This Week In College Viability (TWICV)

Is it fair to critique the financial health and viability of colleges?I am a sports enthusiast. I rarely care who wins; but I enjoy watching the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat as we used to hear on The Wide World of Sports.Recently, I noticed local and national sport writers and talking heads break down many games to a play by play level. Of course, their analysis is mos

Here are the questions Ben Unglesbee addressed during our podcast interview.With all of the research and report you do, what is your sense of the stability of private colleges for this academic year?Let's talk about the FAFSA Debacle. What is the latest you are hearing? Do you have any best-case and worst-case scenarios for this Fall?You did a lot of reporting on University of the

This week's podcast starts with a WWII sampling bias story that strongly relates to college enrollment. My thanks to Jon Boeckenstedt for making the connection.+ Alverno College received and HLS financial probation letter and nobody knows it.+ Wisconsin week: UW Regents close college and lay off 32 tenured professors+ Spinning Fall enrollment+ Mark La Branche IHE Survivability Is N

If you think colleges are having troubles, here in St. Louis we can’t even get the city kids to school. The great St. Louis bus catastrophe kicks off today. My friend, Blythe Bernhard at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch has done Pulitzer-worthy investigative stories on the colossal failure that is SLPS leadership. It’s not the kids, not the families, not the employees – it’s the

Get the College Viability Student & Family updates here.College classes are beginning to bring students to campus for the Fall 2024 term. While the FAFSA Debacle is still out there, I am sensing some last-minute scrambling by both students and colleges to get the FAFSA app submitted and processed.I am going to stick with my forecast of 2-3 colleges closings per week starting la

St. Ambrose University President Amy Novak and Mount Mercy University President Todd Olson join me to discuss the strategic combination of their two organizations. SummaryDr. Amy Novak, president of St. Ambrose University, and Dr. Todd Olson, president of Mount Mercy University, discuss their strategic combination and the future of Iowa private colleges. They emphasize the need for

The end of July and early August produced a really slow news week in higher education. My google alerts on many higher education topics produced more alumni obituaries than anything else.But then Forbes released their 2024 Financial Grades for Private Colleges over the weekend. I will go into great detail about the article and its meaning for HE.Get the College Viability Student &a

Here are the questions from my interview with Rebeka Mazzone, Founder and CEO of FutureEDFinance.Tell us briefly about Futuredfinance.Talk about finance as a lagging indicator of a college's financial health.I spend a lot of time at institutions that have tried to solve this (operating deficit) problem with quick fixes. They tried short-term bumps in their spending rates, a one-tim

The end of July is upon us. The Olympics are all over the TV and news. I understand there is a presidential election in about 100 days. I just saw 5 Bucks and 3 does wandering through my typical American suburb street.And none of this changes that fact that higher education in general and smaller, private colleges in particular, are headed toward the consequences of a diminishing d

Here are the lead news and commentary stories for July 22, 2024Get the College Viability Student & Family updates here.Layoffs, cutbacks, closures & FAFSA check ins. Folks it is going to be 10-11% decrease in enrollment. Not everywhere, but it will be in colleges that cant’ afford to lose anything like that number of students.+ HLGU (MO) has a dizzy spinning story that I