Four types of colleges moving forward: flagship states, elite small Liberal Arts, WashU style private research Unis, and cost-effective community/commuter public school. Mid sized privates, regular LACs, and second-tier residential state schools are all in huge trouble.
Maybe it’ll help normalize costs. A lot of these c-tier schools still charge tens of thousands more than a state school for a lesser education and have fewer resources for students
That doesn't seem likely to me, as higher education shows no signs of slowing administrative bloat and disproportionate increases in tuition and campus costs.
In a decade or so, when the glut of children from the millennial generation starts to show itself, every school, including elite ones, will start to feel the pain. My guess is they’ll all need to trim the bloat just to keep operating, and they’ll also start competing on price (tuition) to some degree. Those schools with robust scholarship programs thanks to hefty donors will be the ones that survive.
Depends on a few factors, including how students loans change over the next decade. Both of my parents were in academia for decades, and they would both say that administration recognizing its own excess would come way, way after other departments are gutted or shuttered. They've been nickel-and-diming eighteen-year-olds w/ unforgivable loans for decades and have gotten quite used to that model.
There is a thing called the 2027 cliff, which is when children of the 2008 crash become college aged. From the crash on there was a significant drop in birth rates. There won’t be enough kids to fill all of the colleges, so a bunch will close.
Maybe, as the number of colleges rightsizes for the available number students. But the opposite might be true as well. Right now there is a huge surplus in capacity - so, as struggling colleges close, that extra capacity will shrink. Fewer college options may lead to higher prices. Supply and demand.
I think the B tier universities are probably fine -- it's the C and D tier that look really in trouble to me, at least for now.
So, for instance, Fontbonne and Webster are in trouble, but Wash U (A tier) and SLU (B tier) are not.
The state artificially restricting online degrees helps them. If UM online were allowed to expand it would significantly eat into schools like UMSL’s enrollment
To be fair, Indiana is a bit of an outlier because of Ivy Tech, the largest community college system in the country. It is mostly an excellent case study, and states should emulate that model - but I'm sure their partnership with UVA, where the junior college credits are guaranteed transferrable to a UVA online bachelor's degree, is dealing the IU and Purdue systems a fit.
Think this has anything to do with why IUPUI split up?
I also want to highlight what you said about Ivy Tech. For those of us from St. Louis we think of a community college as really being a regional at best school. More local than anything. Ivy Tech covers the entire state, has a huge amount of resources for a community college, and has campuses even in smaller cities that definitely wouldn't have a community college in Missouri (Like Greencastle, which has less than 10k residents).
Hard to say. Sounded like it was more just holding back their respective grad programs - big business in a major metro area. People come and stay; they earn more and spend more.
I have family in Indy and even lived in Bloomington for a couple years, but IUPUI's always been nothing but an enigma to me. Like... if UMKC had some sort of Kansas City partnership with kU, everyone's heads would fucking explode.
> if their states don't decide to cut funding
That is absolutely no guarantee in Missouri. They're 1 pissed off far right senator away from having a problem.
Honestly, we’re so tuition dependent anymore, additional state funding cuts are less of a deal than they were. Other than to make us even more dependent on enrollment.
I think there's going to be a more closings like this one, but I don't think it's the breakdown you listed. The bottom end state schools are going to not only survive, but thrive. I think it's just that Missouri and to a lesser extent Illinois were slow to pick up on the trend. The 'geography' schools (Southern, Eastern, Northern State University) that represent the "it's not a community college! It's a real degree!" schools are mushrooming.
It's going to be the Elite Privates (Ivies and near Ivies and the private research schools), the State University systems, and community colleges, which have been spooling up to offer bachelors degrees for nearly twenty years now.
A few religious schools will probably stick around, and a few HBCUs will survive, but you're going to see the Websters and Fontbonnes and Lindenwoods and Illinois Colleges (and I don't think that one in Alton, despite its religious affiliation) are not going to be with us much longer. I'm amazed Webster and Fontbonne lasted this long, honestly.
> A few religious schools will probably stick around, and a few HBCUs will survive, but you're going to see the Websters and Fontbonnes and Lindenwoods and Illinois Colleges
Agreed, though I will point out that Lindenwood behaves a lot like a state school despite being private. It's bigger than some state schools too. It's also somehow got an OK endowment. I doubt it's in any immediate danger whatsoever.
I think Lindenwood will last longer, but ultimately anything not directly tied to a state budget, endowment, religious system, or a combination of at least two of those is going to suffer. Locally Lindenwood got all of the kids who would have gone to a Northern Illinois or Alabama-Birmingham because Missouri was slow to deploy those campuses. Now there's a SEMO and a Missouri State and even UMSL and UMKC are considered less of a joke. Those are all students not going to Lindenwood and that trend is going to accelerate.
If you're private your days are numbered unless you're already elite or you've got religious money. Private HBCUs will stick a little longer but even those will go too in favor of State HBCUs.
Harris Stowe is either getting propped up, shut down, or absorbed. It's not even well-regarded among HBCUs. They're a state school, but their enrollment is tiny, they graduate a fraction of their admissions, and having their degree might actually make it harder to get a job than not having one at all. I don't know if they're considered the worst in rankings, but they have to be close to it.
Missouri will keep funding it for a while, since it doesn't cost much and no one wants that pushback...but if they get a little smaller (which they will) or things move a little politically, or the City or WashU creep a little closer and that land becomes more attractive...
I sort of suspect they'll just die on their own. They graduate like 200 people a year and the decision tree to get you to actually apply there must be just insane. Hell, at this point it might be entirely employees and their children that either couldn't get accepted anywhere else or the parents can't afford to send them and they're in that tiny population for whom financial aid didn't happen.
They are a magnet for lawsuits as well. Their leadership is insanely incompetent. Rumors suggest state legislators are waiting for enough lawsuits to pile up against them to shut them down, in order to avoid the racism hurdle, which will continue to be the only ad hoc defense that school can muster.
I think state schools tethered to mid and major metros should be fine. I have a bachelors basically in going to college and I’ve had zero issues with employment. No idea how the people with private bachelors have fared
HBCUs generally don't have that big of endowments (with a few notable exceptions) and many get considerable federal funding, which could always change. Will be interesting to see what happens. Morris Brown was all but dead, but is hanging on, hoping to improve.
And like a convent. The dude would sit in his Cadillac in his PJ's with binoculars at night trying to catch people visiting the opposite sex's dorm.
Although he saved Lindenwood, it's also good he's no longer in the picture. He would have slowed down their growth with his religious morals. They're just now shaking that off 18 years after he died.
I had the same before transferring to Lindenwood. It was a rude smack in the face to be treated like a child by the university, and to face expulsion if I had the audacity as a 22 year old to haver a beer in my dorm room after class on Friday.
I went to Northwestern from 1992-1996. It was basically free reign. There were technically some rules, but not that strict and not enforced. Definitely no coed visitor rules. And here's the crazy thing - every Sunday in the dorm commons area during my freshman year, we had "wet" munchies. Food and booze provided by the RAs and thus the school. Northwestern is actually more strict today in that regard. Kids can probably do what they want, but no way the school is providing booze to kids at the risk of a lawsuit.
I think you'll see States roll back their C-tier campuses (New York is hugely overextended, for example) but they'll still last longer than the privates.
SUNY Fredonia, for example, is effectively Chautauqua Community College, no matter how they insist they're a 'performing arts incubator'. But that status as the local community college will absolutely keep it in the state budget long after a similar private school had to give up. The crap state schools are viewed as much as a public service as Universities. Crap private schools have to stand in their own. As the dynamic in the article accelerates -- S.I.U.E. graduates are either telling their kids not to go to college at all, or to go to a *good* college, schools that don't have the unlimited tap of state tax support are going to disintegrate.
