Urbana University To Cease Operations

 
Honestly this doesn't surprise me in the slightest. They were struggling when they were bought by Franklin university. The state probably could try to establish a branch of Clark State there or a new community College entirely.
 
It's a school with 350 undergraduate or graduate students, participating in an NCAA Division II conference with long travel, that isn't even its own school. The string was probably running out on Franklin University of Champaign County to begin with, and now they have their cop-out.
 
Well when you only have 320 students at the physical campus and more than 900 online with Franklin University I can see where they had issues but still very unfortunate for everyone involved.
 
Maybe not closing the entire campus but I'm guessing we'll see a lot of colleges drop certain sports. Will be a large list if we can't get football in.
 
Wright State may not be far behind.

It has been theorized for a while that Toledo and Bowling Green were already struggling to co-exist, could one of these be in trouble or a merger imminent? Same out east (Akron and Kent State, if I remember correctly? Not positive on that memory.)

I know Miami already had financial difficulties, but would think it will survive:

GDPR Support

www.daytondailynews.com

According to Forbes, Wittenberg was already in trouble for years:
www.forbes.com

Is Your College Going Broke? The Most And Least Financially Fit Schools In America

Parents and students spend vast amounts of time and money trying to find a school that is the right fit academically and socially. They'd be wise to pay more attention to colleges' financial health.
www.forbes.com www.forbes.com

Forbes also rated Ashland, Wilberforce and Malone as financially iffy and Ohio Dominican as really in trouble. Urbana was rated really bad.

Oberlin has been rumored to be on the edge for years:
legalinsurrection.com

Radical fallout: Oberlin College enrollment drops, causing financial problems

Is social justice war coming home to roost at Oberlin, as it did at Mizzou and Evergreen State?
legalinsurrection.com legalinsurrection.com
 
Rangerfan said:
Wright State may not be far behind.

It has been theorized for a while that Toledo and Bowling Green were already struggling to co-exist, could one of these be in trouble or a merger imminent? Same out east (Akron and Kent State, if I remember correctly? Not positive on that memory.)

I know Miami already had financial difficulties, but would think it will survive:

GDPR Support

www.daytondailynews.com

According to Forbes, Wittenberg was already in trouble for years:
www.forbes.com

Is Your College Going Broke? The Most And Least Financially Fit Schools In America

Parents and students spend vast amounts of time and money trying to find a school that is the right fit academically and socially. They'd be wise to pay more attention to colleges' financial health.
www.forbes.com www.forbes.com

Forbes also rated Ashland, Wilberforce and Malone as financially iffy and Ohio Dominican as really in trouble. Urbana was rated really bad.

Oberlin has been rumored to be on the edge for years:
legalinsurrection.com

Radical fallout: Oberlin College enrollment drops, causing financial problems

Is social justice war coming home to roost at Oberlin, as it did at Mizzou and Evergreen State?
legalinsurrection.com legalinsurrection.com
Click to expand...
Wright state was so poorly ran that that wouldn't surprise me. The only thing that would concern me is what would become of the Lake Campus
 
Rangerfan said:
Wright State may not be far behind.

It has been theorized for a while that Toledo and Bowling Green were already struggling to co-exist, could one of these be in trouble or a merger imminent? Same out east (Akron and Kent State, if I remember correctly? Not positive on that memory.)

I know Miami already had financial difficulties, but would think it will survive:

GDPR Support

www.daytondailynews.com

According to Forbes, Wittenberg was already in trouble for years:
www.forbes.com

Is Your College Going Broke? The Most And Least Financially Fit Schools In America

Parents and students spend vast amounts of time and money trying to find a school that is the right fit academically and socially. They'd be wise to pay more attention to colleges' financial health.
www.forbes.com www.forbes.com

Forbes also rated Ashland, Wilberforce and Malone as financially iffy and Ohio Dominican as really in trouble. Urbana was rated really bad.

Oberlin has been rumored to be on the edge for years:
legalinsurrection.com

Radical fallout: Oberlin College enrollment drops, causing financial problems

Is social justice war coming home to roost at Oberlin, as it did at Mizzou and Evergreen State?
legalinsurrection.com legalinsurrection.com
Click to expand...

I think Kent was on pretty stable ground prior to this and maybe even seeing positive growth.

Akron, however, I know was in pretty dire straits financially even before. Their InfoCision Stadium project was a huge boulder around their necks, among other things.

Miami's rainy day fund is pretty robust, and as much as double that of my alma mater in Athens. I am pretty impressed that they are sending funds to students.
 
Rangerfan said:
Wright State may not be far behind.

