Showing posts with label Vote of No Confidence. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Vote of No Confidence. Show all posts

Sunday, February 12, 2017

St. Joseph's College is closing: Is the bell tolling for small liberal arts colleges?

St. Joseph's College, which was founded in 1889, is  shutting its doors in May. Officials cited several reasons for  closing: fierce competition for students, accreditation problems and increased federal regulation. St. Joseph's president, Robert Pastoor, said the college will need $100 million to reopen; and the college's friends and alumni are hoping to raise the funds.

Students organized a vote of no confidence against Pastoor and four other college leaders, but St. Joseph's decline and fall may not have been their fault. Small liberal arts colleges are in a precarious position all over the United States. The U.S. Department of Education has 500 colleges on its heightened-cash-monitoring watch list; and many of the schools on that list are small liberal arts colleges.

St. Joseph's, with only 900 students, just didn't have the resources to successfully navigate its way through rough financial waters. St. Catharine College, another small Catholic liberal arts college, announced it is closing less than a year ago. Like St. Joseph's, St. Catharine College cited increased federal regulation as one of the factors that brought it down.

By and large, the higher education community is made up of liberal Democrats; and almost no one protested the deluge of regulations that came out of the Department of Education during the Obama administration. Public universities, large private universities, and institutions with healthy endowment funds have been able to weather the tightening regulatory environment. Indeed, they have no choice. Virtually no college or university can survive without regular infusions of federal student aid money--and that money comes with regulatory strings attached.

Without question, many small liberal arts colleges are going to be squeezed out of existence over the next few years due to the same challenges that St. Joseph's and St. Catherine faced. Those that survive will have this profile:
  • Tuition rates below their competition; 
  • Strong academic programs that lead to good jobs such as jobs in medicine, health sciences, or criminal justice; 
  • High teaching standards; and
  • Endowment funds to buffer economic stress.
Many college and university leaders deplore the appointment of the new Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos.  You can probably count DeVos's higher-education supporters on the fingers of one hand.

But maybe college leaders should give DeVos a chance to address the financial crisis in higher education before attacking her. If she acts sensibly to trim the thicket of federal regulation, it is quite possible that more small liberal arts colleges will survive.

And surely that would be a good thing.



References

Meredith Colias. Rensselaer stunned after announcement of St. Joseph's closure. Chicago Post-Tribune, February 10, 2016.

Alexandra Kruczek & Alexis Moberger. St. Joseph's College president will call it quits in May. WLFI.com, February 9, 2017.

Another Small Private Closes Its Doors. Inside Higher Ed, June 1, 2016. Accesible at https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2016/06/01/another-small-private-closes-its-doors-dowling-college?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=a0fafeb056-DNU20160601&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-a0fafeb056-198564813

Paul Fain. The Department and St. Catharine.  Inside Higher Ed, June 2, 2016. Accessible at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/06/02/small-private-college-closes-blames-education-department-sanction?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=3d1c6eed79-DNU20160602&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-3d1c6eed79-198565653


Monday, May 19, 2014

The Abu Dhabi Scandal: New York University Should Be Kicked Out of the Federal Student Loan Program

Today's New York Times carried a front-page story about New York University's recently constructed campus in Abu Dhabi.  According to the Times, the campus was built by immigrant laborers who worked under harsh conditions for salaries of as little as $272 a month.

Photo credit: NYU Photo Bureau



  


New York University pledged that the Abu Dhabi campus would be built by construction workers who would work under humane conditions and receive fair wages; but apparently that did not happen.  As many as 15 workers lived in tiny rooms, and apparently they were not paid the wages that had been promised to them.  When workers went on strike, the police were called in; and some of the workers were beaten.

New York University is a private institution with extremely high tuition--about $64,000 a year for tuition, room and board.  NYU students graduate with some of the highest student-loan debt levels in the country.  In 2010, NYU students graduated with a total of $659 million in student loans. That's right--nearly two-thirds of a billion!

Nevertheless, John Sexton, NYU's president, is compensated at an obscene level; and the university operates as if it should be answerable to nobody. And when I say obscene--I mean obscene.  President Sexton makes almost $1.5 million per year and is guaranteed a "length of service" bonus of $2.5 million.  When he retires--supposedly in 2016--he will receive annual retirement income of $800,000 a year.  Oh yeah--and he also get an apartment near Washington Square.

Here are a few other recent stories of unseemly behavior by this behemoth institution.
  •  According to a recent news story, the university provides a luxury apartment for scholar Henry Louis Gates at below-market rent. Professor Gates is not even employed by NYU; he works at Harvard.
  • NYU paid Jacob Lew, now Secretary of the Treasury, an exit bonus of several hundred thousand dollars when Lew left NYU to go to work in private industry.
  • NYU gave President Sexton and other favored faculty members low interest loans to purchase second homes. For example, a former law school dean and his wife used a NYU loan to buy a 65-acre estate in Connecticut. 
NYU has the right to operate as it wishes and to disregard its many critics.  The governing board has paid no attention to a vote of no confidence in Sexton's leadership that the Arts & Science faculty issued in 2013.

But does NYU deserve to participate in the Federal student loan program, which is financed by American taxpayers, when it shows so little regard to financial propriety?

I don't think so.  If it wants to pay its president more than $1 million a year and start a high-profile campus in the Middle East, let it do so.  But NYU should not benefit from a federal student loan program that was intended to provide broader access to higher education--not subsidize a lavish and unseemly enterprise.

References

Jake Flanagin. The Expensive Romance of NYU. Atlantic, August 13, 2013. Available at: http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/08/the-expensive-romance-of-nyu/278904/

Ariel Kaminer &  Alain Delaquieriere. N.Y.U. Gives Its Stars Loans for Summer Homes. New York Times, June 17,2013.

Ariel Kaminer & Sean O'Driscoll. Worker's at N.Y.U.'s Abu Dhabi Site Face Harsh Conditions. New York Times, May 19, 2014, p. 1.

Abby Ohlheiser. John Sexton will officially leave NYU in 2016. The Wire, August 14, 2013. Available at: http://www.thewire.com/national/2013/08/john-sexton-will-officially-leave-nyu-2016/68346/

Bruce Wright, Harvard Prof. Henry Louis Gates Gets Unreal Housing Perks from NYU. Boston.com, May 17, 2014. Available at: http://www.boston.com/news/nation/2014/05/17/harvard-prof-henry-louis-gates-gets-unreal-housing-perks-from-nyu/pXTFg7YDd3BMSekltbQ4tI/story.html