It'll be interesting to see what student loan reform does to all this.
Are you saying SIUE is a crap school?
I think people are just going to be much more selective about cost. Scholarships and other things will be decision makers and people will skip college if they can’t get the scholarships, etc.
SIUE has been cleaning SIUC's clock for about 20 years, ever since Edwardsville got on-campus undergraduate housing. I hear that Carbondale is becoming a ghost town.
Makes sense. Carbondale area is pretty, but it's isolated. SIUE is in the burbs of a major metro (or semi-major depending on your definition of "major") with everything that has to offer.
I went to the University of Illinois, where there is a fully developed Campustown in the middle of the campus. There really isn't much reason for a student to leave the campus area, particularly if the student lives in the dorms, and doesn't need to go grocery shopping. Therefore, I was very surprised when I moved to Edwardsville to find the SIUE campus is three or four miles removed from the City of Edwardsville. I thnk that it would be very difficult for an undergraduate to get by without a car.
The academic programs at Edwardsville have improved markedly over the past 20 or so years, It may be able to compete for the rank of "Third Best Academic: program among Illinois Public Universities", behind Illinois (by design) and ISU.
I think the reason is that the entire campus property is huge--I think that it has the second-biggest geographic footprint of any US college or university--but the area in which the classroom buildings and dorms are located is in the middle of all that real estate. It is like the entire campus is a doughnut, and the part of the campus that the school actually uses is the doughnut hole. The organizers of the campus in the mid-1950s had some pretty grandiose ideas of how big the school would become, and they persuaded the State to dispossess farmers accordingly. As it is, the university only uses about 15-20% of the total campus real estate.
Because the area that the students use is so far away from the nearest private property, it is not really practical for local merchants to develop a separate campustown. By the time that the students get to the nearest private property, they might as well go a little furtheer, and shop/eat/drink where the rest of the local population goes. (Which is what the students do).
In the student union, there is a Starbuck's, and a few franchise restaurants in a food court. But that is the extent of private enterprise on campus.
SIUC had to take all the kids from Chicago the way I understand it. Also Southern Illinois has been hit really hard with coal mine closers and off shoring of industries. Carbondale is rough now.
Not so sure about Webster, they seem to have found a life raft with international and military students. Their enrollment is up 27% and highest level since 2017.
If you're referring to Principia College, in Elsah near Alton, they will be fine. They have now opened enrollment and dropped the religious requirements. Enrollment is picking up. Not to mention the St Louis campus (k-12) is booming and acts like a feeder to the college. They continually make the list of best liberal arts colleges and have a huge endowment. They aren't going anywhere anytime soon.
Most people there aren't even Christian Scientists anymore. That's what open enrollment means. Just s great liberal arts education at this point. Still has a high moral component, but no religious requirements anymore to enroll.
I thought maybr he was talking about Blackburn College, in Carlinville, which is loosely Presbyterian, They have been living on the edge of insolvency for so long that it appears to have become a viable lifestyle for them.
Illinois College in Jacksonville, IL (not that far from STL) is still around and doing pretty well right now - not that its future success is ensured. MacMurray College, also in Jacksonville, closed recently. There was a great article, but I don't recall where, about how MacMurray declined and how Illinois College changed its strategy in order to survive and sort of thrive.
All of this is assuming you were referring to Illinois College specifically, not Illinois colleges generally.
[Even some elite schools are struggling.](https://chicagomaroon.com/40486/news/uchicago-professor-sounds-alarm-over-troubling-university-finances/)
Regardless, higher education in this country is in need of a reckoning one way or another.
Most fundies don't have money. There are a few rich, prominent leaders, sure, but many fundie families live in poverty, between giving to their church and having a bunch of kids.
That's the great part about fundie schools, the tuition is all covered by the mega donors and church itself!
Now it's a affordable college degree for anyone that follows their lifestyle and lives the right beliefs, before and after college!
It seems like mostly the Missouri State schools are doing well. I’ve heard great things from most of them recently. I know Truman was struggling with attendance for a bit, have they started bouncing back?
It seemed like Truman had become an exclusive school after they went to a liberal arts curriculum. They became picky in who they would accept. It wasn't as strict as the Northeast Missouri days...I got in...LOL
Definitely. Wash U has 1000 more undergrad than they did 10 years ago (6k to 7k). There are also some older dorms that I know they want to rebuild since the others are from the 60's. Wash U's main campus is land locked in one of the more expensive areas in the city. They had to make a giant underground structure so they could make their new engineering campus.
A large part of their problem is that, by charter, no building is allowed to be taller than Brookings Hall, which is a mere three stories. (The smokestack doesn't count). So, while some places would build very tall buildings, they're forced to go *down*.
They should just raise Brookings. I want to see it growing taller every year until it's as tall as the Arch. Then Mecha-Brookings and ArchZilla can fight along the central corridor.
Since it's got Wydown between it and the Fontbonne campus, can't they just call Fontbonne a separate campus and get away with it? They can just slap the name "Wydown Campus" on it at problem solved?
Interesting. I wonder if there's any way they could get around/out of that IF (big IF) they wanted to. But, I'd assume there would never be agreement among the powers that be as to wanting to even pursue trying.
I used to work there, which is why I know about that kind of thing.
They have enormous financial incentive to find a way out, but it's built so deep in the charter that they would have to, on a corporate level, destroy themselves and be reborn. Building down is so very, very expensive, they've had plenty of incentive. They just can't find a way out.
I’m curious how old that provision is in the charter, and does it apply to the South 40? Because once upon a time I lived in Eliot Hall, clocking in at a mere 12 stories. It was kind of yuck but had these cool built in closets and desks.
Along with its twin Shepley, it had to be higher than Brookings. (Both were razed by 2003. I graduated in 1995)
I’ve never linked an article before, but I’m going to try:
[Eliot demolition](https://source.wustl.edu/2003/06/eliot-comes-down-making-way-for-new-residence-hall/)
I was just there today. The best thing to ever happen to that school is the underground parking lot. It used to be a stressful situation looking for parking there as a visitor.
What is Wash U doing with the old CBC campus after that they bought that probably 10 years ago? I know they've using the athletic facilities for intramural/club sports but I don't know what else is happening over there.
Still using it for intramurals and club sports, but the old half of the buildings and the chapel and rectory are abandoned. They also have Clayton community theater, and just re-turfed the field about 2 years ago
University police with Washington U. For many years. We use much of the facility for training…. “Active shooter” scenarios and such. They haven’t done much with the property.
Since the North Campus facility was so badly damaged by the flood a couple of years ago, It would not surprise me if they simply abandoned or sold that and moved everything to the Fontbonne site.
All they did with the flooded portion of complex was “remediation”…..After that, nothing.
This would actually be ideal. Consolidate the North and West Campus admin functions to Fontbonne, and sell/develop those MetroLink-adjacent properties into dense residential/TOD.
It would be cool and would make a lot of sense, but WUSTL is way too heavily invested in the Loop to just walk away from the “save the north side” strategy. Plus it would be horrible PR for them to just give up on Delmar.
It wouldn’t be them giving up on Delmar, it’d be them freeing up a massive piece of pretty prime real estate for development. It’d be one of the best things they could do for the Loop.
They’ll still be heavily invested in the Loop with all the student housing and other property they have there.
WashU leases out the theater to outside groups. There's no classes there and I doubt the the main building is being used for something else e.g. art studios. With the amount of expansion and new construction they've recently implemented, it'll be a monumental task to try and fill the Fontbonne Campus, even if it's only 9 buildings.
