Reflections on Challenges of Church Related Colleges and Universities

Chris Gehrz, professor of history at Bethel University in MN, posts weekly for the Anxious Bench on a variety of topics. Chris offered reflections this week in "Will Your (Christian) College Close?" He concludes that the "...recent series of closures suggests the pace is quickening, and that my particular sector of higher ed may face unique challenges."

Gehrz then follows with comments on the stress church related institutions are facing as they compete for students within the broader higher education sector.

 

Gehrz's current post is based on an update of analysis he originally posted in a couple of entries on his The Pietist Schoolman blog back in 2013. The first, "When Colleges Close: A Historical Sketch," published April 22, 2013 includes his observations backed up by several interesting charts and tables. "When Colleges Close: Recent History," published April 29, 2013, follows up with an emphasis on some of the more well-established institutions [those with 100+ years of history] that have closed in recent years.

Weekend Thoughts on College Closures...

Scanning higher education news and social media the last week or two feels a bit like it did back in March 2015 when Sweet Briar College announced it would close....of course, Sweet Briar is open and happily serving students.  And in spite of many calls at the time that we were at a tipping point, it doesn't really feel like we are falling off a cliff.

Now in the first few weeks of 2019 we have seen a couple of small institutions announce they will close, another that faces possible loss of accreditation, and others are indicating that they are looking to merge or find a partner.  As a result, we are once again seeing a number of people posting or commenting on what it all means...and from the sound of it, it isn't likely that it will be good.

Yet, in the flurry of recent articles, two people caught my attention this week with ideas that contrast with more common narratives.

Timothy Burke, professor of history at Swarthmore offers interesting reflections in "College of Theseus," on his Easily Distracted blog.  Burke provides brief historical sketches of Newbury College, Hampshire College, and Green Mountain College after their recent announcements and the reactions he was viewing in the media. 

In contrast to those who take each of these cases and jump to conclusions about what they imply for all of higher education, Burke argues that "...when you look at the story of any particular closure, they all have some important particulars. The story being told that flatters the disruptors and innovators would have us thinking that there are these venerable, traditional, basically successful institutions going about their business and then suddenly, ZANG, the future lands on them and they can’t survive. At least some of the institutions closing have been hustling or struggling or rebranding for their entire existence."

Similarly, I noticed that John Newsom, a reporter for the Greensboro News & Record, has been pushing back a bit in social media on the quick takes that possible loss of accreditation for Bennett College will automatically lead to closure. 

Newsom is doing really good reporting on the situation for his newspaper.  He recently noted  "...shortly after word got out that Bennett College could lose its accreditation, several folks asked me if they thought the private women’s school would close. A month ago, I said I didn’t know. Now, I’m going with probably not. It’s really, really hard to shut down a college, and Bennett is putting up a heck of a fight." His article presents several options for Bennett that would allow it to continue its mission.

For those interested I have been updating a file on Google Sheets for College Closures since 2009. 

It is far too easy to hear that a college is closing and then jump to conclusions about a trend as Burke notes in his post.  Historical perspective is always valuable and before we all conclude that the sky is falling, it is important to remember that a few colleges close every year.  

While it is obviously early in the year and we may in fact see a surge of closures in 2019, our peak number of closures over the last decade was in 2016 and the numbers declined in each of the past two years.

For a longer perspective, Chris Gehrz, professor of history at Bethel University in St. Paul, Minnesota authored a couple of posts several years ago that explore data on institutional closures and found that closures peaked during the 1970s.

You can access the file by clicking on College Closures since 2009 in the index at the right of any College History Garden page. The file opens with an initial "Summary" tab. You can then find more details on each institution in the "since 2009 not for profit" and "since 2009 for profit" tabs. This extra information includes: IPEDS id, Carnegie Basic classification, accrediting agency, and sector for the respective institutions.

Snapshot of Black Higher Education in the 1920s

The U.S. Bureau of Education organized an extensive study of black colleges and universities that is available at no charge as a .pdf, "Survey of Negro Colleges and Universities, Bulletin 1928, No. 7," on the ERIC website.  

Dr. Arthur J. Klen, chief of the Division of Higher Education, served as the director for the survey with cooperation of seventy-nine higher education institutions, nineteen state departments, and several church foundations or educational boards.  Data gathering included visits to the institutions and the report presents a detailed picture of life on the campuses through text and tables.  The survey certainly serves as an authoritative source of information on black higher education in the 1920s.

Canton College: Brief History of an Early Illinois Institution

A brief history of Canton College in Canton, IL is offered in "The forgotten history of Canton's first College," on January 7, 2017 by the Pontiac Daily Leader.  Canton College operated from 1835 until 1843.

JSTOR also offers a journal article with more details about the institution, "Canton College: An Early Attempt at Higher Education in Illinois," written by Mildred Eversole, J. Wright and N. W. Dewey for the Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, Vol. 34, No. 3 (Sep., 1941), pp. 334-343.  The article concludes with the text of a letter written by a faculty member in 1838 and it provides a fascinating glimpse of the life of a teacher for a struggling institution.  

Bethel at War...excellent example of a digital history and institutional stories

Chris Gehrz posted a description on The Pietist Schoolman blog of web pages devoted to the history of Bethel University during this past century.  Bethel at War 1914-2014 provides stories from a historical perspective of a small Midwestern college affiliated with the Baptist General Conference.

Bethel at War features essays, timeline, map, and information on many other references and resources.  

America's Lost Colleges...Historical Sketches of 200+ Institutions

Paul Batesel, a former colleague and emeritus professor of English at Mayville State University has created an amazing site devoted to the history of institutions that have closed.   