It has been theorized for a while that Toledo and Bowling Green were already struggling to co-exist, could one of these be in trouble or a merger imminent? Same out east (Akron and Kent State, if I remember correctly? Not positive on that memory.)

I know Miami already had financial difficulties, but would think it will survive:

GDPR Support

www.daytondailynews.com

According to Forbes, Wittenberg was already in trouble for years:
www.forbes.com

Is Your College Going Broke? The Most And Least Financially Fit Schools In America

Parents and students spend vast amounts of time and money trying to find a school that is the right fit academically and socially. They'd be wise to pay more attention to colleges' financial health.
www.forbes.com www.forbes.com

Forbes also rated Ashland, Wilberforce and Malone as financially iffy and Ohio Dominican as really in trouble. Urbana was rated really bad.

Oberlin has been rumored to be on the edge for years:
legalinsurrection.com

Radical fallout: Oberlin College enrollment drops, causing financial problems

Is social justice war coming home to roost at Oberlin, as it did at Mizzou and Evergreen State?
legalinsurrection.com legalinsurrection.com
Click to expand...

FWIW, Oberlin's endowment was valued at $888 million at the end of the 2018 fiscal year.
Wittenberg's was $107 million at the end of the 2017 fiscal year.
Ashland's was $41.3 million at end of 2017 fiscal year.
Ohio Dominican's was $24.1 million at the end of the 2017 fiscal year.
Malone's was $19.4 million at the end of the 2017 fiscal year.
Wilberforce's was $8.14 million as of the end of the 2017 fiscal year.
No endowment info is available for Urbana.
 
Mr. Slippery said:
FWIW, Oberlin's endowment was valued at $888 million at the end of the 2018 fiscal year.
Wittenberg's was $107 million at the end of the 2017 fiscal year.
Ashland's was $41.3 million at end of 2017 fiscal year.
Ohio Dominican's was $24.1 million at the end of the 2017 fiscal year.
Malone's was $19.4 million at the end of the 2017 fiscal year.
Wilberforce's was $8.14 million as of the end of the 2017 fiscal year.
No endowment info is available for Urbana.
Click to expand...

Yep. Oberlin has a huge endowment and a national reputation. They will be fine. All the money they save on water when the students have their "don't shower for a week" contest in the spring will see them through.
 
I never really gave small colleges a lot of thought in this situation. Urbana shutting down may be just the start of a trend. Most of these schools get a huge amount of revenue from student athletes. There is no way these schools will sustain without they're enrollment. Wilmington College for example has barely been hanging on for years. Their big drawl is sports medicine and sports management. This program is hardly a field and career that anyone would want to consider in the current environment. The economical cost of Wilmington college shutting down would be devastating to this poor little town. I'm also thinking about all these young coaches that are coming up with no health care, retirement, and job security. Where do these guys go? Gyms, fitness centers, coaching, and teaching opportunity's will be extremely limited. If football is cancelled this fall, I'm thinking the traditional college experience may be lost for several years to come.
 
Mr. Slippery said:
FWIW, Oberlin's endowment was valued at $888 million at the end of the 2018 fiscal year.
Wittenberg's was $107 million at the end of the 2017 fiscal year.
Ashland's was $41.3 million at end of 2017 fiscal year.
Ohio Dominican's was $24.1 million at the end of the 2017 fiscal year.
Malone's was $19.4 million at the end of the 2017 fiscal year.
Wilberforce's was $8.14 million as of the end of the 2017 fiscal year.
No endowment info is available for Urbana.
Click to expand...
What about a school like Bluffton U?
 
OUcats82 said:
I think Kent was on pretty stable ground prior to this and maybe even seeing positive growth.

Akron, however, I know was in pretty dire straits financially even before. Their InfoCision Stadium project was a huge boulder around their necks, among other things.

Miami's rainy day fund is pretty robust, and as much as double that of my alma mater in Athens. I am pretty impressed that they are sending funds to students.
Click to expand...

.....and Miami and O who can raise money quickly, if need be.
 
As someone who follows this type of thing, I can almost say with certainty that at least 100 colleges nationwide will be going under within the next two years. Possibly much higher. The outlook for smaller schools was bad to begin with for a number of reasons. Covid is just the final straw.
Urbana has become a CCP diploma mill and had run into serious trouble with their accrediting agency because of it. Their reputation never recovered.
 
Urbana has 300 on campus students but they offer 20 sports teams? Can anybody fill me in on what I’m missing. That can’t be right.
 
cardzfan1234 said:
Urbana has 300 on campus students but they offer 20 sports teams? Can anybody fill me in on what I’m missing. That can’t be right.
Click to expand...

