One other small faculty, Hodges College, will shut

Hodges College, a small non-public nonprofit faculty in Florida, introduced late Friday that it could cease enrolling college students and shut by the tip of this educational 12 months.

In a information launch and a message to college students on its house web page, Hodges officers mentioned that “as a consequence of monetary challenges and declining enrollment numbers, we are able to now not present the standard instructional applications that we have now supplied over the previous 33 years.” 

Consultants and others who work with faculties on their funds have been predicting that quite a few small faculties could announce closures late this summer season and early within the fall as fall 2023 enrollment knowledge are available in.

The mix of suppressed enrollments, the expiration of federal restoration {dollars} that buttressed institutional budgets throughout the pandemic, and better prices as a consequence of inflation could also be an excessive amount of for establishments on the sting, they’ve warned.

Officers at Hodges didn’t reply to requests from Inside Larger Ed for remark.

However publicly out there paperwork from in the previous few years recommend a set of developments that present a reasonably typical sample amongst enrollment-driven establishments: of a relentless, and more and more determined, seek for further sources of income and monetary lifelines.

Hodges, in Fort Myers, Fla., was based in 1990 as Worldwide Faculty however renamed after a non-public present in 2007.

Information that the faculty submitted to the U.S. Training Division earlier than the pandemic confirmed it having greater than 1,115 full-time-equivalent college students in 2017-18. The faculty’s personal knowledge listed it as having a complete of 638 enrolled college students in 2021, with 338 on campus and 300 in on-line or self-paced applications.

The latest knowledge from the Training Division’s Nationwide Middle for Training Statistics listed Hodges as having 443 college students enrolled in 2022, providing credentials starting from certificates to grasp’s levels. That is a couple of third as many as Hodges reported to the division for 2017-18.

A weekly newspaper in Naples, Fla., reported in 2021 that Hodges had purchased a constructing in Naples in 2013 for $13 million, and remodeled it right into a science and expertise constructing for the college’s campus there, about 40 miles to the south of its principal campus in Fort Myers.

One other article within the Florida Weekly Naples Version mentioned that Hodges had offered the Naples campus to a neighborhood instructional establishment for $10 million. That means a sell-off of the establishment’s property to attempt to fund its core operation.

Hodges’ accreditor, the Southern Affiliation of Faculties and Faculties’ Fee on Faculties, positioned the college on probation in December 2022 after a two-year monitoring interval.

The accreditor’s disclosure assertion mentioned that it had positioned Hodges on probation as a result of the college fell wanting its necessities and requirements associated to governing board traits and monetary duty.

Final 12 months, it started a brand new dental hygienist program, based on native information experiences, in an obvious

Final 12 months, it started a brand new dental hygienist program, based on native information experiences, in an obvious—and in the end unsuccessful, it appears—seek for new college students.