America's Lost Colleges includes separate pages for more than 270 institutions that can be reached from a central index of Lost Colleges by State.  Batesel conducted research using yearbooks and newspapers.  He also visited a quarter of the institutions.  Each institutional page includes a historical sketch, photographs, sources of information, and highlights intended to capture the soul or spirit of the learning community.

A New Study Looks at Students who attend Women's Colleges, 1971-2011

Kathy Wyer authored a summary of a recent study by Linda Sax, “Who Attends a Women’s College?  Identifying Unique Characteristics and Patterns of Change 1971 – 2011” on UCLA's Graduate School of Education and Information Studies Sudikoff Public Forum website.  The entire document is also available via a link.

Academic Degrees...history and practice of awarding degrees

ERIC offers .pdfs of Academic Degrees: Earned and Honorary Degrees Conferred by Institutions of Higher Education in the United States.  The entire work was published by the U.S. Office of Education in 1960 and includes over three hundred pages and was split into two separate files, part 1 and part 2.

Eells and Haswell surveyed institutions and historical documents to build lists of over 2,400 degrees, both earned and honorary, awarded.  They also included a number of descriptive chapters that can serve as a good foundation and reference for anyone interested in knowing more about academic practice.

Philanthropy in the History of American Higher Education

I was recently fortunate to find a copy of Philanthropy in the History of American Higher Education by Jesse Brundage Sears with an introduction by Roger Geiger.  You can find copies in a variety of formats at the Internet Archive.  New copies of the book can still be acquired through the website of Transaction Publishers or you can find used copies.

When Colleges Close...

Chris Gehrz has added a couple of recent posts on his The Pietist Schoolman blog that explore data on institutional closures.  

The first, When Colleges Close: A Historical Sketch, published April 22, 2013 includes his observations backed up by several interesting charts  and tables.   When Colleges Close: Recent History , published April 29, 2013, follows up with an emphasis on some of the more well-established institutions [those with 100+ years of history] that have closed in recent years.

Gehrz highlights four institutions [Bradford College in Massachusetts, Lambuth University in Tennessee, Dana College in Nebraska, and Southeastern University in Washington, DC ] with more detailed comments.

Wisconsin Business University

A Brief History of the Wisconsin Business University, La Crosse, Wisconsin is available as a .pdf file.  The author, Richard Rogers, completed the paper for a history seminar course.  Rogers reviewed newspaper archives, institutional publications, surveyed alumni, and interviewed alumni, instructors, and a graddaughter of the founder.  The institution was founded by Frank J. Toland and operated from 1892-1941.  

The Toland family operated institutions in a number of towns across the upper Midwest, including:  Fairmont, Mankato, and Winona in Minnesota, Mason City, Oelwein, and Spencer in Iowa, and both Eau Claire and La Crosse in Wisconsin.

The Murphy Library of the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse offers a digitized version of a 1902 prospectus for Toland's Business Universities.  The 80 page document includes many photographs of former students with information on their positions in businesses.  The prospectus also offers information on teaching methods and courses of study.

Study of Factors Leading to Closure of 40 Colleges

Terry Province studied early indicators linked to college closure and the dissertation is available.  His review of literature in Chapter 2 does a nice job of highlighting early indicators from previous studies.  The statistical analysis of 40 institutions led to identification of the most significant indicators for the study period between 1965-2005.  

Identity and Mission in Jesuit Higher Education

 

R. Eric Platt’s Ph.D. dissertation, Sacrifice and Survival: The Historiographic Role of Identity and Mission in Jesuit Higher Education of the New Orleans Province, submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, August 2011, is available through the LSU Electronic Thesis & Dissertation Collection.

The fascinating work uses historiographically-constructed case studies to address whether institutional identity and mission of colleges and universities affect their ability to survive. Platt further explores whether social environments contributed to the survival of particular institutions of higher education and how the relationship between a college or university and the surrounding social environment contributed to its ability to persist.

Anyone interested in Jesuit colleges of the New Orleans Province will enjoy reading the dissertation. Institutions included for study include: the College of the Immaculate Conception, New Orleans, Louisiana; Spring Hill College, Mobile, Alabama; St. Charles College, Grand Coteau, Louisiana; St. Mary’s College, Galveston, Texas; College of the Sacred Heart, Augusta, Georgia; Loyola College, New Orleans, Louisiana; and Loyola University New Orleans.

Searching for Records of Closed Catholic Women's Colleges

Fernanda Perrone's paper, Vanished Worlds: Searching for the Records of Closed Catholic Women's Colleges, summarizes results of a survey of the archives of 36 Roman Catholic women's colleges that closed or merged with other institutions after 1967. The author notes that many of the archives are held by the religious communities that originally sponsored the colleges. She also notes that the "...archives are rich resources on the history of women, education, religion, and culture that to some degree have been neglected by scholars who have focused on the history of colleges that are still open." The paper includes a table with information on the various archives and their location and was published in Archival Issues, Vol. 30, No. 2, 2006.

Why do colleges fail?

On the Brink of Disaster? an article in August 2009 by David J. Koon on the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy website explores issues facing private higher education. Koon cites statistics from the Department of Education’s Digest of Educational Statistics indicating that only 185 independent four-year institutions shut down between 1977 and 2007. He calculates about an 89 percent survival rate over three decades and comments that most of those that closed were small, relatively unknown colleges with enrollments of fewer than 100 students.

Koon cites an interesting paper, "Why do colleges fail? An analysis of college and university closings and mergers, 1975-2005," written by Stephen R. Porter and Trina J. Ramirez of the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at Iowa State University. These researchers started with the private colleges listed in the 1973 Carnegie classification of institutions and then explored why 10% of these institutions no longer existed as stand-alone institutions by 2005. The work of Porter and Ramirez challenges some commonly held perceptions used to explain why certain institutions are in difficulty.