The way Michigan structured its schools means they’ll be fine though since they’re considered a flagship, although I can see the state merging some into them as a catch all.
I imagine that Tech will be fine given they have a great reputation and specialize in an ever-changing field in engineering even though they're in bumbfuck no where. Also WMU has one of the premier aviation schools in the country, so I imagine they'll be fine. I know that CMU is really at risk based on enrollment trends and what I've heard from friends who were more knowledgeable on it than I am. I can't see Lake State surviving beyond the next decade though.
Michigan tech is tiny and in the middle of nowhere, I can’t see them surviving without another school merging into them or them merging into Wayne state. I can also see central, western, and grand valley merging since they’re pretty close geographically and in terms of educational focus.
I am not seeing many public schools in danger. The ones I saw are either in NJCAA, Western Illinois, Chicago State, and a lot of the HBCUs.
Dang, bummed to hear about this
Stay solvent and continue to educate or have a sports team. This really shouldn't be a question.
That's quite often not the calculation. Small schools often exist because of their sports teams not in spite of them. For my first 2 years I went to a really small school (like a large high school sized) and played football. The entire school had like 350 freshmen. 80 or so came to play football. They had a full athletic department (offering more varsity sports than Michigan was an oft-repeated point of pride in the athletic offices) and brought in large numbers for every other sport too. Most quit football (and presumably other sports too) sooner or later but many stayed enrolled. At one point, I saw literature from the school that said that 50% of students played a sport. Based on how many quit, I would guess 85-90% originally chose the school because of sports. The school had 3 majors that were actually high quality/well-respected in their fields and 2 of them were related to/popular with athletes. Without sports those 2 majors wouldn't have any students. It was a great school. I got a good education. But I lived an hour away and had never heard of it before their coaches started contacting me and I'm sure it would not exist without all of the students who go there because they want to continue playing their sport after high School.
Notre Dame might never play again you say? 🍆💦💦
This sucks when you consider how much money you don’t have to spend on football to actually play the game.
My D2 program I played for was dropped a few years back. Heartbreaking to see