My understanding is that Fontbonne tried to buy the old CBC building for expansion, but WashU jumped in and outbid Fontbonne in order to strangle their growth because they wanted the Fontbonne campus (which seems to have worked out for WashU).
As far as I can tell the CBC building is sitting empty. WashU doesn't pay property taxes, they can buy property and let it sit vacant with very little cost.
What is the actual information? Is the cbc campus in use? Are taxes being paid on it?
Here's an article from 2007 about Fontbonne being in negotiation to buy CBC:
https://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/stories/2007/06/25/story4.html
Obviously this didn't happen and WashU bought it instead, effectively choking the growth of Fontbonne so that the whole campus could be bought later, which just happened.
As a former student at Fontbonne during this time, this is the story that was relayed to us: Wash U swept in at the 11th hour with an ungodly higher bid than Fontbonne. That being said, it was (at the time) a blessing in disguise. The word was the building was gutted to a large degree and was going to take a lot (a lot, lot) of money to get it back up to code for any kind of use. Which could explain why it's still sitting in the current state and not as active as it could be
This makes me very sad. Graduated there in the 90s (when it was still "Fontbonne College").
This development doesn't surprise me, though. Their previous president had delusions of grandeur. Tried to make it too big, too commercial. He spent millions buying the old JFK high school to make it into a satellite campus, with rooms equipped for video conferencing/remote teaching, and all that. Never got off the ground - don't think it even opened. We went to the open house, and I could tell then they were over their heads.
Pair that with lower enrollment, and an alumni relations team that \*really\* struggled to get anyone excited about anything at all, much less donating, and here we are.
I had 4 great years there, but really the only thing I got out of it was my wife and best friend. Still, though, it's really a shame. I know an awful lot of people who will be in mourning.
Sad to see. That school has such a long and rather interesting history. Glad that WashU is purchasing it at least. Hopefully they can put the campus to use.
Consider that if it was sold for a housing development the surrounding community would benefit from the taxes.
With WashU as the owner, no tax money and only a hope they do something productive with it.
There are plenty of places to build housing that aren’t big historic institutional campuses already adjacent to a big historic growing institutional campus.
If they’re going to demo it all for a parking lot, then yeah, I’d rather have the housing development. If they’re going to use it to grow the university and expand their programs, then I’ll take that.
You aren't wrong. WashU sucks. But they've also been buying up every available property for years now and I'm just glad this one was already zoned as educational/tax free.
Yeah it's likely to be at least partially dorms. The Fontbonne campus is adjacent to the residential part of their current campus, not the educational part, so that's the lowest-friction way of developing the property, probably.
Having no property taxes for something like a university is a head scratcher, and basically helps turn them into real estate plays that, by accident, teach something.
Land is too important to just let certain kinds of institutions sit on it for decades. See that NE corner of grand and Lindell. Bought by SLU in 99 or so. The building was demolished, and instead we got a "sculpture park" (really, a lawn).
As a former employee, staff have seen a massive downslide the last 5-6 years, after the JFK purchase. If staff are still there, it’s either they want to be, or don’t have a lot of options. They laid off so many people between 2018-2020, even BEFORE the pandemic. And the faculty that are still there are likely staying to for the students.
It’s very sad, because it was a lovely little community to work in, though the pay was always pretty crap. Small, but great student to teacher ratio.
i always think of [Don Martin, the great cartoonist for Mad Magazine,](https://i0.wp.com/comicsgrinder.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/don-martin-mad-magazine-maddest-artist-running-press.jpg?ssl=1) when I see the name Fontbonne.
My husband is going to be so sad when he hears this. First his high school gets plowed down to make for new houses. Now his college is also going to close.
sucks for those involved, but it sounds a bit better planned than some other college closures: one-year warning, trying to get as many through as possible (sounds like they're spending down their endowment to do this) with free "overload" classes and cheap summer classes, already have a buyer for the propery, etc.
Record enrollment isn’t helping their financial situation. They’ve pissed a ton of endowment money away on rapid expansion and have cut a ton of athletic programs that were previously a draw for them.
-edit because I was incorrect about degree programs
The Athletics cuts were necessary to comply with Title IX. FCS football has 65 scholarships to D2’s 36. Some men’s sports had to be cut to keep the ratio of male to female scholarships comparable to enrollment. It also made sense since most of the sports cut aren’t sponsored by their new conference (Ohio Valley), and it would’ve been a budgeting nightmare to fill out an independent schedule for non revenue sports
They cut athletic programs to get within D1 Title IX and conference regulations. Mens sports were cut because they had to have scholarships for football and then they have to have equal amounts for women’s sports
Lindenwood flushed millions for nothing on shit here in belleville, annoying waste to rehab all those lofts and then just let them sit to rot and never be used.
They also bought an old Catholic school up here in Florissant, used it for a few years and now it seems like it's been empty since well before covid.
Rumor was before they bought that building they were sniffing around the old Circuit City at West Florissant and 270. STLCC got scared and bought it with no real plan. That building never really had much going on in it and if it wasn't for Boeing's job training it would be completely empty.
Higher ed in general went on an expansion boom for about 10-15 years and has been denying that the bubble burst a good 10 years ago.
Unlike Belleville, though, Lindenwood didn't really touch Our Lady of Fatima. It remained untouched and still was very much a Catholic elementary school inside. They couldn't have spent much money on it at all.
I doubt debt is in Lindenwood's wheelhouse.
What I'm not sure a lot of the public realizes is that Lindenwood is a very, very republican run institution. Finances come first. I get the impression they would see debt as a defeat, a la Dave Ramsey. If they were to take on debt they wouldn't do it unless they were nearly guaranteed a financial return from it.
Hell, their latest president came from IBM, not from a university. And the interim president didn't even have a degree.
There's a reason why so many parts of Lindenwood's campus have corporate names attached to them, too. They love corporate sponsorship.
That's kind of what I felt. I won't say I didn't learn anything. My degree program was OK. But some of the more general ed classes were not good.
I used Lindenwood as a method to move back home and finish a mostly completed degree. I feel lucky most of my education came from another university. Unfortunately, the paper that counts says Lindenwood.
Really I think their plan for years was to become a football school first, academic school second. They were hell bent on D1 despite being smaller than Fontboone just 25 years ago.
They’ve expanded a lot, but they’re hitting the can’t get admitted anywhere else niche. It’s also very inexpensive for a university in the US
Yes that’s not a very kind comment, however, my degree is from that crap hole.
Maryville is actually growing. They've been offering online programs since before COVID https://www.maryville.edu/mpress/maryville-university-is-the-3-fastest-growing-private-university-in-the-nation/
Yep, Maryville has transitioned pretty well. I mean I'm not convinced they have no issues, but compared to other C-tier schools they've made meaningful transitions over the last two decades which are reaping benefits now.
I know someone in leadership at Maryville. They've been running that place like a business that needs to survive financially instead of an old-school educational institution for well over a decade now. I don't have any access to their financials or anything, but I'd bet they're doing fine.
Regardless, the school is hemorrhaging money and is currently being sued by a high end donor for paying off other debts with funds that were meant for scholarships. Not a great tactic when trying to secure future donations.
The donors [dropped their suit.](https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/metro/donors-settle-with-webster-university-over-scholarship-funds/article_8badde90-d27b-11ee-a4e6-fb4564546531.html)
They are doing very badly financially. I'm not sure what I can say because I'm not an employee but most people who work there are getting ready to jump ship when they have to.
It’s bad enough that I got a degree in print journalism from there. I don’t need it to be rendered entirely useless by the closing of the whole damn school.
