Lumina Foundation is working to increase the share of adults in the U.S. labor force with college degrees or other credentials of value leading to economic prosperity.
It's a question that's rarely talked about: What actually happens when a college reaches the point where it just can't survive anymore? It turns out every closure is a complicated mix of finance, operations, teach-out arrangements for students, community impact, thinking about where the faculty and staff go, and a myriad of emotions.
As a partner of a firm that manages college closures, Doug Moore knows firsthand about some of the hardest moments an institution can face. In this interview, he offers a candid look at why colleges close, what warning signs leaders often miss, why mergers so often fail, and what's really lost when a campus disappears.
St. John’s College adopted its "Great Books" approach in 1937, and it has remained largely unchanged since the 1970s. The tiny campus offers only one undergraduate major. It has no cutting-edge disciplines or high-tech classrooms. In fact, none of the trappings of modern teaching exist here. Instead, students make their way in tandem through a series of texts—most of them foundational to the disciplines—over four years together.
St. John’s approach may be unfashionable, but the college has something that many envy: a student body that strives to grow intellectually, embraces ambiguity, and revels in deep reading.
While financial deficits at private colleges and regional public institutions have become so common that they’re almost a daily story in the media, budget pressures are now threatening more flagship universities. For years, people have presumed that these large, leading public institutions are relatively resistant to financial difficulties.
That presumption no longer holds. In the past month alone, four flagship universities have announced multi-million dollar budget deficits, a combination of federal cutbacks to research funding, ongoing enrollment challenges, and rising inflation.
The credential landscape is vast and growing. Credential Engine calculates that more than 134,000 providers offer nearly 1.9 million unique credentials, with $2.34 trillion invested annually in education and workforce development.
But too little is done to help learners connect these pieces and move from one opportunity to another. The routes are often there, but the map is weak. That’s why the idea of a talent marketplace, which helps people identify opportunities and understand the skills those opportunities require, is worth our attention. And community colleges can play a central role in this navigation effort.
When immigration agents pounded on his family’s apartment door in 2019, 15-year-old Jair Solis stood between them and his father, refusing to let agents inside without the proper warrant. Seven years later, Solis became the first in his family to earn a college degree, graduating from the University of California-Merced two months after his mom became a permanent U.S. resident.
The milestone is one that had long felt out of reach for Solis after years of navigating family detention, fears of deportation, and immigration raids.
The University of Arkansas Community College at Batesville is aiming not only to rebuild Arkansas' pipeline for farmers and ranchers but also to make the college a regional hub for agriculture, according to Chancellor Brian Shonk.
That's the goal of the school's new Farm and Ranch Management program, which is slated to launch this fall. Shonk believes the FARM program can function for Batesville college as athletics does for some other two-year colleges: bringing in students who otherwise might not have considered higher education.
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