Student Union
- By Pete Musto
Small, Private Colleges in Danger of Closing
The same might be said for St. Catharine College in Kentucky or Bethany University in California.
But these schools had two things in common: They were small, private colleges, and they closed in the past 10 years.
The U.S. has over 4,700 colleges and universities. Almost every year some older schools close, while other schools open.
Now, experts are warning that more small, private colleges will close down. Yearly closings may triple by 2017, they say, representing a 200 percent increase compared to two years ago.
Moody’s Investor Service rates the value and success of companies and organizations. Last year, it released a report about U.S. college closures, and said about five colleges or universities closed every year in the past.
But closures may reach as high as 15 by next year. It said small colleges are the most at risk.
The report defines small colleges as any private school with operating revenue below $100 million. Public colleges were defined as those with revenue below $200 million.
Dennis Gephardt is a leader of the higher education team at Moody’s. He points out that the predicted number of closures is less than 1 percent of non-profit colleges and universities in the U.S. He said it is difficult for small, private colleges to compete with bigger schools.
First, bigger schools can accept more students. This means more revenue through tuition.
An endowment is the amount of money a college or university receives from donations and earnings on investments. Schools often use their endowments to help pay for their day-to-day operations. Endowments can also help pay for operating costs if there is ever a decrease in tuition dollars.
Larger schools often have larger endowments, or donations. Traditionally, schools ask graduates to donate money to their school to improve programs and facilities.
Bigger schools can offer more programs and can afford to advertise more widely. In some cases, Gephardt says, bigger schools offer more variety than smaller schools for the same cost.
The economic recession in the U.S. forced many students to think about value, he adds, meaning they thought about what they would get in return for the price they were paying. More students considered bigger, public colleges that could offer more financial aid. He says this forced smaller colleges to compete with each.
"They compete and compete ferociously on price," he says. Weaker schools couldn't keep up.
One school that faced hard times is Sweet Briar College in Virginia.
Sweet Briar, a private women’s college, opened in 1901. In 2015, its governing board announced it would close Sweet Briar. It did not discuss its decision with students, teachers or workers.
Students had to find new schools; employees had to find new jobs.
But news of the closure spread. Sweet Briar College alumni and students fought back.
Faculty members and parents took legal action against the board. They argued that their children did not receive the full education the school promised them.
By July 2015, courts ordered the removal of the board’s members and stopped the school from closing. The alumni chose a new president, Philip Stone.
Stone had many years of experience as an educator and college president. But when he arrived at Sweet Briar, about 60 percent of the faculty and staff had already taken new jobs. And he had only six weeks to prepare before fall classes opened.
Stone brought back 200 faculty and staff members. He rescheduled athletic events. He regained Sweet Briar’s accreditation.
The alumni raised more than $20 million over 12 months to pay legal and operating costs.
When the college started the 2015 fall term, it had only 240 students. But Stone saus Sweet Briar’s financial performance for the 2015 to 2016 school year was the strongest in its history.
Stone said he believes Sweet Briar will grow and return to its former standing. He said he believes the strong connection between students at a small college is the reason.
"A graduate three years out of school might call someone she had never met across the country somewhere, maybe out of school 50 years earlier, and they immediately bond by their feeling of being sisters from this special environment of a women’s college," he says.
David Warren, head of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, says the best chance small, private colleges have for success is understanding their own value. Small colleges can offer more personal experiences with smaller class sizes. And often, they can specialize in subjects like nursing or religious studies.
But most importantly, Warren says, small colleges must learn to cut costs. They will be able to compete with larger schools if they can find ways to reduce tuition prices and manage their own money better.
"These little colleges have been around, some for 150 or 200 years. They have an extraordinary dedication by alumni and friends and the local community in which they are located. And there’s a saying around a long time, which is ‘One of the hardest thing to kill is a small private college."
VOA Learning English reported this story.
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Lily Meskers faced an unexpected choice in the lead-up to the first major election she can vote in.
The 19-year-old University of Montana sprinter was among college athletes in the state who received an inquiry from Montana Together asking if she was interested in a name, image and likeness deal to support Sen. Jon Tester, a three-term Democrat seeking re-election. The group, which is not affiliated with the Tester campaign, offered from $400 to $2,400 to athletes willing to produce video endorsements.
Meskers, who is from Colorado but registered to vote in Montana, decided against the deal because she disagrees with Tester's votes on legislation involving transgender athletes in sports.
"I was like, OK, I believe that this is a political move to try to gain back some voters that he might have lost," Meskers said. "And me being a female student-athlete myself, I was not going to give my endorsement to someone who I felt didn't have the same support for me."
Professional athletes such as LeBron James, Colin Kaepernick and Stephen Curry have taken high-profile stances on hot-button topics and political campaigns in recent years, but college athletes are far less outspoken — even if money is available, according to experts in the NIL field. Being outwardly political can reflect on their school or endanger potential endorsement deals from brands that don't want controversy. It can certainly establish a public image for an athlete — for better or for worse — or lead to tensions with teammates and coaches who might not feel the same way.
There are examples of political activism by college athletes: A Texas Tech kicker revealed his support for former President Donald Trump on a shirt under his uniform at a game last week and a handful of Nebraska athletes a few days ago teamed up in a campaign ad against an abortion measure on the Tuesday's ballot.
Still, such steps are considered rare.
"It can be viewed as risky and there may be people telling them just don't even take that chance because they haven't made it yet," said Lauren Walsh, who started a sports branding agency 15 years ago. She said there is often too much to lose for themselves, their handlers and in some cases, their families.
"And these individuals still have to figure out what they're going to do with the rest of their lives, even those that do end up getting drafted," she added.
