DePaul University/Buffalo Colleges Cancel Merger

[MICKEY]

This article was posted on the Fairfield fan board, so I thought some on this board might find the article interesting and concerning.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... nt-shrinks

[le]

It's just not DePaul facing an enrollment crisis. With the shifting demographics working against small expensive private schools, enrollments will continues to decline at an alarming rate.

In four years, the number of students graduating from high schools across the country will begin a sudden and precipitous decline, due to a rolling demographic aftershock of the Great Recession (2018). Traumatized by uncertainty and unemployment, people decided to stop having kids during that period. But even as we climbed out of the recession, the birth rate kept dropping, and we are now starting to see the consequences on campuses everywhere. Classes will shrink, year after year, for most of the next two decades. People in the higher education industry call it “the enrollment cliff... Private colleges are even more vulnerable. Many have small financial endowments and get by year to year on tuition revenue. Unluckily for them, private colleges are disproportionately located in the Northeast and Midwest — the same regions that will be hit hardest by declining enrollment. When they shut down, they leave a void of employment and tax revenue that local communities can’t easily fill.

The near future of higher education is on of decline, and it's consequences will reshape the American landscape.

FULL STORY:

https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/23428 ... tion-crash

Nathan Grawe, an economist at Carleton College in Minnesota, predicts that the college-going population will drop by 15 percent between 2025 and 2029 and continue to decline by another percentage point or two thereafter.
“When the financial crisis hit in 2008, young people viewed that economic uncertainty as a cause for reducing fertility,” said Grawe. “The number of kids born from 2008 to 2011 fell precipitously. Fast forward 18 years to 2026 and we see that there are fewer kids reaching college-going age.

FULL STORY:

https://hechingerreport.org/college-stu ... year-2025/

[MICKEY]

Something a little closer to home


https://www.highereddive.com/news/medai ... on/647066/

[MICKEY]

It’s only been 20 days since my post it was on and now it’s off.

https://www.wkbw.com/news/local-news/me ... dLnI2SMDvs

[Truthful]

https://spectrumlocalnews.com/nys/james ... -of-august

[MICKEY]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medaille_University

What I found interesting in the Wikipedia article is that they sold their Buffalo campus to Trocaire back in January. That campus is adjacent to the Canisius campus. You have to wonder if this opens the door for Trocaire and Canisius to consider a merger or cooperative agreement of some form. Does Canisius have a nursings school?


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trocaire_College

[phillyeagle]

Good chance for a few more students for NU as the consolidation of private colleges occurs.

https://news.niagara.edu/news/show/niag ... -agreement.

[MICKEY]

I always felt the Little Three schools were adversely effected when all of the historic Catholic women’s colleges in WNY survived the ‘70s and ‘80s.. They became coed and competed for students with the three. Considering the relatively weak WNY economy it is hard to understand how that could happen when their sister schools were closing or merging in most other northeast markets. Has anyone seen any details on how Trocaire was able to acquire the Medaille campus and whether it includes their new athletic facility in south Buffalo near the Tesla plant. Both properties would certainly have some value.

[jhart]

Merger died and Medaille closes its doors in August.

[MICKEY]

While this article was written prior to Medaille’s closure announcement it has added information about the two institutions.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/bus ... eal-called