Splitting hairs here but their athletics website only lists 19 sports. To add insult to injury?? the water polo team's website doesn't work.

With that being said I did a quick look at the sports that typically don't field large rosters at any given school and UU only had 12 kids in their XC program for both boys and girls, 17 wrestlers, 12 golfers (boys and girls), 14 swimmers (boys and girls). That's 55 kids across 7 of the sports.

Its interesting that UU was fielding boys volleyball, acrobatics (which is popping up at a lot of small schools lately it seems) and apparently water polo. I feel like they just started their wrestling and swim programs recently. My guess is all this was done to try to just get enrollment numbers up some how some way.

I'd be curious as to what percentage of their roughly 300 person enrollment was on a sports team. UU is not the only one. There are two Division 2 schools down here in South Carolina that have small enrollments where more than half the student body is on a varsity sports team.
 
Here is a web site that grades the financial health of all private colleges. It isn’t a pretty picture and this was from fall 2019 before the viral outbreak. Urbana received a C grade and there were tons of schools with lower grades than that. You can kiss most of those goodbye.

www.forbes.com

Dawn Of The Dead: For Hundreds Of The Nation’s Private Colleges, It’s Merge Or Perish

How financially fit is your Alma mater? Forbes' 2019 College Financial Grades paint a grim picture for most.
www.forbes.com www.forbes.com
 
There are definite tiers of small schools here in Ohio as far as financial sustainability. The top tier are all also competitive academic institutions that draw most of their kids from out of state- Chicago, California and the East Coast. Oberlin, case western, Denison, OWU, Kenyon, DePauw to name a few. You need good grades/test scores/resume and a fat wallet to attend those (yes even as a student athlete unless you qualify for financial aid) and their endowments are in the hundreds of millions, not tens.
Colleges were already bracing for a drop off in the pool of college kids over the next 10 years.
 
scbuckeye99 said:
Splitting hairs here but their athletics website only lists 19 sports. To add insult to injury?? the water polo team's website doesn't work.

With that being said I did a quick look at the sports that typically don't field large rosters at any given school and UU only had 12 kids in their XC program for both boys and girls, 17 wrestlers, 12 golfers (boys and girls), 14 swimmers (boys and girls). That's 55 kids across 7 of the sports.

Its interesting that UU was fielding boys volleyball, acrobatics (which is popping up at a lot of small schools lately it seems) and apparently water polo. I feel like they just started their wrestling and swim programs recently. My guess is all this was done to try to just get enrollment numbers up some how some way.

I'd be curious as to what percentage of their roughly 300 person enrollment was on a sports team. UU is not the only one. There are two Division 2 schools down here in South Carolina that have small enrollments where more than half the student body is on a varsity sports team.
Click to expand...
At some smaller colleges, a coach's main job is to attract tuition-paying students. The administration couldn't care less about if the team wins or loses in that case unless there is a financial gain to be made from winning (ex. more alumni donations to the school).

Had a kid from my HS go to Urbana on a bowling scholarship. They were giving him $10k to bowl. Coincidentally, he was a freshman in 2014 when the school's financial issues gained publicity. He couldn't transfer fast enough.
 
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ringer2 said:
As someone who follows this type of thing, I can almost say with certainty that at least 100 colleges nationwide will be going under within the next two years. Possibly much higher. The outlook for smaller schools was bad to begin with for a number of reasons. Covid is just the final straw.
Urbana has become a CCP diploma mill and had run into serious trouble with their accrediting agency because of it. Their reputation never recovered.
Click to expand...
Crazy thing about this pandemic is it is laying waste to every weakness in its path whether it be a weakness with personal health, public health, business, education, you name it.

I've seen the booklets that they distribute alongside the standardized tests that list all the college codes, so the examinees can indicate where to send their test scores. Those booklets are so thick that I was always left wondering "how in the heck do all these schools make it?"
 
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Kballer said:
There are definite tiers of small schools here in Ohio as far as financial sustainability. The top tier are all also competitive academic institutions that draw most of their kids from out of state- Chicago, California and the East Coast. Oberlin, case western, Denison, OWU, Kenyon, DePauw to name a few. You need good grades/test scores/resume and a fat wallet to attend those (yes even as a student athlete unless you qualify for financial aid) and their endowments are in the hundreds of millions, not tens.
Colleges were already bracing for a drop off in the pool of college kids over the next 10 years.
Click to expand...
A major topic of discussion among these schools has been the 2027 enrollment cliff, in which low birth rates beginning after the last financial crisis will result in a 9% drop in the college age population. It’s really a doomsday scenario for many colleges. And all will feel the effects in some way.
 
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