According to a report by Philly.com, colleges in the area are currently facing tough financial losses.
From an operating deficit standpoint, Cabrini College is running about a $2.6 million deficit, which is on revenues of about $45 million, according to Eric Olson, chief financial officer of the college.
On Friday, Feb. 5, Dr. Donald Taylor held a town hall meeting for faculty and staff in the Widener Lecture Hall at 9 a.m. to share this fact and the steps that will be taken to get out of the red.
It is a tough time for higher education, with enrollment declining in the Philadelphia region and in many parts of the country. The Philadelphia region is the most crowded with universities or among the top several cities. This makes competition for the dwindling student pool of traditional college-age students intense.
Students are also easily able to transfer to other in- stitutions without completing their degree at their first college. “When a student goes away, the tuition does, too,” Dr. Jeffrey Gingerich, provost and vice president of academic affairs, said.
The student demographic of the number of high school graduates started shifting during the time of recession in the past seven or eight years. Declining enrollment and budget problems have been prevalent since then at most colleges.
“The declining enrollment and the losses that ulti- mately were connected to that did not happen overnight and they were part of a regional trend,” Taylor said. “We have started to turn the corner to correct that.”
In the 1900s and 2000s, the college did well financially and with enrollment.
“We had enough reserves built up in the savings account, so we can afford to do the offset of the operating losses and that has been how we are doing that,” Taylor said. “That gets us back to being in the black.”
Taylor has a plan for the institution called his “2020 Roadmap to Growth” plan. Included in this plan is the addition of news masters programs, doctoral programs and recruiting more international students, geared to getting the college back to a balanced budget.
“None of this is driven to change Cabrini into something that it isn’t,” Olson said. “It’s just about adding some things to keep the numbers to where we need to be and to keep going with the mission of Cabrini.”
The new programs for adult learners include a doctorate in higher education. Education is the field at Cabrini that has the most graduates. There are over 5,000 alumni who majored in education.
The Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart, the Catholic order that founded the college in 1957, have 17 schools abroad and about 12 of them are high schools. Taylor will be traveling to Spain with the sisters over spring break for recruitment.
Students are currently being recruited from Argentina and parts of Asia.
“I think Cabrini is a great place for international students to come to,” Gingerich said. “These students will come into a new culture and a place like Cabrini can really provide the support for those students that they might get lost in the crowd at a bigger university.”
“The world around us is changing, so the demographics around us are changing,” Gingerich said. “We need to adapt to that. The worst thing we could do is keep doing things the way they’ve been done the past 60 years.”
A $2 million Title Three grant helped the college to establish key retention initiatives, such as the Center for Teaching and Learning and Living and Learning Communities. Over 11 years ago, retention rate of first-year students was in the upper 60 percentile. These new programs have caused a slow increase in retention to the 70 percentile. Students who enrolled in an LLC have had a higher retention rate than those not involved in one. Because of this, Taylor would like to see 100 percent of students to participate in a learning community by 2020. The academic affairs area will also be redesigned and new programs for high impact practices will be implemented, such as the addition of different “schools” based upon majors for more individual attention to students and advising.
“These are all of the new programs that will help us, but it is important to remember that the center of Dr. Taylor’s 2020 roadmap is the undergraduate and graduate students on campus that we have always cared about,” Gingerich said.