College coaches are not always as reticent. Auburn men's basketball coach Bruce Pearl has used social media to make it clear he does not support Kamala Harris, Trump's Democratic opponent in next week's presidential election. Oklahoma State football coach Mike Gundy once caused a stir with a star player for wearing a shirt promoting a far-right news outlet.
Blake Lawrence, co-founder of the NIL platform Opendorse, noted that this is the first presidential election in the NIL era, which began in July 2021. He said athletes are flocking to opportunities to help increase voter turnout in the 18-to-24 age demographic, adding that one of his company's partners has had 86 athletes post social media messages encouraging turnout through the first half of the week.
He said athletes are shying away from endorsing specific candidates or causes that are considered partisan.
"Student-athletes are, for the most part, still developing their confidence in endorsing any type of product or service," he said. "So if they are hesitant to put their weight behind supporting a local restaurant or an e-commerce product, then they are certainly going to be hesitant to use their social channels in a political way."
Giving athletes a voice
Many college athletes have opted to focus on drumming up turnout in a non-partisan manner or simply using their platforms to take stands that are not directly political in nature. Some of those efforts can be found in battleground states.
A progressive group called NextGen America said it had signed players in Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Virginia to encourage voting among young people. Another organization, The Team, said it prepped 27 college athletes in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Arizona and Michigan to lead volunteer voter participation opportunities for students. The organization also said it got more than 625 coaches to sign a nonpartisan pledge to get their athletes registered to vote.
The Team's executive director is Joe Kennedy, a former coach who coordinated championship visits and other sporting events at the White House during President Barack Obama's administration. In early October, it hosted a Zoom event during which panelists such as NCAA President Charlie Baker and WNBA players Nneka Ogwumike and Natasha Cloud gave college athletes advice about using their platforms on campus.
In its early days, The Team seized upon momentum from the record turnout seen in the 2020 election. The NCAA that year said Division I athletes could have Election Day off from practice and play to vote. Lisa Kay Solomon, founder of the All Vote No Play campaign, said even if the athletes don't immediately take stands on controversial issues, it's important for them to learn how.
"It is a lot to ask our young people to feel capable and confident on skills they've never had a chance to practice," Solomon said. "We have to model what it means to practice taking risks, practice standing up for yourself, practice pausing to think about what are the values that you care about — not what social media is feeding into your brain, but what do you care about and how do you express that? And how do you do it in a way that honors the kind of future that you want to be a part of?"
Shut up and play?
Two years ago, Tennessee-Martin quarterback Dresser Winn said he would support a candidate in a local district attorney general race in what experts said was very likely the first political NIL deal by a college athlete.
There have been very few since.
The public criticism and fallout for athletes who speak out on politics or social issue can be sharp. Kaepernick, the Super Bowl-winning quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers, hasn't played in an NFL game since January 2017, not long after he began kneeling during the national anthem at games.
Meskers, the Montana sprinter, said political endorsements through NIL deals could create problems for athletes and their schools.
"I just think that NIL is going to run into a lot of trouble and a lot of struggles if they continue to let athletes do political endorsements," she said. "I just think it's messy. But I stand by NIL as a whole. I think it's really hard as a student athlete to create a financial income and support yourself."
Walsh said it's easier for wealthy and veteran stars like James and Ogwumike to take stands. James, the Los Angeles Lakers star, started More Than a Vote — an organization with a mission to "educate, energize and protect Black voters" — in 2020. He has passed the leadership to Ogwumike, who just finished her 13th year in the WNBA and also is the president of the Women's National Basketball Players Association. More than a Vote is focused on women's rights and reproductive freedom this year.
"They have very established brands," Walsh said. "They know who they are and they know what their political stance is. They know that they have a really strong following that -- there's always going to be haters, but they're also always going to have that strong following of people who listen to everything that they have to say."
Andra Gillespie, an associate professor at Emory University who teaches African American politics, also said it is rare that a college athlete would make a significant impact with a political stand simply because they tend to have a more regional platform than national. Even celebrities like Taylor Swift and Eminem are better at increasing turnout than championing candidates.
"They are certainly very beneficial in helping to drive up turnout among their fans," Gillespie said. "The data is less conclusive about whether or not they're persuasive – are they the ones who are going to persuade you to vote for a particular candidate?"
Athletes as influencers
Still, campaigns know young voters are critical this election cycle, and athletes offer an effective and familiar voice to reach them.
Political and social topics are not often broached, but this week six Nebraska athletes — five softball players and a volleyball player — appeared in an ad paid for by the group Protect Women and Children involving two initiatives about abortion laws on Tuesday's ballot.
The female athletes backed Initiative 434, which would amend the state constitution to prohibit abortions after the first trimester, with exceptions. Star softball player Jordy Bahl said on social media that the athletes were not paid.
A University of Montana spokesperson said two athletes initially agreed to take part in the NIL deal backing Tester. The school said one withdrew and the other declined to be interviewed.
For Meskers, deciding against the offer boiled down to Tester twice voting against proposals to bar federal funds from going to schools that allow transgender athletes to play women's sports, a prominent GOP campaign topic. Tester's campaign said the proposals were amendments to government spending packages, and he didn't want to play a role in derailing them as government shutdowns loomed.
"As a former public school teacher and school board member, Jon Tester believes these decisions should be made at the local level," a Tester spokesperson said. "He has never voted to allow men to compete against women."
Meskers said she believes using influence as college athletes is good and she is in favor of NIL. She just doesn't think the two should mix specifically for supporting candidates.
"I think especially as student athletes, we do have such a big voice and we do have a platform to use," she said. "So I think if you're encouraging people to do their civic duties and get up and go (vote), I think that's a great thing."
