Dive Temporary:
- Saint Leo College introduced a collection of sharp cuts Thursday, looking for to turn into extra environment friendly and concentrate on progress areas after an audit of enrollment traits.
- The Catholic establishment in Florida will eradicate 111 college and employees positions, shut eight of 14 department areas, shut down six of 23 sports activities groups, and finish three diploma packages.
- Plans for the cuts come lower than a yr after an try collapsed for Saint Leo to develop by buying Marymount California College. Saint Leo’s accreditor, the Southern Affiliation of Schools and Colleges Fee on Schools, did not again the deal amid considerations about Saint Leo’s budgeting.
Dive Perception:
Saint Leo’s new plans reveal the excessive ranges of uncertainty gripping even some schools that see themselves as patrons in increased training’s scorching merger-and-acquisition market.
Saint Leo as soon as deliberate to have expanded to the West Coast by this time via an acquisition of Marymount California, which had a Los Angeles space campus enrolling greater than 500 college students. As a substitute, Saint Leo is shedding its personal branches, and the president who led it throughout the merger try is gone.
Initially, Saint Leo, which relies about 30 miles north of Tampa, deliberate to shut on its West Coast acquisition in January of this yr. Marymount California had been looking for a companion for years because it confronted enrollment declines. Via the deal, the Florida college would even have taken on Marymount’s money owed.
However after the accreditor refused to log out, Marymount California mentioned it might shut down. In September, the College of California, Los Angeles introduced a deal to purchase two of the previous Marymount California campuses for $80 million.
The president who helmed Saint Leo when the merger was introduced, Jeffrey Senese, resigned lower than three months after acquisition talks fell aside. Senese was changed in July by Edward Dadez, who had been Saint Leo’s provost.
Saint Leo did not touch upon the rationale for the personnel change when it was introduced.
The establishment has skilled sharp enrollment declines within the final decade, in keeping with federal information, which exhibits fall 2021 enrollment totaling 9,523 college students. That is down from 15,564 a decade earlier.
Saint Leo says its unduplicated headcount over a yr is greater than 15,300. Final fall it launched a world campus providing on-line diploma packages in Spanish in Latin America, which has enrolled over 1,000 college students to this point, it mentioned.
The college has suffered working losses in recent times, dropping virtually $7 million in fiscal 2022, $1.6 million in 2021 and $17.3 million in 2020, in keeping with audited monetary statements.
Now comes phrase of considerable cuts. Within the subsequent six months Saint Leo will shut training facilities it operates in 5 states: two in South Carolina, one in Mississippi, one in Texas and 4 in Florida. College students enrolled in these areas can proceed their coursework on-line, the college mentioned.
Six athletics packages will finish when their seasons shut. Saint Leo did not instantly say which packages had been affected as a result of a number of groups had been touring and it deliberate to debate the modifications with them after they returned to campus. The establishment competes in NCAA Division II athletics.
Educational packages being shut down embody a bachelor’s diploma program in worldwide hospitality, a bachelor’s in human companies and a grasp’s in human companies. The establishment is shifting diploma packages in its present training and social companies school into different schools on the finish of the tutorial yr.
Of the 111 college and employees positions lower, 27% had been “just lately vacant,” in keeping with Saint Leo. Among the positions had been eradicated as of Thursday, whereas others will stay via the tip of the tutorial yr, a spokesperson mentioned in an electronic mail.
The establishment now intends to concentrate on progress areas. They embody a bachelor’s program in nursing, packages inside a school protecting computing, synthetic intelligence, robotics and information science, {and professional} improvement for companies.
The called-off merger did not have an effect on Saint Leo’s present plans, that are a part of ongoing work to answer enrollment traits and turn into extra environment friendly, in keeping with the college’s spokesperson.
“We would have liked to proper measurement by slicing bills,” Saint Leo’s president, Dadez, mentioned in a press release. “We are actually in a a lot stronger monetary scenario. We are going to now attempt to hit our campus and on-line enrollment numbers; add tutorial packages that may improve enrollments; develop new income streams; and improve our college donor program. These methods will present stability and alternative for progress.”
