Skip to content
ADVERTISEMENT
Sign In
  • Sections
    • News
    • Advice
    • The Review
  • Topics
    • Data
    • Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion
    • Finance & Operations
    • International
    • Leadership & Governance
    • Teaching & Learning
    • Scholarship & Research
    • Student Success
    • Technology
    • Transitions
    • The Workplace
  • Magazine
    • Current Issue
    • Special Issues
    • Podcast: College Matters from The Chronicle
  • Newsletters
  • Virtual Events
  • Ask Chron
  • Store
    • Featured Products
    • Reports
    • Data
    • Collections
    • Back Issues
  • Jobs
    • Find a Job
    • Post a Job
    • Professional Development
    • Career Resources
    • Virtual Career Fair
  • More
  • Sections
    • News
    • Advice
    • The Review
  • Topics
    • Data
    • Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion
    • Finance & Operations
    • International
    • Leadership & Governance
    • Teaching & Learning
    • Scholarship & Research
    • Student Success
    • Technology
    • Transitions
    • The Workplace
  • Magazine
    • Current Issue
    • Special Issues
    • Podcast: College Matters from The Chronicle
  • Newsletters
  • Virtual Events
  • Ask Chron
  • Store
    • Featured Products
    • Reports
    • Data
    • Collections
    • Back Issues
  • Jobs
    • Find a Job
    • Post a Job
    • Professional Development
    • Career Resources
    • Virtual Career Fair
    Upcoming Events:
    An AI-Driven Work Force
    AI and Microcredentials
Sign In
News

Public Regional Colleges Were Already Struggling. Covid-19 May Push Some to the Brink.

By Dan Bauman May 11, 2020
Nevada State College, in Henderson, Nev.
Nevada State College, in Henderson, Nev.Nevada State College

It’s late January, and Bart J. Patterson is cradling loose dirt with a golden shovel, flanked by Nevada’s governor and a flock of local dignitaries. A flurry of camera snaps capture this historic moment for the institution Patterson leads, Nevada State College: a groundbreaking ceremony celebrating the construction of a $62-million building for the School of Education.

To continue reading for FREE, please sign in.

Sign In

Or subscribe now to read with unlimited access for as low as $10/month.

Don’t have an account? Sign up now.

A free account provides you access to a limited number of free articles each month, plus newsletters, job postings, salary data, and exclusive store discounts.

Sign Up

It’s late January, and Bart J. Patterson is cradling loose dirt with a golden shovel, flanked by Nevada’s governor and a flock of local dignitaries. A flurry of camera snaps capture this historic moment for the institution Patterson leads, Nevada State College: a groundbreaking ceremony celebrating the construction of a $62-million building for the School of Education.

Less than 100 days later, the regents of the state’s System of Higher Education approved budget cuts of $68 million to $124 million for its central office and member institutions. With the state’s gambling and tourism suffocated by the coronavirus outbreak, Nevada is expected to face immediate billion-dollar budget shortfalls. At the same time, its public universities and colleges entered the pandemic underfunded relative to the levels of support they received before the Great Recession.

Following that economic crisis, public regional universities and colleges fared especially poorly in austerity measures taken across the country, as they lacked access to the alternative streams of revenue available to some private colleges and state flagships. Now, as the United States enters a downturn that might prove even more devastating, advocates and academics worry that federal and state policy makers have not yet grasped the important role played by public regional institutions.

Coronavirus seen under electron microscope
Coronavirus Hits Campus
As colleges and universities have struggled to devise policies to respond to the quickly evolving situation, here are links to The Chronicle’s key coverage of how this worldwide health crisis is affecting campuses.
  • Here’s Our List of Colleges’ Reopening Models
  • Fall-Enrollment Trends in Distance Education: a Snapshot
  • Why Is Gettysburg College Giving Up on ‘The Gettysburg Review’?

“Regional colleges are disproportionately dependent on aid from the state government, and they have limited availability of alternative revenue sources. They do not have significant endowments, or wealthy donors to turn to,” said Thomas L. Harnisch, vice president for government relations at the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association, commonly known as Sheeo. “They serve disproportionate shares of low-income students, first-generation students, and students from historically underserved communities.”

Indeed, more than 60 percent of the undergraduates enrolled at Nevada State College in the fall of 2018 were not white. Nearly half of the college’s incoming freshmen were Pell Grant recipients. And in less than five years, the campus’s undergraduate population grew by 2,000.

Before the pandemic, the college had expected to scale up its operations to meet that burgeoning student demand. But now, hiring freezes will indefinitely delay job searches for full-time faculty members and people in student-support services. And it’s not certain if the state will have the appetite to finance needed campus construction projects. There may not be another groundbreaking ceremony for some time.

Still, Patterson is optimistic about the role his institution will play at this extraordinary moment in Nevada’s history.

“We are going to provide the work-force training that is going to bring us out of this economic situation,” he said.

Very Different Universities

Painful restructuring is already underway at several public regional institutions.

ADVERTISEMENT

In March the Board of Trustees at Central Washington University issued a proclamation of financial exigency, imbuing the president with certain emergency powers, including the means to discontinue or reduce programs and lay off tenured faculty members.

In Ohio the University of Akron announced last week that it would eliminate six of its 11 colleges to balance its budget. The university faces a shortfall of $65 million to $70 million.

And for a brief moment, the closures of three public regional institutions appeared imminent in Vermont. But following a public outcry, the Vermont State Colleges system withdrew its proposal. Still, the system’s chancellor estimated last month that the colleges would need $25 million to remain solvent.

Faced with shifting demographics and stagnant public funding over the last decade, public regional colleges and universities have had to adapt, said Matthew R. Johnson, an associate professor of higher education at Central Michigan University. The coming months and years will be no different.

