The Edge

I’m Goldie Blumenstyk, a senior writer at The Chronicle of Higher Education covering innovation in and around academe. For more than two years, I’ve been curating this weekly Re:Learning newsletter. Now I’ll be using it to share my observations on the people and ideas reshaping the higher-education landscape. Subscribe here. Here’s what’s on my mind this week:

Why a university plans to raze two residence halls — and what that means for the future of campus spaces.

If ever there were a metaphor for the impact of technology and demographic shifts on college spaces, it can be found at Fayetteville State University, which plans to demolish two rundown dormitories — and not replace them at all.

The reason? It doesn’t need to. Enrollment isn’t falling at Fayetteville State, a historically black university in North Carolina; in fact, it’s held steady at about 6,200 students overall for the past five years. But these days, more of its students are attending fully online, or they’re older. Some are both. This is the changing face of the American college student.

And as James Anderson, Fayetteville’s chancellor, succinctly put it to me recently, there’s another reality about the new breed of students: “They don’t need dormitories.”

Gone will be the 240-bed Vance Hall, which has been unused for 10 years (Anderson describes it as looking “like a big prison”), and the 198-bed Bryant Hall, which the university decided to close after last year. The cost of tearing down Vance would be about $850,000 because of lingering asbestos issues; Anderson is hoping the state legislature will provide the money.

The institution has no immediate plans for the soon-to-be-open spaces. But it does have further ambitions for its online and adult-student offerings. Along with the 10 online degrees it already offers, next year Fayetteville State will add a $10,000 degree in conjunction with six nearby community colleges. (It’s called the $10K Pathway, but Jon Young, Anderson’s chief of staff, says the university is open to a better name if you’ve got one.) And with its proximity to Fort Bragg, the giant Army base, the university is also looking to develop programs in fields like cybersecurity that might appeal to soldiers from the base. Those won’t necessarily be four-year programs.

Fayetteville State’s moves fascinate me for several reasons. There’s the adult-student angle, sure. (By now you know I’ve got a thing for that issue.) Also, I’ve written previously about how some HBCUs have struggled to get their programs online, so the growth trajectory of this one is noteworthy.

But mostly I’m curious about how the growth of online education at colleges (with or without a commensurate decline in face-to-face enrollment) is affecting the character of campus life. I’m curious about the physical spaces, but also the less-visible changes. How do faculty dynamics change? Do power centers in the administration shift as certain schools or departments become more important generators of revenue? I’d love to hear from you on this, especially if you have specific examples you can share.

The latest Moody’s blues for small colleges.

It’s gotten to the point where I almost (almost!) don’t bother to read the Moody’s higher-education reports. The credit-rating agency has been so consistent in its gloomy outlook for the sector over the past several years that it’s easy to assume each new analysis will be more of the same.

That was true for the agency’s latest reports on public and private colleges, which highlighted continuing pressures on institutions in both sectors when it comes to revenue. I also noticed another trend — one that could be especially worrying for smaller colleges.

The report on public colleges noted that small public universities were being forced by financial constraints to spend less on their facilities. Spending wasn’t keeping up, the report said, so the buildings were depreciating in value. The Moody’s analysts found the same for small private colleges that aren’t wealthy.

When you consider that one of the biggest draws smaller colleges have is the campus setting, that’s certainly not a promising finding. As a Moody’s analyst, Jared Brewster, told me, “it could diminish their competitiveness going forward.”

In other words, if their campuses get shabbier, they’ll have a harder time attracting students. I asked Susan Fitzgerald, head of Moody’s higher-education practice, whether the agency saw anything on the horizon that would suggest a reversal of this trend.

She didn’t.

When Anderson, Fayetteville State’s chancellor, was describing his institution’s embrace of online courses and adult learners, he told me, “I think more institutions are going to have to change to this model.” Perhaps some of these small colleges will choose a similar course. I suspect many won’t want or be able to make that kind of shift. And that leaves me, and maybe you too, wondering: Where does that leave them?

Quote of the week.

“With each passing day, our country grows more diverse, and despite deeply misguided calls for building walls, the simple truth is we cannot build walls high enough to separate one child’s destiny from that of another.”

—John B. King Jr., president and chief executive of the Education Trust, responding to the Trump administration’s rollback of Obama-era guidance on diversity in education.

Got a tip you’d like to share or a question you’d like me to answer? Let me know at goldie@chronicle.com.