No, in all seriousness, I feel for the professors I had there who are still trying to teach but are having their funding cut over and over. When I was there from 2002 to 2006, they were really trying to double down on the international/military/remote campus enrollment and the business school aspect, which I think hurt it by giving it a reputation as an MBA mill with a location in every strip mall and class B office complex in the suburbs.
Bunch of universities shutting down due to low enrollment. I’ve heard it’s due mostly to population decreasing but I suspect costs are another factor
https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/23428166/college-enrollment-population-education-crash
I think costs are a tangential factor when combined with other things. College is about the paper and the name on that paper now, not about the education. Employers don't look at the fact you graduated with an engineering degree, they look at the name of the school on that degree. So, if you're spending the same amount of money to go to Fontbonne as you would be to go to a recognizable state school or well-known private university, there's no advantage to go to the less-known school. People will want to maximize their return.
I'm not an engineer, but I've sat in on interviews and been a part of interviews and where I went or where an applicant went to college has literally never come up once.
This includes multiple rounds of physician interviews when I worked in that capacity at a medical school.
Maybe there are some lines of work where having an ivy league degree matters, but I've never witnessed it.
Prestigious programs are prestigious for a reason though and the opportunities at schools with nation renown programs do offer advantages.
I feel very sad today for my colleagues at fontbonne and for the students. What would be great is if Wash U did more then buy the land. Soft landings for the students who won’t have time to complete degrees and for the faculty would be will within the wash u budget.
I don't see that happening. I will be shocked if Fontbonne has a teach-out agreement with WashU. It's just a whole different level of university. But if it does happen, good for the students. They'll get a WashU degree at Fontbonne prices.
I imagine it'll be Webster or Lindenwood, perhaps Maryville. Maybe, maybe SLU. SLU has already agreed to be the holder of Fontbonne records after they close.
Edit: Quincy University may have spilled the beans. They posted to twitter today that they are working on a teach out agreement. Though I imagine there will be more than 1 school. Almost has to be since Quincy is nowhere near St. Louis.
I went to Fontbonne. They did actually have an agreement with Wash U. We could take a few classes there for our degree if Fontbonne didn't offer them, and we did not have to pay extra. I know this because I took a few of my classes at Wash U. This was in 2015-ish.
Well you said you'd "be shocked" and I wouldn't because they have agreements like this in place already. I'm not confident Wash U would be this generous, but it would align with the program they already had in place anyways. Just offering some lesser-known details as someone who went there.
everyone in the area needs students but Wash U I expect. Hard for the athletes to move though- their athletic careers are largely over. Like lidenwood, I bet a pretty large % of students are athletes.
I’m sure them having a a good escape plan made this easier. Wash U buying the property is good. I wonder if some of the staff there will get absorbed into wash U. I hope so. I also hope they keep the performance space there available to community theatre and semi professional work. I like the space and have seen good shows there.
Getting your degree online is prominent now more than ever with younger generations and it's showing in the on campus enrollment numbers. Next up, online degrees only. Going to suck because international student fees were a big chunk of the uni's income.
Maybe.
So many university's online programs do not match the caliber of their traditional students on campus. Some, like Purdue's online school, were former for-profit degree mills.
Makes perfect sense for Wash U to buy it. It's so close and it sort of looks like Wash U in terms of architecture - not that it really matters; plenty of schools have varied architecture. I honestly never knew what it was and never knew anyone who went there (but I'm not from STL). I wonder if Wash U will grow noticeably because of the purchase. I have no idea if Wash U wants to grow. But, it's a foundational STL institution with a ton of money, so I wouldn't think a bigger Wash U would be a bad thing. RIP Fontbonne U.
WashU has no plans at the moment. The hope is they will repurpose the space or rebuild for certain departments that aren't on campus.
There have been rumors of a D1 football stadium- not happening.
Why would WashU ever want to be anything other than D3?
None of the schools in the UAA need athletics to market themselves.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University\_Athletic\_Association](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_Athletic_Association)
I went to Northwestern. I always thought that if NW fails to keep up over time in the Big Ten, and is somehow lost in the shuffle of big-time D1 athletics (even if they are a founding member of the conference) as it gets bigger and crazier, they should just go down to D3 and join the UAA. I could see them doing that before playing in a D1 conference like the Summit League. NW certainly doesn't need athletics to market itself, and it is considerably smaller than most D1 major conference schools.
It’s a no-name religious college with an 80% acceptance rate. I lived in STL a couple years before I’d even heard of it. 😂 I’m surprised it lasted this long, TBH.
As a 2021 Fontbonne Graduate, this both saddens me and doesn’t surprise me. The president in my undergrad bought a second campus and made lots of high dollar plans, plans that the school did not have the funding or the attendance for. COVID caused a lot of backlash as they were very disorganized about their switch to online only, giving on campus students only a weeks notice after a promise to stay on campus. A lot international students were left trying to find last minute accommodation as their flights left after campus closure and they were picky about who they allowed to stay. In addition to this their tuition cost rose significantly in just the 4 years I was there, going above what scholarships covered for many of us.
It was a great college, and I’m forever glad I went, but boy howdy did it have issues.
Four types of colleges moving forward: flagship states, elite small Liberal Arts, WashU style private research Unis, and cost-effective community/commuter public school. Mid sized privates, regular LACs, and second-tier residential state schools are all in huge trouble.
Maybe it’ll help normalize costs. A lot of these c-tier schools still charge tens of thousands more than a state school for a lesser education and have fewer resources for students
That doesn't seem likely to me, as higher education shows no signs of slowing administrative bloat and disproportionate increases in tuition and campus costs.
In a decade or so, when the glut of children from the millennial generation starts to show itself, every school, including elite ones, will start to feel the pain. My guess is they’ll all need to trim the bloat just to keep operating, and they’ll also start competing on price (tuition) to some degree. Those schools with robust scholarship programs thanks to hefty donors will be the ones that survive.
Depends on a few factors, including how students loans change over the next decade. Both of my parents were in academia for decades, and they would both say that administration recognizing its own excess would come way, way after other departments are gutted or shuttered. They've been nickel-and-diming eighteen-year-olds w/ unforgivable loans for decades and have gotten quite used to that model.
Dearth or glut?
There is a thing called the 2027 cliff, which is when children of the 2008 crash become college aged. From the crash on there was a significant drop in birth rates. There won’t be enough kids to fill all of the colleges, so a bunch will close.
Yes, because time has shown reducing competition is what drives prices down…
Maybe, as the number of colleges rightsizes for the available number students. But the opposite might be true as well. Right now there is a huge surplus in capacity - so, as struggling colleges close, that extra capacity will shrink. Fewer college options may lead to higher prices. Supply and demand.
I think the B tier universities are probably fine -- it's the C and D tier that look really in trouble to me, at least for now. So, for instance, Fontbonne and Webster are in trouble, but Wash U (A tier) and SLU (B tier) are not.
SIUE and UMSL are doing fine, if their states don't decide to cut funding. We do not have an abundance of public higher education in the STL area.
In the state
The state artificially restricting online degrees helps them. If UM online were allowed to expand it would significantly eat into schools like UMSL’s enrollment
True. They’re not doing that in Indiana and it’s a problem.
To be fair, Indiana is a bit of an outlier because of Ivy Tech, the largest community college system in the country. It is mostly an excellent case study, and states should emulate that model - but I'm sure their partnership with UVA, where the junior college credits are guaranteed transferrable to a UVA online bachelor's degree, is dealing the IU and Purdue systems a fit.
Think this has anything to do with why IUPUI split up? I also want to highlight what you said about Ivy Tech. For those of us from St. Louis we think of a community college as really being a regional at best school. More local than anything. Ivy Tech covers the entire state, has a huge amount of resources for a community college, and has campuses even in smaller cities that definitely wouldn't have a community college in Missouri (Like Greencastle, which has less than 10k residents).