What does that cost of football look like when no one is in the stands?

“You’ll see the consolidation of some colleges. You’ll see the elimination of some VP positions. I think you will have some smaller cuts to places like athletics,” Johnson said. “I mean, what does that cost of football look like when no one is in the stands?”

At other institutions, mass layoffs are underway. Western Michigan University terminated 240 employees at the end of April as it sought to balance its budget. New plans to lay off a “substantial number” of employees were announced by Western Michigan’s president on Monday. And at Ohio University, 140 custodians and at least three professors were let go after their jobs were eliminated.

ADVERTISEMENT

Typically located in the rural outskirts of their home states, public regional institutions like Western Michigan and Ohio University are often their city’s top employer; sometimes they are its major economic engine. But such reliance on a single, central entity can compound the economic stress faced by a particular area in an economic downturn. To update an old saying, “When Northern Illinois University sneezes, DeKalb catches a cold.”

“The disinvestment from this space will have a huge impact on these regions and their ability to get the economy going after this crisis,” warned Sheeo’s Harnisch.

A More Equitable System

Without additional federal stimulus funds, Harnisch said, the road ahead for public colleges will be extremely challenging. The financial health of many institutions will also depend on the continued spread or treatment of Covid-19, as well as how students and parents behave in the fall.

The coronavirus pandemic, though, has only brought into sharper focus what policy makers, academics, and advocates have known all along about the financing of public higher education, said Cecilia M. Orphan, an assistant professor of higher education at the University of Denver. Historically underfunded institutions can’t go it alone forever. A more deliberate model of federal-state partnership is needed, she said, to give states incentives to reinvest in their public universities and colleges.

ADVERTISEMENT

“Maybe there are federal block grants given to states, contingent on their commitment to gradually increase funding for public education over a period of time,” Orphan proposed.

She also suggested that the federal government invent a new classification for certain institutions, similar to those colleges and universities designated as minority-serving: a “rural-serving institution.”

Like Nevada State’s Patterson, Kayla Elliott, a senior policy analyst for higher education at the Education Trust, an advocacy group, believes public regional institutions will play an important role in an eventual economic recovery. But in order for that recovery to be both equitable and consequential, some of those institutions will need to do a better job of increasing their enrollments’ racial diversity and recruiting more low-income students. In turn, Elliott said, policy makers need to stand by public regional colleges and universities.

“Allowing those institutions to fail,” she said, “is failing low-income students and minority students.”

A version of this article appeared in the May 29, 2020, issue.
We welcome your thoughts and questions about this article. Please email the editors or submit a letter for publication.
Tags
Finance & Operations Leadership & Governance Innovation & Transformation First-Generation Students
Share
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Facebook
  • Email
Bauman_Dan.jpg
About the Author
Dan Bauman
Dan Bauman is a reporter who investigates and writes about all things data in higher education. Tweet him at @danbauman77, or email him at dan.bauman@chronicle.com.
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT

More News

Photo illustration showing Santa Ono seated, places small in the corner of a dark space
'Unrelentingly Sad'
Santa Ono Wanted a Presidency. He Became a Pariah.
Illustration of a rushing crowd carrying HSI letters
Seeking precedent
Funding for Hispanic-Serving Institutions Is Discriminatory and Unconstitutional, Lawsuit Argues
Photo-based illustration of scissors cutting through paper that is a photo of an idyllic liberal arts college campus on one side and money on the other
Finance
Small Colleges Are Banding Together Against a Higher Endowment Tax. This Is Why.
Pano Kanelos, founding president of the U. of Austin.
Q&A
One Year In, What Has ‘the Anti-Harvard’ University Accomplished?

From The Review

Photo- and type-based illustration depicting the acronym AAUP with the second A as the arrow of a compass and facing not north but southeast.
The Review | Essay
The Unraveling of the AAUP
By Matthew W. Finkin
Photo-based illustration of the Capitol building dome propped on a stick attached to a string, like a trap.
The Review | Opinion
Colleges Can’t Trust the Federal Government. What Now?
By Brian Rosenberg
Illustration of an unequal sign in black on a white background
The Review | Essay
What Is Replacing DEI? Racism.
By Richard Amesbury

Upcoming Events

Plain_Acuity_DurableSkills_VF.png
Why Employers Value ‘Durable’ Skills
Warwick_Leadership_Javi.png
University Transformation: a Global Leadership Perspective
  • Explore Content
    • Latest News
    • Newsletters
    • Letters
    • Free Reports and Guides
    • Professional Development
    • Virtual Events
    • Chronicle Store
    • Chronicle Intelligence
    • Jobs in Higher Education
    • Post a Job
  • Know The Chronicle
    • About Us
    • Vision, Mission, Values
    • DEI at The Chronicle
    • Write for Us
    • Work at The Chronicle
    • Our Reporting Process
    • Advertise With Us
    • Brand Studio
    • Accessibility Statement
  • Account and Access
    • Manage Your Account
    • Manage Newsletters
    • Individual Subscriptions
    • Group and Institutional Access
    • Subscription & Account FAQ
  • Get Support
    • Contact Us
    • Reprints & Permissions
    • User Agreement
    • Terms and Conditions
    • Privacy Policy
    • California Privacy Policy
    • Do Not Sell My Personal Information
1255 23rd Street, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20037
© 2025 The Chronicle of Higher Education
The Chronicle of Higher Education is academe’s most trusted resource for independent journalism, career development, and forward-looking intelligence. Our readers lead, teach, learn, and innovate with insights from The Chronicle.
Follow Us
  • twitter
  • instagram
  • youtube
  • facebook
  • linkedin