Rural Routes/Margot Ford McMillen

Strain on Small Colleges is Another Blow for Rural America

Education has been in the news: Teacher’s strikes, college closings, charter school taxpayer subsidies and pay-for-play schemes by the biggest and the best universities. All having to do with money, of course. At one of the recent rallies by students against climate change, a young woman observed that it’s a waste of time to get an education if you have no future.

And you can see her point, but what a shame for our shared culture and democratic ideals. Adults can see where a society without certain understood beliefs would go if those beliefs, no matter how few and how shaky, are abandoned. The kids don’t see it exactly that way.

At any rate, and less philosophically, there are severe penalties for a nation that abandons any important sector of its shared vision. Especially education. To rural America, the loss of small colleges would be dire. Driving through the Midwest, where highway departments announce exits for every college, you lose count of how many towns depend on the influx of money and population every August when the Wild Cats, Panthers, Bulldogs and Eagles return from summer break.

Yet, the National Center for Education Statistics reports that between 2016 and 2018, 20 non-profit colleges were shuttered. Every region of the US was affected.

If they close—and I’m not talking about the for-profit colleges, with one corporate-sized main building and a few strip-mall rented spaces, I’m talking about historical colleges, each with a campus, however modest—a closing takes a neighborhood down. Professors’ homes, student rentals, coffee shops and convenient gas stations go down with the shuttered Old Main Hall.

Some of them get lucky. Sweet Briar College, which announced in 2015 it was closing, was saved by an alumni campaign. When St. Gregory’s University of Shawnee, Okla., a Catholic college, closed in 2017, the 73-acre campus was purchased by Hobby Lobby, owned by billionaire evangelical Christians. They plan to keep the college going.

But it’s more than one institution being rescued—or hijacked—by one group. Each private college has a history that begins with the dreams of folks hoping to make the future brighter for their kids. There are websites and a facebook page — Google College History Garden to find the collection by Ray Brown — keeping track.

Other college campuses have been acquired or merged with larger existing universities. Mt. Ida College near Boston was purchased by Amherst. The decline of Mt. Ida is similar to others in that survival depended on tuition dollars rather than tax dollars or endowment. (The well-endowed Ivy League schools like Harvard get as little as 21% of their income from tuition.) So as the college-age population has declined and tuition dollars become harder to get, Mt. Ida has had to struggle.

This history is similar to others in other ways as well. Mt. Ida made headlines when students accused the administration of withholding information on the financial difficulties. Now there’s a conundrum for you. If they had told students, especially incoming students, that the college might have to close or raise tuition significantly, the students and faculty might have made choices to go other places. Couldn’t blame them. The closing created, for them, an emergency.

At the same time, in order to attract students and employees, campuses need to make expensive and annual choices. Not only is maintenance a constant money pit, there are the demands of keeping up with better endowed institutions, which can add wi-fi to all buildings or spacious apartments with modern amenities on campus.

When a public university finds itself with shrinking revenues, it might be able to find more tax support or grants, but there are many university systems being reorganized at the same time as the private ones disappear. Georgia, Alabama and Wisconsin are all consolidating small campuses to reduce costs. The major difference here is that they, and their students and faculty, can afford the time to plan.

So what’s the solution?

Some colleges have survived by focusing on niches that appeal to some segment of society. I might add, “some very prosperous segment of society.” Horsemanship saved one college. Winning computer game teams are working their magic with another. One Missouri women’s college is owned by a national women’s organization.

It seems equally reasonable, although I haven’t heard of it happening, for a college to be rescued by a town or region. A percentage of property tax might be added to the annual bill, and perhaps the college could pay back with tuition breaks for local high schools.

Bottom line: Colleges that thrive can imbue the entire region with prosperity. The luckiest spawn entire downtowns with restaurants, motels, bookstores, performance spaces, car repair shops, medical clinics and the other necessities of life. It’s not just the college that survives: The entire town depends on it for culture and energy. It’s surprising that we’re letting them go.

Margot Ford McMillen farms near Fulton, Mo., and co-hosts “Farm and Fiddle” on sustainable ag issues on KOPN 89.5 FM in Columbia, Mo. Her latest book is The Golden Lane: How Missouri Women Gained the Vote and Changed History. Email: margotmcmillen@gmail.com.

From The Progressive Populist, April 15, 2019

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