Hard to say. Sounded like it was more just holding back their respective grad programs - big business in a major metro area. People come and stay; they earn more and spend more. I have family in Indy and even lived in Bloomington for a couple years, but IUPUI's always been nothing but an enigma to me. Like... if UMKC had some sort of Kansas City partnership with kU, everyone's heads would fucking explode.
Definitely an Enigma. During my first semester at DePauw I had to have someone explain to me what IUPUI even was, since the concept was so different.
> if their states don't decide to cut funding That is absolutely no guarantee in Missouri. They're 1 pissed off far right senator away from having a problem.
As a Missouri State student, the Missouri government already does not care about us.
Honestly, we’re so tuition dependent anymore, additional state funding cuts are less of a deal than they were. Other than to make us even more dependent on enrollment.
Good to hear. I think.
It’s just the new reality. If you don’t have an endowment to lean on, you are going to need your focus on recruitment and retention.
I think there's going to be a more closings like this one, but I don't think it's the breakdown you listed. The bottom end state schools are going to not only survive, but thrive. I think it's just that Missouri and to a lesser extent Illinois were slow to pick up on the trend. The 'geography' schools (Southern, Eastern, Northern State University) that represent the "it's not a community college! It's a real degree!" schools are mushrooming. It's going to be the Elite Privates (Ivies and near Ivies and the private research schools), the State University systems, and community colleges, which have been spooling up to offer bachelors degrees for nearly twenty years now. A few religious schools will probably stick around, and a few HBCUs will survive, but you're going to see the Websters and Fontbonnes and Lindenwoods and Illinois Colleges (and I don't think that one in Alton, despite its religious affiliation) are not going to be with us much longer. I'm amazed Webster and Fontbonne lasted this long, honestly.
> A few religious schools will probably stick around, and a few HBCUs will survive, but you're going to see the Websters and Fontbonnes and Lindenwoods and Illinois Colleges Agreed, though I will point out that Lindenwood behaves a lot like a state school despite being private. It's bigger than some state schools too. It's also somehow got an OK endowment. I doubt it's in any immediate danger whatsoever.
I think Lindenwood will last longer, but ultimately anything not directly tied to a state budget, endowment, religious system, or a combination of at least two of those is going to suffer. Locally Lindenwood got all of the kids who would have gone to a Northern Illinois or Alabama-Birmingham because Missouri was slow to deploy those campuses. Now there's a SEMO and a Missouri State and even UMSL and UMKC are considered less of a joke. Those are all students not going to Lindenwood and that trend is going to accelerate. If you're private your days are numbered unless you're already elite or you've got religious money. Private HBCUs will stick a little longer but even those will go too in favor of State HBCUs.
And along those lines...the one thing I've not seen among all the "Webster's next" comments is Harris Stowe. They are not in good shape either.
Harris Stowe is either getting propped up, shut down, or absorbed. It's not even well-regarded among HBCUs. They're a state school, but their enrollment is tiny, they graduate a fraction of their admissions, and having their degree might actually make it harder to get a job than not having one at all. I don't know if they're considered the worst in rankings, but they have to be close to it. Missouri will keep funding it for a while, since it doesn't cost much and no one wants that pushback...but if they get a little smaller (which they will) or things move a little politically, or the City or WashU creep a little closer and that land becomes more attractive... I sort of suspect they'll just die on their own. They graduate like 200 people a year and the decision tree to get you to actually apply there must be just insane. Hell, at this point it might be entirely employees and their children that either couldn't get accepted anywhere else or the parents can't afford to send them and they're in that tiny population for whom financial aid didn't happen.
They are a magnet for lawsuits as well. Their leadership is insanely incompetent. Rumors suggest state legislators are waiting for enough lawsuits to pile up against them to shut them down, in order to avoid the racism hurdle, which will continue to be the only ad hoc defense that school can muster.
And the funny part is that it's the white staff members doing the suing.
I think state schools tethered to mid and major metros should be fine. I have a bachelors basically in going to college and I’ve had zero issues with employment. No idea how the people with private bachelors have fared
That and they now have D1 (FCS) football with great facilities in the fastest growing county in the state. They aren’t closing anytime soon.
SEMO, MO State, and UMKC are all well over 100 years old...
SEMO and Missouri State (aka Southwest Missouri State) have been around forever.
HBCUs generally don't have that big of endowments (with a few notable exceptions) and many get considerable federal funding, which could always change. Will be interesting to see what happens. Morris Brown was all but dead, but is hanging on, hoping to improve.
Dennis ran lindenwood like a business, hence the endowment. They will be fine
And like a convent. The dude would sit in his Cadillac in his PJ's with binoculars at night trying to catch people visiting the opposite sex's dorm. Although he saved Lindenwood, it's also good he's no longer in the picture. He would have slowed down their growth with his religious morals. They're just now shaking that off 18 years after he died.
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I had the same before transferring to Lindenwood. It was a rude smack in the face to be treated like a child by the university, and to face expulsion if I had the audacity as a 22 year old to haver a beer in my dorm room after class on Friday.
I went to Northwestern from 1992-1996. It was basically free reign. There were technically some rules, but not that strict and not enforced. Definitely no coed visitor rules. And here's the crazy thing - every Sunday in the dorm commons area during my freshman year, we had "wet" munchies. Food and booze provided by the RAs and thus the school. Northwestern is actually more strict today in that regard. Kids can probably do what they want, but no way the school is providing booze to kids at the risk of a lawsuit.
Check this: second tier state schools are in trouble. https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2024-02-29/higher-education-on-the-edge
I think you'll see States roll back their C-tier campuses (New York is hugely overextended, for example) but they'll still last longer than the privates. SUNY Fredonia, for example, is effectively Chautauqua Community College, no matter how they insist they're a 'performing arts incubator'. But that status as the local community college will absolutely keep it in the state budget long after a similar private school had to give up. The crap state schools are viewed as much as a public service as Universities. Crap private schools have to stand in their own. As the dynamic in the article accelerates -- S.I.U.E. graduates are either telling their kids not to go to college at all, or to go to a *good* college, schools that don't have the unlimited tap of state tax support are going to disintegrate. It'll be interesting to see what student loan reform does to all this.
Are you saying SIUE is a crap school? I think people are just going to be much more selective about cost. Scholarships and other things will be decision makers and people will skip college if they can’t get the scholarships, etc.
SIUE has been cleaning SIUC's clock for about 20 years, ever since Edwardsville got on-campus undergraduate housing. I hear that Carbondale is becoming a ghost town.
Makes sense. Carbondale area is pretty, but it's isolated. SIUE is in the burbs of a major metro (or semi-major depending on your definition of "major") with everything that has to offer.
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I went to the University of Illinois, where there is a fully developed Campustown in the middle of the campus. There really isn't much reason for a student to leave the campus area, particularly if the student lives in the dorms, and doesn't need to go grocery shopping. Therefore, I was very surprised when I moved to Edwardsville to find the SIUE campus is three or four miles removed from the City of Edwardsville. I thnk that it would be very difficult for an undergraduate to get by without a car. The academic programs at Edwardsville have improved markedly over the past 20 or so years, It may be able to compete for the rank of "Third Best Academic: program among Illinois Public Universities", behind Illinois (by design) and ISU.
Surprised they don't try to develop at least a minimal strip near campus with a few stores, restaurants, etc.
