Innovation key to colleges' survival

Prospective and returning college students faced niggling questions as they weighed their options ahead of the fall semester with the COVID-19 pandemic in play. Is it too risky to live on campus? Will I be able to attend classes? And if it’s mostly online, is it worth the cost?

For college and university administrators, parallel concerns prevailed as they pondered how to attract students while providing a safe campus environment with flexible hybrid learning structures in a down economy — all while keeping their schools financially solvent.

Last spring, the pandemic forced many colleges to send students home early and to move courses to online instruction. This fall, with a summer to prepare, online classes are in the mix once again right alongside meticulous safety measures — assuming students return to campus at all. 

Dealing with a new normal

One incoming freshman who is preparing to move into campus housing at a Midwestern university indicated she is less than thrilled with the safety restrictions and economics of it all.

“At the online orientation, they pretty much stated we’ll be in prison, with zero visitors, and not allowed to leave campus until Thanksgiving. I have to wear a mask literally everywhere,” she said. “Half of my classes are going to be online anyway, but every class could wind up online if some students catch coronavirus.

“I’d rather just stay home and take my classes and not have to pay for housing,” she added. “That’s pretty much where most of the money is going.”

It’s not just about the virus or missing the traditional campus experience. Many middle-class families, having suffered furloughs and income loss, find their pockets aren’t as deep anymore. It doesn’t make sense to send kids away to college so they can take classes online while sitting in their dormitories.

In May, a National Society of High School Scholars (NSHSS) survey found that 33 percent of prospective and present college students were not interested in attending online-only classes and just 53 percent of students who preferred in-person classes were willing to adjust to virtual learning. Meanwhile, taking a year away from school became a touted option. As late as mid-July, a Los Angeles Times feature headline screamed, “For college students, taking a gap year might be the best way to outwit coronavirus.”

College and university administrators had their hands full trying to outwit coronavirus themselves.

On the bubble?

The financial woes of higher education precede the pandemic. Back in 2013, business trends analyst Thomas Frey predicted the collapse of more than half of all colleges by 2030. Last February, in The College Stress Test, University of Pennsylvania education professor Robert Zemsky and his co-authors said 10 percent of colleges faced “severe market risk”; by March, with the pandemic in full swing, they revised that figure to 20 percent.

Indeed, in recent years many smaller colleges have struggled to collect enough money from students to meet rising costs. For some, the financial crisis created by the pandemic might become the tipping point.

Some have tipped already. MacMurray College (Ill.), Urbana University (Ohio), and Holy Family College (Wis.) each closed their doors this year.

“COVID-19 ramifications sealed the concerns about the college’s long-term future,” said Franciscan Sister Natalie Binversie, Holy Family’s community director, in a May letter.

“It’s a perfect storm,” said Rolf Wegenke, president of the Wisconsin Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, describing the challenges of smaller private colleges to Wisconsin State Journal. “Across the board, they’re struggling to adapt and [find] that fine line between being affordable and paying the bills.”

A college’s stability derives largely from its endowment. At less-endowed small private colleges, tuition and housing are lifelines.

One school on the bubble is Notre Dame de Namur University (Calif.). The college has suspended new admissions and has entered partnerships with three regional colleges to keep some of its graduate programs alive. A spring 2021 shutdown is probable.

Losing their faculties

With any university, the largest single expense is the employee payroll. In July, the University of Akron — which already had eliminated some 80 programs in 2018 amid a major restructuring – cut 97 full-time professors and 60 staff positions in the face of budget and enrollment woes. La Salle University in Philadelphia, while exceeding its target fall enrollment, nevertheless laid off 53 employees, cut pay or hours for 48 others, and eliminated 51 vacant positions.

“While difficult, these decisions comprise a necessary restructuring in order to best position La Salle for continued viability,” said a university statement.

Athletic programs and planned capital improvements have felt the ax at a number of colleges.

Better-endowed schools also feel the pain through lost revenues from Division I sports programs, summer sessions, research grants, and fewer international students willing to risk the virus. Their endowments’ investment portfolios also took a hit. They’ll survive, but at considerable fallout: the University of Michigan, for example, anticipates pandemic-related losses upward of $1 billion.

It's the economics, stupid

But families are hurting too. According to a survey conducted by exam preparation company OneClass, 56 percent of collegians say they can no longer afford college due to the pandemic, and nearly all said they had to find new ways to pay for school.

Colleges have responded to these realities, according to Kevin J. Matthews, chief executive officer of The Registry, an executive search firm for colleges and universities.

“Many state institutions and systems of higher education have frozen tuition. Some colleges have actually dropped tuition in order to entice the students back on to campus,” said Matthews, who is vice president of Legatus’ Boston Chapter. “There is a need to do so because of the great importance to room and board revenue in the overall revenue equation.”

Franciscan University of Steubenville is covering tuition for all incoming undergraduate students for the fall 2020 semester. Southern New Hampshire University, which serves a large online audience, offered free first-year tuition for resident freshmen and tuition cuts of 61 percent for all on-campus students by 2021. Other schools have discounted tuition by 10 percent or nixed planned increases.

Crisis brings change

Most colleges set phased reopening plans and adjusted learning structures, cautiously anticipating in-person classes but with contingencies for online instruction. By late July, several – including the University of California at Berkeley – had already changed course, electing not to return students to campus and instead to conduct classes online this fall. Princeton went with a split system to reduce student density, with freshmen and juniors on campus in the fall while sophomores and seniors take courses online at home, then swapping places next spring.

Despite the spread of COVID-19 in California this summer, enrollment figures at state universities looked good heading into August, even with an expected larger “summer melt” of students who accepted admission but later back out. That’s because schools like UC Riverside “overbooked,” accepting many students who might otherwise have been waitlisted.

Others public institutions, such as the University of Florida, reported “stable” enrollment numbers as fall approached. Technical schools and community colleges saw significant enrollment surges, something that ordinarily happens during economic downturns. Percentages will vary, but by August things weren’t looking as dire as the 20 percent across-the-board enrollment drop that some experts had predicted last spring.

Still, higher education can and must adapt to new realities ushered in by the wider problem of COVID-19, said Michael S. Roth, president of Wesleyan University (Conn.).

“[I]t’s likely the pandemic really will shake something up about our higher-education establishment. There will be changes. There will be schools that go bankrupt,” Roth said in an essay for Politico.

It’s a learning experience for colleges too, he indicated.

“The pandemic has demonstrated that faculty can deliver their courses online and students can grasp the material,” he said, “but it’s also abundantly clear that critical parts of the experience are lost when the learning community is dispersed.”

Gerald Korson is a Legatus magazine editorial consultant.