Wittenberg University likely can’t continue operating much longer without deep budget cuts. But the kinds of cuts being considered at the small Ohio institution are causing faculty and some alumni to argue that closure might be better.
A plan, put forward by the university’s president, Michael L. Frandsen, and its board in late July, proposed eliminating 60 percent of full-time faculty and about a quarter of noninstructional staff, and relying more heavily on online course-sharing to teach students.
In a three-page memo, Frandsen described the measures as “an innovative model” that would “maintain the vast majority of existing programs via hybrid learning.” Wittenberg, which enrolled about 1,300 students in the fall of 2023, has traditionally served as a liberal-arts college, and also offers programs in engineering, finance, and health sciences.
Faculty leaders have raised a number of objections to the proposal, including that it was developed without any faculty input and may not meet accreditation standards. They also argue it would shortchange students who enrolled expecting a completely different kind of experience.
“Most faculty I have communicated with feel a carefully planned closure would be preferable to going forward with this ill-conceived plan,” Lori Askeland, a professor of English at Wittenberg and the university’s representative to the American Association of University Professors, wrote in an email.
The details of that initial proposal are likely to be altered before the board makes any decisions, Frandsen told The Chronicle. He announced in early August that he had assembled a committee of nine members, including five faculty members, to consider alternative scenarios. Still, whatever academic model emerges will “likely rely on one or more outside partners to provide some student instruction,” Frandsen wrote in an email to the university community.
A carefully planned closure would be preferable to going forward with this ill-conceived plan.
The university’s Board of Directors will consider such changes at a meeting on Thursday.
The board’s first attempt to solve the university’s deep budget problems revealed that faculty and leadership have different visions of why students are attending Wittenberg, and the value of the campus experience.
The proposal fundamentally alters the kind of education students at Wittenberg would receive, said Ruth J. Hoff, an associate professor of languages.
The university’s leadership is betting on the premise that students would be happy with a steady diet of online courses, adjunct instructors, athletics, and social opportunities, said Hoff. In that case, students would miss out on the close personal interactions with faculty that have been the hallmark of Wittenberg, she said. The austerity plan, she said, “outsources the heart of what we’re all about.”
In an interview, Frandsen said he, too, cherishes the kind of small, liberal-arts college experience that Wittenberg has traditionally offered, but he doesn’t think the institution can survive without significant change.
“I don’t see a way for us to continue delivering the product that we have been delivering in a way that makes financial sense,” he said.
Belt-Tightening
How Wittenberg got to this point is an all-too-familiar tale in higher education that involves enrollment shortfalls, burgeoning debt for new athletic facilities, and several previous rounds of budget and program cuts.
Undergraduate enrollment at the liberal-arts institution fell by 35 percent between 2014 and 2023, according to the university’s figures.
In 2016, Wittenberg took on more than $40 million in bonds to refinance old debts. Just a few years later, the university raised tens of millions of dollars in donations and historic tax credits to pay for a new athletic facility called “The Steemer,” which the university describes as “a state-of-the-art, 265,000-square-foot indoor practice facility.”
The price tag for the building, initially projected at $40 million, increased to $50 million by the time it was completed in 2019. The facility “includes a six-lane, 300-meter track, and an artificial turf playing surface that will accommodate football, soccer, lacrosse, and field hockey,” as well as “batting cages attached to the ceiling” and a “7,000-square-foot strength center.”
The long-term debt has added to the university’s financial troubles, but the focus on athletics has done nothing to improve its falling enrollment.While the total number of traditional undergraduates has fallen more than 30 percent over the past decade, enrollment of athletes has increased by more than 12 percent over the past decade, according to Wittenberg’s data. In other words, all the enrollment loss at the university has been among students who don’t play intercollegiate sports.
As a result, the university has done a lot of belt-tightening. There was a $6.5-million cut in 2015 — about 10 percent of its budget at the time — and another $2.5-million cut in 2020. The board is aiming to trim another $7 million from the university’s $96 million in expenses.
Those efforts have been little more than a Band-Aid on a gaping wound. The university operated at a deficit for three of the past four years, according to its IRS filings, and spent nearly $6 million from its endowment (in addition to its traditional annual draw) last year to cover a $17-million shortfall.
I don’t see a way for us to continue delivering the product that we have been delivering in a way that makes financial sense.
Another cause of Wittenberg’s financial troubles, Frandsen said, is that the university hadn’t done a comprehensive campaign to raise money in the two decades before he arrived in 2017. A fund-raising campaign completed last year netted about $113 million, and the average number of donors to the university has tripled, he said.
But Wittenberg’s audited financial statements don’t hold back: The university’s fiscal situation raises “substantial doubt” about its ability to continue operating.
‘Astonishing and Insulting’
The question now is whether Wittenberg can find a way forward while preserving the institution’s mission.
Over the past year, Frandsen said, the university has been working with outside firms, such as Huron Consulting and RIZE Education, a for-profit company that manages course-sharing for dozens of small colleges, including Wittenberg.
Frandsen’s proposal to eliminate a majority of faculty and increase the use of online courses “relies heavily on RIZE,” he said. “They were certainly involved in the creation.”
Course-sharing arrangements make a compelling pitch: Students get access to a larger variety of programs, and colleges don’t have to incur the long-term costs of hiring faculty, said James Wiley, vice president for product and research at ListEdTech, which tracks the industry. Despite the relatively low cost, the approach is not widely used, Wiley said, especially among small private colleges like Wittenberg.
For courses offered through RIZE, colleges pay $500 for each student who enrolls in the course, and the money is divided between the company and the institution offering the course.
RIZE provides a technical platform and support services to colleges, said Kevin Harrington, its co-founder and chief executive.
Wittenberg already uses course-sharing for a number of programs, Frandsen said, such as a new dual-degree engineering program with Indiana Tech. Programs at Wittenberg in supply-chain management, project management, neuroscience, and public health use courses from RIZE or another consortium called Acadeum.
Wittenberg did not pay RIZE for any consulting on its plans, Harrington said, but company representatives have had several conversations with Frandsen, and “tried to be as helpful as we can using experience of other colleges and help them find other outside expertise.”
Hoff, the associate professor of languages, said it was “somewhat astonishing and insulting to plop this in the faculty lap without any prior engagement.”
If the plan was a surprise to faculty, it could be an even-bigger surprise to students, especially the more than 400 who have committed to Wittenberg for the fall, said Askeland, the English professor.
“By announcing this change at this late hour before classes start in late August,” she wrote, “many of us are left feeling that we lied to those students, especially those that were just recruited.”
Dan Bauman contributed to this report.