I think the reason is that the entire campus property is huge--I think that it has the second-biggest geographic footprint of any US college or university--but the area in which the classroom buildings and dorms are located is in the middle of all that real estate. It is like the entire campus is a doughnut, and the part of the campus that the school actually uses is the doughnut hole. The organizers of the campus in the mid-1950s had some pretty grandiose ideas of how big the school would become, and they persuaded the State to dispossess farmers accordingly. As it is, the university only uses about 15-20% of the total campus real estate. Because the area that the students use is so far away from the nearest private property, it is not really practical for local merchants to develop a separate campustown. By the time that the students get to the nearest private property, they might as well go a little furtheer, and shop/eat/drink where the rest of the local population goes. (Which is what the students do). In the student union, there is a Starbuck's, and a few franchise restaurants in a food court. But that is the extent of private enterprise on campus.
SIUC had to take all the kids from Chicago the way I understand it. Also Southern Illinois has been hit really hard with coal mine closers and off shoring of industries. Carbondale is rough now.
Not so sure about Webster, they seem to have found a life raft with international and military students. Their enrollment is up 27% and highest level since 2017.
If you're referring to Principia College, in Elsah near Alton, they will be fine. They have now opened enrollment and dropped the religious requirements. Enrollment is picking up. Not to mention the St Louis campus (k-12) is booming and acts like a feeder to the college. They continually make the list of best liberal arts colleges and have a huge endowment. They aren't going anywhere anytime soon.
Principia is almost in its own category, even when compared to other religious schools. It's more or less THE christian scientist university.
Most people there aren't even Christian Scientists anymore. That's what open enrollment means. Just s great liberal arts education at this point. Still has a high moral component, but no religious requirements anymore to enroll.
I thought maybr he was talking about Blackburn College, in Carlinville, which is loosely Presbyterian, They have been living on the edge of insolvency for so long that it appears to have become a viable lifestyle for them.
Illinois College in Jacksonville, IL (not that far from STL) is still around and doing pretty well right now - not that its future success is ensured. MacMurray College, also in Jacksonville, closed recently. There was a great article, but I don't recall where, about how MacMurray declined and how Illinois College changed its strategy in order to survive and sort of thrive. All of this is assuming you were referring to Illinois College specifically, not Illinois colleges generally.
I think Webster is a global school...if that makes any kind of difference.
[Even some elite schools are struggling.](https://chicagomaroon.com/40486/news/uchicago-professor-sounds-alarm-over-troubling-university-finances/) Regardless, higher education in this country is in need of a reckoning one way or another.
And I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing.
Where does Maryville land in this?
Don’t forget the fundamentalist Christian schools.
Most fundies don't have money. There are a few rich, prominent leaders, sure, but many fundie families live in poverty, between giving to their church and having a bunch of kids.
That's the great part about fundie schools, the tuition is all covered by the mega donors and church itself! Now it's a affordable college degree for anyone that follows their lifestyle and lives the right beliefs, before and after college!
How many of these type schools are top-notch STEM or other well regarded Universities??
I'll give you a hint. If you multiple the number of top notch STEM and similarly prestigious fundie universities by any number, you still get zero.
BYU?
Define "well regarded", because that's pretty subjective.
And for anyone who is OK with a degree from an unaccredited school, which for all intents and purposes doesn't count as a real degree!
It seems like mostly the Missouri State schools are doing well. I’ve heard great things from most of them recently. I know Truman was struggling with attendance for a bit, have they started bouncing back?
It seemed like Truman had become an exclusive school after they went to a liberal arts curriculum. They became picky in who they would accept. It wasn't as strict as the Northeast Missouri days...I got in...LOL
They never seemed super exclusive to me, at least when I was there. I attended from 2014-2018 and I did uh… not do great in highschool lol.
Good. Party is over hopefully
Wash U has been looking to buy that campus forever. Sad for the students and workers.
Beautiful campus for sure. I wonder if this means higher enrollment for them?
Definitely. Wash U has 1000 more undergrad than they did 10 years ago (6k to 7k). There are also some older dorms that I know they want to rebuild since the others are from the 60's. Wash U's main campus is land locked in one of the more expensive areas in the city. They had to make a giant underground structure so they could make their new engineering campus.
A large part of their problem is that, by charter, no building is allowed to be taller than Brookings Hall, which is a mere three stories. (The smokestack doesn't count). So, while some places would build very tall buildings, they're forced to go *down*.
They should just raise Brookings. I want to see it growing taller every year until it's as tall as the Arch. Then Mecha-Brookings and ArchZilla can fight along the central corridor.
ArchZilla harnesses the power of weather and wins.
it should at least be as tall as the Amoco sign
World's Fair Building, along with the rest of the old quad.
Since it's got Wydown between it and the Fontbonne campus, can't they just call Fontbonne a separate campus and get away with it? They can just slap the name "Wydown Campus" on it at problem solved?
Interesting. I wonder if there's any way they could get around/out of that IF (big IF) they wanted to. But, I'd assume there would never be agreement among the powers that be as to wanting to even pursue trying.
I used to work there, which is why I know about that kind of thing. They have enormous financial incentive to find a way out, but it's built so deep in the charter that they would have to, on a corporate level, destroy themselves and be reborn. Building down is so very, very expensive, they've had plenty of incentive. They just can't find a way out.
whose idea was it that they shouldn't have any buildings taller than brookings? The dude who founded it?
I’m curious how old that provision is in the charter, and does it apply to the South 40? Because once upon a time I lived in Eliot Hall, clocking in at a mere 12 stories. It was kind of yuck but had these cool built in closets and desks. Along with its twin Shepley, it had to be higher than Brookings. (Both were razed by 2003. I graduated in 1995) I’ve never linked an article before, but I’m going to try: [Eliot demolition](https://source.wustl.edu/2003/06/eliot-comes-down-making-way-for-new-residence-hall/)
It's in the founding document, day zero as far a I know. It's for the main campus. I streamed that demolition.
I was just there today. The best thing to ever happen to that school is the underground parking lot. It used to be a stressful situation looking for parking there as a visitor.
Holy shit I knew they were in trouble but still crazy to see them officially throw in the towel
When a college dwindles down to only 875 students this is inevitable
And according to Wikipedia their acceptance rate was over 94%! They were taking everybody that applied that had a pulse.
What is Wash U doing with the old CBC campus after that they bought that probably 10 years ago? I know they've using the athletic facilities for intramural/club sports but I don't know what else is happening over there.
Still using it for intramurals and club sports, but the old half of the buildings and the chapel and rectory are abandoned. They also have Clayton community theater, and just re-turfed the field about 2 years ago
abandoned chapel sounds metal
University police with Washington U. For many years. We use much of the facility for training…. “Active shooter” scenarios and such. They haven’t done much with the property. Since the North Campus facility was so badly damaged by the flood a couple of years ago, It would not surprise me if they simply abandoned or sold that and moved everything to the Fontbonne site. All they did with the flooded portion of complex was “remediation”…..After that, nothing.
This would actually be ideal. Consolidate the North and West Campus admin functions to Fontbonne, and sell/develop those MetroLink-adjacent properties into dense residential/TOD.
It would be cool and would make a lot of sense, but WUSTL is way too heavily invested in the Loop to just walk away from the “save the north side” strategy. Plus it would be horrible PR for them to just give up on Delmar.
It wouldn’t be them giving up on Delmar, it’d be them freeing up a massive piece of pretty prime real estate for development. It’d be one of the best things they could do for the Loop. They’ll still be heavily invested in the Loop with all the student housing and other property they have there.
Where is the north campus?
Olive and Skinker
WashU leases out the theater to outside groups. There's no classes there and I doubt the the main building is being used for something else e.g. art studios. With the amount of expansion and new construction they've recently implemented, it'll be a monumental task to try and fill the Fontbonne Campus, even if it's only 9 buildings.
I thought Concordia was using CBC.
