The coronavirus crisis will “accelerate a closure of colleges and universities,” especially under-resourced institutions, said a higher education analyst from EAB to Diverse.
EAB, which on March 19 held a flash poll of 500 university enrollment officials during a webinar, said that 90% of respondents said they felt the highest levels of concern — 4 and 5, with 1 being low and 5 being high — about “yielding” the Fall 2020 class. “Yield” refers to the percentage of accepted students who enroll.
“In conversations I’ve had, there are a number of institutions that are experiencing financial strains, and when you combine that with uncertain enrollment results and loss of valuation [with endowments declining as markets fall] … I absolutely believe this will accelerate the closure of colleges and universities. … This is a sort of cataclysmic event,” said Madeleine Rhyneer, EAB vice president and dean of enrollment services.
Vulnerable colleges, especially historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and minority-serving institutions (MSIs), have already flagged this concern.
Senators Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Doug Jones (D-AL) last Thursday pressed for $1.5 billion in emergency funding to help historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and other minority-serving institutions respond to the coronavirus pandemic. Like leaders of the nation’s HBCUs, the United Negro College Fund and the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, the senators said that the costs of operating during the pandemic threaten these institutions’ future survival.
Since the campus closures began due to the spread of the coronavirus, several HBCUs and other under-resourced institutions have covered expenses for students from low-income families who have had to leave campus and go back home. They have also had to put resources into online teaching, so students’ academics don’t suffer during the stoppage of in-person classes.
Referring to HBCUs and MSIs, Lezli Baskerville, president and CEO of the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education, said, “These 800 equal educational opportunity American colleges and universities are graduating 4.8 million undergraduate students in the U.S., 24% of all students. They are doing this despite their woeful underfunding.”
