If COVID-19 makes campus life less attractive, CT universities will pay a stiff price
Yehyun Kim :: ctmirror.org
Harry Zehner, senior at the University of Connecticut, works before attending an online class in his room in New Haven. Zehner decided to live off campus this fall semester to live with friends going to different universities and because of the uncertainty coming from living on campus.
Connecticut’s public colleges and universities have walked on a fiscal knife’s edge for years.
Forced to frequently raise fees and tuition to offset dwindling state aid, higher education faces a new threat from the coronavirus potentially worse than the initial surge that closed campuses last spring.
If COVID makes campus life less attractive, CT colleges could pay price
Dec. 22, 2020
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Connecticut’s public colleges and universities have walked on a fiscal knife’s edge for years.
Forced to frequently raise fees and tuition to offset dwindling state aid, higher education faces a new threat from the coronavirus potentially worse than the initial surge that closed campuses last spring.
Simply put, what happens if students decide it’s cheaper or healthier to learn remotely, even after the pandemic?
Even a small shift in attitudes that saps 10 percent or 20 percent of fee receipts could push systems already in fiscal jeopardy into grave peril.
At Marquette, university officials are using the book Demographics and the Demand for Higher Education, published in 2018 by Nathan Grawe, as their guide to realignment. Grawe’s book describes declining birth rates within multiple demographic groups, leading to a decline in the demand for higher education. Those changes mean the university needs to plan for a smaller Marquette, officials have said.
“We do not want to build a university on the hope that students will come,” Marquette provost Kimo Ah Yu is quoted as saying in approved Academic Senate meeting minutes.
A recently approved Marquette budget document cuts 225 of the university’s 2,811 faculty and staff, Wisconsin Public Radio reported. Expenses will be cut to the tune of $41 million compared to last fiscal year, and a surplus of $12 million will provide room for investing in projects of strategic priority,” the document says.
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The College of Saint Rose, located in Albany, N.Y., is cutting 16 majors and six master’s degrees, including programs in chemistry, math and music.
The University of Evansville, in Indiana, has proposed eliminating 17 majors and three departments: philosophy and religion, music, and electrical engineering and computer science.
Finally, Marquette University, in Milwaukee, is planning to terminate 225 faculty and staff positions this year.
The three religiously affiliated institutions are just the latest to take a paring knife to their academic programs. An unsparing approach to cuts, administrators have said, is necessary to survive acute financial challenges.