This is a strange time to shutter a campus. A record 15.1 million students will enroll in college this fall; meanwhile, the strong economy has swollen endowments. But prosperity isn’t uniform. While large, well-known institutions count their blessings, times are tough for many small, less-famous schools. Bradford College, a 197-year-old institution north of Boston, graduated its final class this summer after trustees found no escape from deep debts. And in July, after a desperate fight for survival, Trinity told students it would close. Sophomore Meghan Ireland, 19, describes the scene in the cafeteria: “People were yelling, crying, hugging each other… It was heartbreaking.”
Small colleges have long faced a financial struggle: 52 have closed since 1986. No matter how tiny, every college needs so many faculty, buildings and library books, and spreading those costs over fewer than 1,000 students is difficult. Few enjoy big endowments, and many offer big scholarships, reducing tuition income (chart). Now their problems are growing. In surveys, today’s freshmen say an ideal college has 5,000 students, up from 3,500 five years ago, says consultant George Dehne. “Universities have all the sex appeal,” says David W. Breneman, a former small-college president who’s now a dean at the University of Virginia. “A lot of kids go to high schools that are larger than these small colleges.” Some experts see more of them facing bleak futures. Says Williams College expert Gordon Winston: “Schools that have been weakened are going to go under.”
Trinity provides a case study of this death spiral. Founded in 1925 by the Sisters of Mercy, it specialized in turning “late blooming” young women into confident students. In the ’70s, as all-male schools went coed and women’s colleges lost appeal, Trinity diversified by entering adult education; later it added trendy programs in criminal justice and mental health. But too many college shoppers were turned off by Trinity’s lack of a pool, Internet-equipped dorms or a fitness center. By the late ’90s, with enrollment down to just 300 residential students, the school spent $1 million on new dorms and began giving huge scholarships to offset its $21,420 price tag. Those were fatal mistakes. “The discounts went up too high,” says Sister Jacqueline Marie Kieslich, who took over as Trinity’s president last year and led a last-ditch effort to woo new students and donors. By July, they had fallen short.
In a nation obsessed with ranking its 3,500 colleges, the death of a nonelite school like Trinity may be no big deal. But it and hundreds of other no-name schools still matter to millions of alumni–and to the towns where small colleges often form the cultural center. Boosters say those deep roots will help many beleaguered schools survive. “There are a lot of institutions where if you look at their balance sheets, you’d say, ‘Gosh, that place looks like it’s barely making it year to year’,” says Jon Fuller of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities. “Yet they’ve been that way for 100 years.”
That makes it difficult to predict which school might fall next. Like strapped families who are driven into bankruptcy by job loss or illness, it’s usually an unpredictable event or management misstep that pushes colleges under. Researcher Breneman, in a 1994 book on small colleges, predicted Bradford’s demise, but he rated schools like Barber-Scotia, Judson, Immaculata and nearly 100 others as being in worse shape, yet they survive. Ironically, Trinity’s death may help others live: while a few part-time students will remain to finish up classes as Trinity powers down, most full-time students have transferred to other small schools, boosting their enrollments. “It will take a little bit of the edge off for this year and next… but it won’t help them long term,” says Sister Jacqueline. For other schools running out of time, let us pray.
