Will universities close?

[Joan.of.the.Arch]

State universities here have been told to draw up plans to cut budgets by 15-25% for next fiscal year. At my son's campus, it is expected that a 25% cut would mean letting go of 23% of the faculty and staff. Hard for me to imagine a school going on like that. (I know my title may be a bit sensational, but the question does occur to me.) Surely whole departments will cease to exist. What a choice to make.

Are you all seeing this where you live?

[sydneysky84]

unlv has raise tuition 25% thats alot

[kork13]

I just found out last week that my department (astronautical engineering) back at college just got both of my major's programs cut. My major focused on the operation of small-satellites. I managed the operations of one of our 2 satellites (FalconSAT-3) as my senior capstone project. Our operations on the second satellite (Gravity Probe B, which we bought from NASA) has already been shut down, and FS-3 is going to be shut down NLT the end of this current semester.

It's disappointing to see, especially to know that to do this, the major I took is essentially doomed to disappear without these programs.


As to universities actually CLOSING, don't most colleges have endowments which defray operating costs? But maybe those are only at private universities.... In the end, I doubt that MANY colleges would shut down entirely, but i suppose some smaller ones potentially could.....

[maat55]

In Tulsa, Oral Roberts University is having layoffs. They were recently rescued form the Roberts by the owner of Hobbly Lobby and Mardels.

[Like2Plan]

Originally Posted by sydneysky84

unlv has raise tuition 25% thats alot

[disneysteve]

I wouldn't be surprised to see some schools close. At the very least, many will probably shrink their course offerings and reduce services.

On a separate but related note, I read recently that we will probably see a number of hospital closures in 2009 as they succumb to rising costs, shrinking insurance reimbursement, higher default from patients who can't pay their bills and cut backs in state aid for treating the uninsured.

[gamecock43]

Womans studies and African American studies have been cut at my university. Now that might get the minorities a bit steamed.

[ktmarvels]

Originally Posted by disneysteve

On a separate but related note, I read recently that we will probably see a number of hospital closures in 2009 as they succumb to rising costs, shrinking insurance reimbursement, higher default from patients who can't pay their bills and cut backs in state aid for treating the uninsured.

Unfortunately this doesn't surprise me. I'm in pharmacy school right now very few of the hospitals are able to hire interns during the summer because they are in a hiring "frost". Not quite a freeze, but a frost. As one of my friends said: Kinda scary when they have to invent new words to say they can't hire people.

[scfr]

Yes, I think some will close. Just as home builders built increasingly bigger and grander homes because home buyers were willing to take on heavy mortgages, universities built bigger and grander buildings and programs because students were willing to take on heavy student loans. (When I attended my 20th reunion, I was shocked at the lavishness of the rooms in the new dorm buildings.)

I'm pretty sure that just as people are starting to reexamine how much house they really need, people are also going to start seriously looking at whether or not all of that student loan debt is really worth it, and are going to start scaling back, going to less expensive schools, going to 2-year instead of 4-year programs, or just not going at all.

One of the things on my "To Do" list for this month is to order a couple copies of my official transcript (the ones in the sealed envelopes that are invalid once opened) "just in case." Not that I necessarily think my alma mater will close, but I'd hate to be involved in a job hunt, come across a job that required an official transcript, and not be able to get one.

[red92s]

Morris Brown, a historically black college just outside Atlanta, is very close to shutting down.

From wikipedia:

"The school has $22 million in long-term debt and $5 million in short term debt. Both the alumni association and the African Methodist Episcopal Church have pledged to keep the school from closing. As of January 2009, Morris Brown has 240 students. In December 2008, the City of Atlanta disconnected water service to the college due to an overdue water bill [13]. The college president is pleading for $1.5 Million to keep the school open."

[Joan.of.the.Arch]

Originally Posted by scfr

One of the things on my "To Do" list for this month is to order a couple copies of my official transcript (the ones in the sealed envelopes that are invalid once opened) "just in case." Not that I necessarily think my alma mater will close, but I'd hate to be involved in a job hunt, come across a job that required an official transcript, and not be able to get one..

Well, they might very well charge higher fees for transcripts, even if they do not close.

I'm glad you mentioned this , as it may be applicable to my DH. I had not thought of it even though we were just talking about his need to provide transcripts in his line of work.

[maat55]

I wonder if lowering prices might help. Might work like lowering taxes on investing. Raising costs and expenditures, does not work in any arena. IMO.

[jIM_Ohio]

Letting go of faculty members depends on how the college operated.

My university publishes an 8:1 or 7:1 faculty/student ratio... but I cannot remember if I ever had a class smaller than 20 people... that ratio is used to offer MORE classes, not smaller classes.

Largest classes I had were freshman chem and sophomore physics with maybe 60-80 people, and the calculus classes usually had around 30.

So yes faculty might get cut... it just means that the "adhesives technology" I took as a senior gets cut or freshman chem goes up to 80-90 students.

Colleges have other ways to control money (it may not mean programs get cut).

[bjl584]

I heard that a lot of the larger state universities were actually benefiting from the economy, as more people were opting to send their children to these schools instead of their more expensive private college counterparts.

[disneysteve]

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...Rg5mg&refer=us

Here is a related article from November.

[GREENBACK]

Originally Posted by scfr

I was shocked at the lavishness of the rooms in the new dorm buildings.)

.

I wonder if these schools ever really look at cutting costs instead of asking for more money. When I first went to college I stayed in a dorm that had no a/c and not much heat and was very basic and small. This was the football players dorm and was better than most others.

[asmom]

Originally Posted by red92s

Morris Brown, a historically black college just outside Atlanta, is very close to shutting down.

From wikipedia:

"The school has $22 million in long-term debt and $5 million in short term debt. Both the alumni association and the African Methodist Episcopal Church have pledged to keep the school from closing. As of January 2009, Morris Brown has 240 students. In December 2008, the City of Atlanta disconnected water service to the college due to an overdue water bill [13]. The college president is pleading for $1.5 Million to keep the school open."

Morris Brown is not shutting down. (Oh and it's in the heart of Atlanta not outside). It has been on deathwatch for several years but it has a very committed alumni. The water has been turned back on and it will continue to flow. It's been here since 1881 and we're not going anywhere.

Morris Brown class of '91

[asmom]

So far here in Georgia there is talk about "merging" some of the HBCUs with other colleges which really means they want to shut them down.


Plan #2 is to restrict enrollment in order to maintain quality. I know that's funny to hear someone use the words "quality" and "education" in the same sentence when you're talking about Georgia but that's what he said. Later he(the Chancellor of the University System of Georgia) admitted that the real concern was faculty salaries.

[banditfist]

My MBA econ class was taught by the Dean of the Business School. This was in the late 1990's. I remember him commenting that it was harder to get the enrollment up during economic boom times. People see jobs and money. But in recession, they don't. Recessions are the best thing for grad schools.

BUT! We are dealing with a little bit different situation now. Colleges and universities have raised their tuition at rates far greater than inflation for years while increasing enrollment.

Just like everything else, there will be a reversion to the mean.

[TBH]

Like others have said, community colleges also benefit from recessions because more people go back to school.

Many schools rely partially on endowments, which are of course all in the toilet right now along with any other money that is invested in the stock market.

There are talks of cuts at colleges around here but I don't have much info yet. Where I work we've been warned that there are no cuts "yet" but there will be come summer.