One morning in late January, Valorie Stover Quarles walked into the auditorium at the Watkins College of Art. As chair of the Faculty Senate and a film professor there for 25 years, she knew that the Tennessee institution had seen some tough years. It had only a $3-million endowment. Tuition had gone up more than 17 percent in four years. And enrollment had declined. But she wasn’t prepared for the news President Joseph Kline dropped on them that day: Watkins, with its nearly 200 students and 47 faculty members, would be merging in the fall with Belmont University, a Christian institution that has more than 6,500 undergraduates and 900 faculty members.
The merger of the two Nashville colleges was publicly announced later that week, making it the latest example of what experts see as a growing trend among institutions coping with an expected decline of traditional-age applicants and increasing financial pressure. The Watkins-Belmont deal, and the pushback it has produced, also highlights the importance of long-term planning, early and transparent communication (especially for students and faculty members), and shared institutional values.
Many faculty members at Watkins were put off by the lack of openness about the decision. “We were disappointed that we weren’t brought into the loop earlier so that we could have been part of the solution,” said Stover Quarles. “We didn’t have time to do what we are trained to do, and that is to be creative problem solvers as artists.” While she said that Belmont is a fine institution, she said she worried about the fit between the two cultures. “One of the concerns is definitely having that freedom of expression.”
The number of faculty members who will be offered a position at Belmont or receive severance has yet to be determined. The two institutions are in a months-long process of evaluating faculty and staff needs, and Watkins students are being invited to Belmont’s campus for information sessions on the transition, according to Greg Pillon, a spokesman for Belmont.
The initial messages caused worry on the Watkins faculty. Belmont said at first that only Christians would be hired, but, after public opposition emerged, it made a special exception to that rule.
Students have expressed concern, too.
With alumni, faculty, and staff, they formed a group called Save Watkins to protest the merger; they raised issues about transparency and artistic expression; and they called for protection of LGBTQ students. An open letter, written by a Watkins graduate, has been signed by more than 4,600 people; it requests a new deadline for students to withdraw without penalty and seeks protection of artistic expression.
All of the Watkins undergraduates are expected to transfer as part of the deal, according to Belmont. Their annual cost of attendance will remain at about $31,000, the same as it was at Watkins, which is $18,000 less than what Belmont estimates its students will pay in the coming academic year.
Pillon wrote in response to an email from The Chronicle that existing Watkins faculty and staff members will be given the first opportunity to fill any new positions that are needed. “We plan to treat everyone involved with utmost care throughout the transition,” he said. “Our department of art fully supports students’ right to artistic expression.”
Belmont’s 2018 merger with another small arts institution, O’More College of Design, increased the university’s interest in a similar partnership. “We considered the ultimate success of the O’More merger as reason to be open to Watkins’s inquiries,” said Pillon. O’More had 28 full-timer employees who served more than 150 students before the merger, according to The Tennessean. Pillon said that at least six members of the faculty and staff had joined the university.
Watkins leaders had known that “critical changes needed to take place” to protect the institution’s mission, said officials of the college in a written statement. The board, the statement said, determined that “pursuing a partnership with an established university that shares a commitment to the arts and unmatched arts education would be the best possible outcome to protect and sustain Watkins’s legacy.”
Lessons for Mergers
Other institutions may end up in a situation like Watkins’s. “There’s a lot more interest than there was four or five years ago,” said Jim Newberry, chair of the higher-education department at Steptoe & Johnson PLLC.
It’s often a decision born out of some sense of crisis. According to an analysis by EY-Parthenon that used data from Moody’s Investors Service and the federal Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, 35 percent of college mergers are due to financial distress, though colleges often have multiple motivations. In the past two decades, institutions with fewer than 1,000 students were most likely to merge.
Such institutions need to negotiate challenges similar to the ones that Belmont and Watkins are encountering now. Several already have, and some lessons are emerging.
One is the importance of timing. “In general, most colleges don’t think about merging until they are at risk of closure,” said Robert Kelchen, an associate professor of higher education at Seton Hall University, in New Jersey. “The mergers don’t get talked about until the very last minute. And then, they really don’t look like a merger. They’re more of an acquisition.”
In many deals, Kelchen said, the colleges involved have unequal financial and organizational footing. “Most of the mergers,” he said, “will look more like acquisitions where the college that merged into another may just become a department.”
Kevin F. Quigley, who as president of Marlboro College, in Vermont, executed a merger with Emerson College, in Massachusetts, that is planned to take effect this fall, emphasized the importance of timing in helping the community understand the college’s circumstances and allowing a search for a partner to unfold. “A merger or partnership process is like a marathon,” he said, with “all the training you do to lay the base before a marathon and getting into the marathon itself — lots of hurdles and impediments along the way — and hitting the wall from time to time.”
Finding a way to honor a fragile institution’s mission — even if it means the institution itself doesn’t survive — is also key. Kent Devereaux, now president of Goucher College, in Maryland, orchestrated a merger between the New Hampshire Institute of Art, where he was then president, and New England College, also in New Hampshire, in 2018.
He spent a year identifying a merger partner, then another nine months negotiating. An important consideration, he said, was being able to continue all of the institute’s programs. “First and foremost, it was about making sure that we were doing right by the mission of our institution and that we were doing right by our students, that we were not looking to merge to save costs and cut programs,” said Devereaux.
To make the merger happen, said Devereaux, the faculty had to be included. The New Hampshire Institute’s board had three faculty trustees and worked with the Faculty Senate on merger logistics.
Devereaux expects to see mergers over the next decade that will rely heavily on finding common ground in institutional values.
Those values can be particularly relevant — and complex — when mergers involve religious colleges. “If you have a faith-based institution, I think even more premium and even more attention is paid on the admissions part of the conversation before you even get to the financials,” said Kasia Lundy, a principal at EY-Parthenon. “Everybody has a slightly different perspective and cares very much about how they are going to fulfill their particular mission, even in the same religious denomination.”
What may complicate a merger the most are the emotions it elicits. When David Chard negotiated a merger between Wheelock College, where he was president, and Boston University, he spent a lot of time preparing his board. “If you talk to other institutions that have tried mergers,” he said, “they sometimes will tell you it got right to the 11th hour and then realized their board wasn’t prepared to say, ‘I’m ready to close the college.’”
A stigma of failure can pervade higher-education mergers. Leaders are concerned about losing their jobs and must acknowledge that the college closed on their watch, and alumni and trustees must sacrifice institutional pride.
It can take an emotional toll on a president, said Chard.
His merger process took place over a year and a half, with considerable time allocated to determining which college or university would be the best fit, eliminating any that were faith-based or against Wheelock’s institutional values. A strategic-options committee consisting of faculty, staff, and trustees was also formed to determine if a merger was necessary and to make any related decisions.
“I do believe in the end we did the right thing,” said Chard, who was asked by both Boston institutions to remain for the merger transition. “But, also, I’m the president who closed the college. I’m the president who took a 130-year legacy and decided that we couldn’t make it any longer.”