Both are. WashU and Concordia both use the campus for club sports last I checked.
*20 years
thanks, time is a smear these days
My understanding is that Fontbonne tried to buy the old CBC building for expansion, but WashU jumped in and outbid Fontbonne in order to strangle their growth because they wanted the Fontbonne campus (which seems to have worked out for WashU). As far as I can tell the CBC building is sitting empty. WashU doesn't pay property taxes, they can buy property and let it sit vacant with very little cost.
Pure speculation and misinformation
What is the actual information? Is the cbc campus in use? Are taxes being paid on it? Here's an article from 2007 about Fontbonne being in negotiation to buy CBC: https://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/stories/2007/06/25/story4.html Obviously this didn't happen and WashU bought it instead, effectively choking the growth of Fontbonne so that the whole campus could be bought later, which just happened.
As a former student at Fontbonne during this time, this is the story that was relayed to us: Wash U swept in at the 11th hour with an ungodly higher bid than Fontbonne. That being said, it was (at the time) a blessing in disguise. The word was the building was gutted to a large degree and was going to take a lot (a lot, lot) of money to get it back up to code for any kind of use. Which could explain why it's still sitting in the current state and not as active as it could be
This makes me very sad. Graduated there in the 90s (when it was still "Fontbonne College"). This development doesn't surprise me, though. Their previous president had delusions of grandeur. Tried to make it too big, too commercial. He spent millions buying the old JFK high school to make it into a satellite campus, with rooms equipped for video conferencing/remote teaching, and all that. Never got off the ground - don't think it even opened. We went to the open house, and I could tell then they were over their heads. Pair that with lower enrollment, and an alumni relations team that \*really\* struggled to get anyone excited about anything at all, much less donating, and here we are. I had 4 great years there, but really the only thing I got out of it was my wife and best friend. Still, though, it's really a shame. I know an awful lot of people who will be in mourning.
Sad to see. That school has such a long and rather interesting history. Glad that WashU is purchasing it at least. Hopefully they can put the campus to use.
Consider that if it was sold for a housing development the surrounding community would benefit from the taxes. With WashU as the owner, no tax money and only a hope they do something productive with it.
There are plenty of places to build housing that aren’t big historic institutional campuses already adjacent to a big historic growing institutional campus. If they’re going to demo it all for a parking lot, then yeah, I’d rather have the housing development. If they’re going to use it to grow the university and expand their programs, then I’ll take that.
Eh- I think its a good fit. I'd rather have WashU poach on other educational (tax-free) properties than continue to buy up private lots.
Look up WashU history on sitting on property. lol its not good. it will get destroyed and they won't keep it up.
You aren't wrong. WashU sucks. But they've also been buying up every available property for years now and I'm just glad this one was already zoned as educational/tax free.
It'll be unnecessarily bougie dorms that are nicer than my first post-degree apartment in no time.
Yeah it's likely to be at least partially dorms. The Fontbonne campus is adjacent to the residential part of their current campus, not the educational part, so that's the lowest-friction way of developing the property, probably.
Having no property taxes for something like a university is a head scratcher, and basically helps turn them into real estate plays that, by accident, teach something. Land is too important to just let certain kinds of institutions sit on it for decades. See that NE corner of grand and Lindell. Bought by SLU in 99 or so. The building was demolished, and instead we got a "sculpture park" (really, a lawn).
Feel bad for the students and the workers. A lot of them have to make desperate changes to their lives.
As a former employee, staff have seen a massive downslide the last 5-6 years, after the JFK purchase. If staff are still there, it’s either they want to be, or don’t have a lot of options. They laid off so many people between 2018-2020, even BEFORE the pandemic. And the faculty that are still there are likely staying to for the students. It’s very sad, because it was a lovely little community to work in, though the pay was always pretty crap. Small, but great student to teacher ratio.
i always think of [Don Martin, the great cartoonist for Mad Magazine,](https://i0.wp.com/comicsgrinder.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/don-martin-mad-magazine-maddest-artist-running-press.jpg?ssl=1) when I see the name Fontbonne.
Ditto. I always pictured all the teachers and students drawn in his style.
My husband is going to be so sad when he hears this. First his high school gets plowed down to make for new houses. Now his college is also going to close.
That is how I feel about the Chesterfield Mall
JFK?
Yup
sucks for those involved, but it sounds a bit better planned than some other college closures: one-year warning, trying to get as many through as possible (sounds like they're spending down their endowment to do this) with free "overload" classes and cheap summer classes, already have a buyer for the propery, etc.
Webster’s next. Hundreds of others will follow across the country over the next decade or so.
Lindenwood isn’t far behind. They expanded too fast, and now they’re gutting programs to cut costs.
Lindenwood has had two consecutive years of record freshman enrollment.
Record enrollment isn’t helping their financial situation. They’ve pissed a ton of endowment money away on rapid expansion and have cut a ton of athletic programs that were previously a draw for them. -edit because I was incorrect about degree programs
What academic programs did they cut? I saw they cut a bunch of random athletics, but I think that was because they went D1
It was athletics only. Still a big hit to recruitment and shows they have budget issues.
They're betting the farm on football anyway.
The Athletics cuts were necessary to comply with Title IX. FCS football has 65 scholarships to D2’s 36. Some men’s sports had to be cut to keep the ratio of male to female scholarships comparable to enrollment. It also made sense since most of the sports cut aren’t sponsored by their new conference (Ohio Valley), and it would’ve been a budgeting nightmare to fill out an independent schedule for non revenue sports
If they’re cutting programs and growing, seems like those programs weren’t that big of a draw.
They cut athletic programs to get within D1 Title IX and conference regulations. Mens sports were cut because they had to have scholarships for football and then they have to have equal amounts for women’s sports
Lindenwood flushed millions for nothing on shit here in belleville, annoying waste to rehab all those lofts and then just let them sit to rot and never be used.
They also bought an old Catholic school up here in Florissant, used it for a few years and now it seems like it's been empty since well before covid. Rumor was before they bought that building they were sniffing around the old Circuit City at West Florissant and 270. STLCC got scared and bought it with no real plan. That building never really had much going on in it and if it wasn't for Boeing's job training it would be completely empty. Higher ed in general went on an expansion boom for about 10-15 years and has been denying that the bubble burst a good 10 years ago.
Unlike Belleville, though, Lindenwood didn't really touch Our Lady of Fatima. It remained untouched and still was very much a Catholic elementary school inside. They couldn't have spent much money on it at all.
I don't believe they've taken on debt to expand. They seem to be doing pretty well.
I doubt debt is in Lindenwood's wheelhouse. What I'm not sure a lot of the public realizes is that Lindenwood is a very, very republican run institution. Finances come first. I get the impression they would see debt as a defeat, a la Dave Ramsey. If they were to take on debt they wouldn't do it unless they were nearly guaranteed a financial return from it. Hell, their latest president came from IBM, not from a university. And the interim president didn't even have a degree. There's a reason why so many parts of Lindenwood's campus have corporate names attached to them, too. They love corporate sponsorship.
Republicans love debt when it’s their own and the government bails them out.
Do you think Republicans “don’t take debt” or something? Do you think all companies and institutions that have debt are ones run by non republicans? 😂
No...really more that they run it like a for profit business instead of an educational institution.
Lindenwood is a sham. They sell the idea of college without the academics.
That's kind of what I felt. I won't say I didn't learn anything. My degree program was OK. But some of the more general ed classes were not good. I used Lindenwood as a method to move back home and finish a mostly completed degree. I feel lucky most of my education came from another university. Unfortunately, the paper that counts says Lindenwood. Really I think their plan for years was to become a football school first, academic school second. They were hell bent on D1 despite being smaller than Fontboone just 25 years ago.
