The Fall of Catholic Colleges

I dropped my youngest son off August 22 as a freshman at Rochester Institute of Technology. I couldn’t help reflecting that—almost to the day—49 years earlier I started as a freshman at St. Mary’s College in Orchard Lake, Michigan.

The difference is that I suspect RIT will be around in 49 years. Orchard Lake St. Mary’s (OLSM) isn’t. I guess that happens when your graduating class was about 40.

One of the things I discovered at OLSM was that I wanted to teach—and do that in higher education. My first job was as an assistant professor of theology at St. John’s University in New York. Most people know the main campus in Queens.  Fewer know there was a Staten Island campus, created from a smaller Catholic college about to go belly-up.

Cardinal Cooke, not wanting to lose an institution of higher education in the archdiocese, got the Vincentians to take over. St. John’s Staten Island catered, in large part, to first-generation-college Catholic kids from the island and Brooklyn. In my day, St. John’s Staten Island had about 2,000 students.

The Vincentians seemed to have a cost-proof scheme going: no dorms, no food service except a lunch cafeteria, classes from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. Pack 50 kids in a class and have faculty teach four classes (but never exceed 208 students, lest you had to pay a supplement). Make sure you pay the Con Ed bill for light and heat and you could make a go of it.

St. John’s Staten Island closed in 2024. 

The primary reason was demographic: enrollment cratered, falling to about 800-900. COVID had something to do with it, but I suspect contraception even more. American fertility fell below replacement level in 2008; kids that should have been born that year would be college freshmen this year. 

The people who study higher education have identified four factors that question an institution’s viability: enrollment, costs, changing attitudes toward tertiary schooling, and AI. 

Obviously, enrollment is the big one: a school exists for students; and if the students aren’t filling the seats, there won’t be a school. Public schools, from grade to grad school, enjoy some insulation: they can always run to the taxpayer to keep the lights on. But private higher education—and that includes Catholic higher education—doesn’t have that luxury. Our schools are tuition-dependent, i.e., they need students paying tuition. And the kids not born in 2008 and afterward aren’t in English 101 this month.

Because our schools are tuition-dependent, they will be more expensive than their state counterparts. If we offered a better product that people recognized to be a better product, that might compensate. But a lot of schools have grown fat and lazy since the time I went to college—in the decade the U.S. Government got into the student loan business. If students could get money, there were fewer incentives to contain costs, especially when a higher price might suggest a better school.

And, let’s be honest, the collapse of vocations and the departure of clergy and religious from teaching did not just affect grade schools: it sapped college staffing.  When I started grad school at Fordham in 1981, there were about 50,000 Jesuits worldwide, and most of my Theology Department was staffed by them. Today, the Society scratches about 15,000, and Jesuits are a minority in the Theology Department.

Catholics also got used to running schools on the cheap, thinking that education doesn’t cost and faculty don’t need to be paid. When clerical and religious faculty were replaced by laity, salary costs had to go up. I can’t pay RIT tuition on a priestly stipend!

Finally, young people are beginning to ask whether college is a worthwhile investment given the dicey job market many face post-graduation. And let’s face the truth for Catholic colleges and universities: are they Catholic enough to be worth the price? The Catholic family that doesn’t really think religion to be an important element of higher education will probably ignore the mission dimension.  But young Catholics serious about their faith—and that is an important market niche—can rightly ask whether the additional thousands are worth an elderly nun in a pants suit offering some anodyne prayer at graduation on the campus where Catholic identity otherwise needs to be searched for under bushel baskets.

Finally, the higher education researchers note a phenomenon whose impact is still unknown: AI. To what degree will AI decimate the need for education that hitherto required years of acquisition? And will its impact be particularly disproportionate on entry-levels jobs that give new graduates their segue to the employment market?

One website named 240 colleges and universities whose financial variables are such that they might be on the chopping block in the next decade. My cursory look at that list spotted about 50 Catholic institutions. If you look at the membership roster of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities, it is just shy of 200.  Are we potentially facing a grim reaping of a quarter of Catholic higher education?

I hope not. But I have to ask about the writing on the wall.

Catholic colleges were just one part of the great Catholic infrastructure that an earlier generation of “brick and mortar” Catholic leaders (including bishops like Spellman, Cushing, and Cody) built. It’s an infrastructure that included Catholic colleges, high schools (parochial high schools are practically nonexistent), grade schools (often consolidated or even diocesan), hospitals (often partnered with entities not sharing our bioethical commitments), and, of course, parishes. 

That Catholic leaders—including bishops—call this great culling “renewal” suggests there are plenty of Orwell-like talents that could compete with George. And Catholics have a right to ask what is becoming of our material culture and heritage—including our colleges and universities.