As usual, opinions expressed herein are my own.
Iowa Wesleyan University will close in May. I first wrote about Iowa Wesleyan — then a College — on this blog in early 2014, when I noted that, despite its firing of nearly half of its faculty members, the long-term decline in the number of Iowa’s high school graduates and changes in the higher ed market made the school’s survival unlikely. As I predicted in 2019 and 2021, its articulation agreement with a community college in another state failed to generate sufficient tuition revenue, and its full-time equivalent (FTE) undergraduate enrollment never rebounded to pre-2008 recession levels.
A few years ago, I stated during a conference panel that any private college or university with an undergraduate FTE below 500 was in danger of closing and that faculty members at such institutions should find jobs elsewhere. I’m revising my recommendation — to an undergraduate FTE of less than 1,000.
I’ll end with this:
IRS tax forms and IPEDS enrollment data indicate that Bethany College in West Virginia is in terrible shape.
A small college in Ohio, name not known to me, was supposedly unable to make payroll last week.