private colleges

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Yes, this is personal: Concerning the New York Times report on The King's College crisis

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Yes, this is personal: Concerning the New York Times report on The King's College crisis

I have been on the road for about 12 days now, visiting family in Kansas after speaking at a journalism conference in Washington, D.C. During that time, I have received quite a few emails asking me to comment on the New York Times story about the crisis at The King’s College in lower Manhattan.

As longtime GetReligion readers know, I taught seminars at The King’s College for five years after the semester-length Washington Journalism Center program moved there in 2014. I have friends and former colleagues at TKC and, thus, writing about this topic is quite personal.

Thus, let me stress that the following is a GetReligion commentary about the Times report — which is an important story and, frankly, quite good. It’s crucial — here’s that GetReligion theme, again — that it was assigned to a religion-desk reporter. However, the story, in my opinion, does have an important “ghost” in it, one that could be spotted by anyone who has dug into the details of recent academic and financial trends in Christian higher education.

Hold that thought. First, here is the double-decker headline on this news feature:

The Second Life of a Christian College in Manhattan Nears Its End

The King’s College, which draws students from around the country to Manhattan, has not been able to recover from enrollment and financial losses.

As is the case with MANY private colleges, before and after the coronavirus pandemic, this small college has fundraising issues, enrollment issues and then budget issues that are directly linked to enrollment issues.

To be blunt, many excellent private educational institutions are overly dependent on tuition dollars and lack the endowment funds to survive severe drops in recruiting numbers. For two decades Christian college leaders have known that they would face severe challenges after the passing of a giant wave of students from the giant Millennial generation.

Thus, Christian college administrations have been asking hard questions about recruiting and fundraising. Here is one way to look at it: The concerns of donors, church leaders and parents are not (#DUH) always the concerns of potential students. However, a Christian college cannot survive without loyal donors, church leaders and parents willing to send their children — the ultimate investment — to a specific college.

The raises a painful question: Should small Christian private schools case a “wide net,” seeking as many students as possible (period), or focus on “mission fit,” seeking students from homes and pews that strongly support a school’s core values and programs?


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Podcast: Faith-based colleges face coronavirus crisis (and hard identity questions, too)

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What is going to happen on college and university campuses this fall?

That’s a huge question, right now, and nobody knows the answer yet. Parents and students want to know. Football fans want to know. Trustees want to know since, in the end, they’re the people who will end up trying to handle the financial fallout of the coronavirus crisis (including predictions of a second wave hitting with the flu-season in November).

But there is more to this story than COVID-19, if you have been paying close attention to higher-education trends in recent years. Leaders in higher-ed were already bracing for the year 2025 — when the enrollment surge linked to the massive millennial generation would be coming to an end.

Now, look past all of those state-funded schools — big and small. How will these trends hit private schools, including faith-based private schools. Many have been facing rising tides of red ink, and that was before the arrival of the coronavirus.

“Crossroads” host Todd Wilken and I talked about all of these issues, and more, during this week’s podcast (click here to tune that in). The hook for this discussion was my “On Religion” column for this week, which included this crucial passage:

… The coronavirus crisis is forcing students and parents to face troubling realities. A study by McKinsey & Company researchers noted: "Hunkering down at home with a laptop … is a world away from the rich on-campus life that existed in February."

What happens next? The study noted: "In the virus-recurrence and pandemic-escalation scenarios, higher-education institutions could see much less predictable yield rates (the percentage of those admitted who attend) if would-be first-year students decide to take a gap year or attend somewhere closer to home (and less costly) because of the expectation of longer-term financial challenges for their families."

This could crush some schools. In a report entitled "Dawn of the Dead," Forbes found 675 private colleges it labeled "so-called tuition-dependent schools -- meaning they squeak by year-after-year, often losing money or eating into their dwindling endowments." While it's hard to probe private-school finances, Forbes said a "significant number" of weaker schools are "nearly insolvent."

How many of America’s truly faith-defined private colleges are in that “Dawn of the Dead” list?


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Demographics and destiny: Big story brewing if many religious colleges are destined to die

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Clayton Christensen of the Harvard Business School predicts that half of America’s colleges will die during the coming decade, due especially to competition from online coursework.

Many will pooh-pooh this dire forecast for institutions that have been so cherished a part of the nation’s culture. But Gettysburg College historian Allen Guelzo contended that the danger is palpable, and increasing, in a recent Wall Street Journal piece (behind a pay wall).

Guelzo said America’s 1,800 private colleges are especially at risk, and the smaller they are the bigger their problem. Though elite private schools boast fat endowments, offer ample scholarship aid and lure plenty of applicants, hundreds of private campuses lack these advantages.

Schools in the Northeast are especially vulnerable. In the past six years, 17 small colleges died in Massachusetts alone, and in recent months three more in New England announced closures. The ghost of Vermont’s debt-ridden Burlington College, which went under in 2016, remains in the news because financial moves by its former head, Jane Sanders, got the blame and she’s married to a would-be U.S. president.

Parents and students may protest tuition increases that exceed inflation year by year, conservatives may bemoan faculties dominated by politically correct liberals and some pundits may question the value of a college degree.

But Guelzo said the big threat is simple demographics. He projects that sagging birth rates will reduce potential college applicants by 450,000 during the 2020s. Private colleges must charge much higher tuitions than tax-supported competitors and will be hammered further if Democrats achieve “free college for all” plans that subsidize public campuses.

Obviously a big story is brewing, and religion writers will want to focus on the 247 Catholic colleges listed by the U.S. bishops’ office and the 143 conservative Protestant campuses linked to the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities. Most are four-year liberal arts institutions, but the counts include some seminaries and other specialized programs. Myriad other schools founded by “mainline” Protestants have only vestigial faith commitments and are of less religious interest.


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Brittany Griner: ESPN gets close to key family and religion question

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Truth be told, I still think that the question I asked a few weeks ago remains one of the most interesting questions one can ask about that big story that keeps unfolding down in Waco: “So, how did Brittney Griner end up at Baylor?”


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