I'm happy with my experience at Lindenwood. I had no problem finding a job in my field.
Sports saved Lindenwood from shutting down permanently in the late 80’s.
They’ve expanded a lot, but they’re hitting the can’t get admitted anywhere else niche. It’s also very inexpensive for a university in the US Yes that’s not a very kind comment, however, my degree is from that crap hole.
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Maryville is actually growing. They've been offering online programs since before COVID https://www.maryville.edu/mpress/maryville-university-is-the-3-fastest-growing-private-university-in-the-nation/
Yep, Maryville has transitioned pretty well. I mean I'm not convinced they have no issues, but compared to other C-tier schools they've made meaningful transitions over the last two decades which are reaping benefits now.
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I know someone in leadership at Maryville. They've been running that place like a business that needs to survive financially instead of an old-school educational institution for well over a decade now. I don't have any access to their financials or anything, but I'd bet they're doing fine.
Webster's enrollment has gone up since the pandemic
Regardless, the school is hemorrhaging money and is currently being sued by a high end donor for paying off other debts with funds that were meant for scholarships. Not a great tactic when trying to secure future donations.
The donors [dropped their suit.](https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/metro/donors-settle-with-webster-university-over-scholarship-funds/article_8badde90-d27b-11ee-a4e6-fb4564546531.html)
Looks like they settled. Still, the school is in dire financial straits.
They are doing very badly financially. I'm not sure what I can say because I'm not an employee but most people who work there are getting ready to jump ship when they have to.
It’s bad enough that I got a degree in print journalism from there. I don’t need it to be rendered entirely useless by the closing of the whole damn school. No, in all seriousness, I feel for the professors I had there who are still trying to teach but are having their funding cut over and over. When I was there from 2002 to 2006, they were really trying to double down on the international/military/remote campus enrollment and the business school aspect, which I think hurt it by giving it a reputation as an MBA mill with a location in every strip mall and class B office complex in the suburbs.
Funnily enough one of the sources of a lot of lost money right now is the international students :/
My thought as well
Bunch of universities shutting down due to low enrollment. I’ve heard it’s due mostly to population decreasing but I suspect costs are another factor https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/23428166/college-enrollment-population-education-crash
I think costs are a tangential factor when combined with other things. College is about the paper and the name on that paper now, not about the education. Employers don't look at the fact you graduated with an engineering degree, they look at the name of the school on that degree. So, if you're spending the same amount of money to go to Fontbonne as you would be to go to a recognizable state school or well-known private university, there's no advantage to go to the less-known school. People will want to maximize their return.
I'm not an engineer, but I've sat in on interviews and been a part of interviews and where I went or where an applicant went to college has literally never come up once. This includes multiple rounds of physician interviews when I worked in that capacity at a medical school. Maybe there are some lines of work where having an ivy league degree matters, but I've never witnessed it. Prestigious programs are prestigious for a reason though and the opportunities at schools with nation renown programs do offer advantages.
I didn’t go there, but have been there several times for things. It always felt like a really special place to me. So sad.
I feel very sad today for my colleagues at fontbonne and for the students. What would be great is if Wash U did more then buy the land. Soft landings for the students who won’t have time to complete degrees and for the faculty would be will within the wash u budget.
I don't see that happening. I will be shocked if Fontbonne has a teach-out agreement with WashU. It's just a whole different level of university. But if it does happen, good for the students. They'll get a WashU degree at Fontbonne prices. I imagine it'll be Webster or Lindenwood, perhaps Maryville. Maybe, maybe SLU. SLU has already agreed to be the holder of Fontbonne records after they close. Edit: Quincy University may have spilled the beans. They posted to twitter today that they are working on a teach out agreement. Though I imagine there will be more than 1 school. Almost has to be since Quincy is nowhere near St. Louis.
I went to Fontbonne. They did actually have an agreement with Wash U. We could take a few classes there for our degree if Fontbonne didn't offer them, and we did not have to pay extra. I know this because I took a few of my classes at Wash U. This was in 2015-ish.
This is not the same as the agreements made when a university closes, however.
Well you said you'd "be shocked" and I wouldn't because they have agreements like this in place already. I'm not confident Wash U would be this generous, but it would align with the program they already had in place anyways. Just offering some lesser-known details as someone who went there.
everyone in the area needs students but Wash U I expect. Hard for the athletes to move though- their athletic careers are largely over. Like lidenwood, I bet a pretty large % of students are athletes.
My understanding was the Fontbonne's athletic program was relatively small. And their recent attempt at a football team failed miserably.
Washu has leased the campus back to Fontbonne for the time being, presumably to help them achieve the “soft landing”
Better have been for $1. They can afford to be beneficent.
Rip Fontbonne
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SLU will hold all school records.
I’m sure them having a a good escape plan made this easier. Wash U buying the property is good. I wonder if some of the staff there will get absorbed into wash U. I hope so. I also hope they keep the performance space there available to community theatre and semi professional work. I like the space and have seen good shows there.
Getting your degree online is prominent now more than ever with younger generations and it's showing in the on campus enrollment numbers. Next up, online degrees only. Going to suck because international student fees were a big chunk of the uni's income.
Maybe. So many university's online programs do not match the caliber of their traditional students on campus. Some, like Purdue's online school, were former for-profit degree mills.
End of an era.
Webster University is next
Sadly, Webster you are on the clock.
Makes perfect sense for Wash U to buy it. It's so close and it sort of looks like Wash U in terms of architecture - not that it really matters; plenty of schools have varied architecture. I honestly never knew what it was and never knew anyone who went there (but I'm not from STL). I wonder if Wash U will grow noticeably because of the purchase. I have no idea if Wash U wants to grow. But, it's a foundational STL institution with a ton of money, so I wouldn't think a bigger Wash U would be a bad thing. RIP Fontbonne U.
My great uncle is the head baseball coach and has been coaching there for about 15 years. We are devastated
WashU has no plans at the moment. The hope is they will repurpose the space or rebuild for certain departments that aren't on campus. There have been rumors of a D1 football stadium- not happening.
I don’t see WashU going back to D1 athletics. They fit in with Chicago, Emory, and Johns Hopkins in D3
Why would WashU ever want to be anything other than D3? None of the schools in the UAA need athletics to market themselves. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University\_Athletic\_Association](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_Athletic_Association)
I went to Northwestern. I always thought that if NW fails to keep up over time in the Big Ten, and is somehow lost in the shuffle of big-time D1 athletics (even if they are a founding member of the conference) as it gets bigger and crazier, they should just go down to D3 and join the UAA. I could see them doing that before playing in a D1 conference like the Summit League. NW certainly doesn't need athletics to market itself, and it is considerably smaller than most D1 major conference schools.
It’s a no-name religious college with an 80% acceptance rate. I lived in STL a couple years before I’d even heard of it. 😂 I’m surprised it lasted this long, TBH.
One more down and a little closer to completely centralized control
I just knew this was going to happen, but I'm surprised it's happening this soon. Was sure they'd stick around for at least four or five more years.
As a 2021 Fontbonne Graduate, this both saddens me and doesn’t surprise me. The president in my undergrad bought a second campus and made lots of high dollar plans, plans that the school did not have the funding or the attendance for. COVID caused a lot of backlash as they were very disorganized about their switch to online only, giving on campus students only a weeks notice after a promise to stay on campus. A lot international students were left trying to find last minute accommodation as their flights left after campus closure and they were picky about who they allowed to stay. In addition to this their tuition cost rose significantly in just the 4 years I was there, going above what scholarships covered for many of us. It was a great college, and I’m forever glad I went, but boy howdy did it have issues.