This episode originally aired on June 30, 2026.
When the school year wrapped up, it also marked the end of the line for several Columbus City Schools buildings.
The district plans to shut down eight buildings over the next few years to plug a massive budget deficit.
CCS is not alone. Cleveland is closing 18 of its school buildings. It’s not just K-12 schools feeling the squeeze.
Several smaller colleges are staring down mergers or total closures.
People are calling this era of education “The Big Shrink.”
We're discussing the topic on this hour of All Sides.
Guests:
- Conor Morris, reporter/producer, Ideastream Public Media
- Dr. Russell Brown, chief of strategy and performance, Columbus City Schools
- Ethan Ris, associate professor, Higher Education Administration, University of Nevada, Reno
Transcript
This transcript is generated with AI. To ensure its accuracy, review the audio file.
Amy Juravich: Welcome to All Sides with Amy Juravich. Many factors are contributing to a decline in the nation's education system. Declining birth rates are leading to fewer students and once booming school districts. When the number of students you serve determines your funding, schools are having to make cuts.
Ohio has not been immune to these challenges. School districts statewide have found it necessary to close buildings, consolidate programs, lay off staff, or all three to keep up with the changing demographics of the areas they serve. Plus, several smaller colleges are staring down mergers or total closures.
People are calling this era of education the big shrink. From kindergarten to college, we're talking about how schools are dealing with the changes this hour. And we're beginning our conversation with Conor Morris, a reporter and producer for IdeaStream Public Media in Cleveland. Welcome to All Sides, Conor.
Conor Morris: Hey, so glad to be here, thank you.
Amy Juravich: I wanted to start with some numbers. Cleveland, the school district in your area, is merging or closing 29 schools, and that number includes closing 18 buildings. That seems like a lot, is it? Yeah.
Conor Morris: Yeah, it is. It's one of the most dramatic examples that we've seen in the state and even, frankly, in the region in terms of building closures lately. In Chicago, we saw, I believe, it was more than 50 buildings closed a few years ago, but that was Chicago, a much larger city. It's significant and the district is also laying off several hundred staff as well on top of that.
You know here in columbus obviously the district is also clement city schools is considering you know they're they're got a plan to merge schools and close schools and it's a smaller number you know she said at the top of the show of course but they're also laying some staff off as well. And here in cleveland and going close to summer guard but there's a really interesting story in cleveland kind of of people leaving the city over the years, you know, factories have left. It's very Rust Belt town, you know, population used to be like 915,000 people in the city alone. And now it's like 370,000. So, and you've also seen the same in Columbus. It's a very similar story.
A lot of folks have left inner cities and urban areas and gone to suburbs using this massive explosion of suburbs you know in ohio and across the country so there's a lot of factors that are at play there and a lot folks call that white flight as well so you know and there's also a factor of wealth leaving with some of those families anyway to which is contributing you know schools are funded with by with the amount of students they have so if your students are leaving you losing money that way. So it's kind of a perfect storm that's facing some larger school districts especially.
Juravich: Yeah, I mean, it's interesting you mentioned with Columbus because there's always stories about Columbus is the fastest growing city in the Midwest. We're growing, we're growing. But it's not the fastest-growing city and expecting to add a million people in the next 50 years doesn't necessarily translate into more students going to Columbus City schools. That's what we're finding. Yeah.
Morris: Yeah, exactly. Schools across the country, public schools anyway, have really seen enrollment decline over the last, you know, 20 years or so as birth rates are declining. It's really, we're kind of at the tip of the iceberg now of what's called this demographic cliff. And so this is really starting to show and really starting to hit schools hard.
Some of them, there's also been some argument about, well, schools should have been cutting back a long time ago as they were predicting this, but it's really, really controversial to make these decisions. As you see locally and in Cleveland, there's an effort here in Cleveland right now to change our appointed school board, which is appointed by the mayor, to an elected school board. Yeah, it's been this way. It's been appointed for the last, you know, 20, 30 years, and some people are really unhappy with these recent decisions. So, we're seeing a lot of pushback. Schools are, public schools are considered anchors to their communities. And so, you really do start to see some challenges for communities as their schools start to close.
Juravich: I didn't realize Cleveland had an appointed school board. That's fascinating. Yeah. Well, our school board here is elected, so it's just different. Yeah.
Morris: They're the only one in Ohio that actually has an appointed school board, and it's because of actually budget and enrollment challenges from the 90s that it became an appointed school board. They actually changed state law.
Juravich: Like the city kind of took over parts of the school district, yeah.
Morris: So yeah, essentially, yeah, the state said, hey, we're gonna give the mayor the ability to appoint people to the board. So yeah pretty interesting stuff.
Juravich: Okay, well you recently produced a piece for Ideastream called "The Big Shrink is Here for Cleveland Schools." Can you tell me about that term? What is the big shrink?
Morris: Yeah, thank you. So we talked to a researcher who out of georgetown who studies public finance and schools and she said that there's just a lot of schools that are cutting back across the country right now whether that's layoffs consolidating programs closing schools. You know l.a. Is a good example they just you know voted to lay off like a thousand people i believe or to cut a thousand staff positions anyway and she's turning at the big shrink and she saying that really schools for a long time of really know only known how to grow their services.
Um she said you know partly that a good thing because well she didn't make a judgment but partly this is increasing you know support staff um counselors nurses things folks that really help students out you know beyond the classroom on the other hand though schools public schools have only seen their enrollment decline. So she says she argues that this has been coming for a long time.
Also, pandemic relief, which came through, you know, Cleveland schools had hundreds of millions of dollars that they received during the pandemic to really fund things that they needed to get done during the pandemic. That money is all gone now and some schools, she said, you somewhat unwisely that use that money to staff up and and you know once that money's gone you can't continue to pay for those folks salaries anymore so um you know the argument is that schools this has been coming for a long time and now they are reducing and it's really painful.
Juravich: It's kind of like a weird catch-22 for schools because there's a demand for more counselors, there's demand for reading coaches. They want all kids to meet the reading and math standards, and they should. There's more reading coaches and more staff, like you said, than decades ago. But then if they add all this staff and then they can't pay for them, right? It's a lose-lose situation.
Morris: Yeah, and public school advocates would argue, we're doing a lot more than we did when we were kids, you know, again, with those counselors and the coaches and everything. And also the number of students with special needs has actually increased in schools over the years. It's kind of up for debate why that's happening more now, of course, but those students require a lot more services. And so schools are saying, look, the burden is increasing on us.
And their argument actually in Ohio, at least, is actually funding has not kept up with costs of doing business. As some listeners might remember, the Ohio Supreme Court said that Ohio's school funding system is unconstitutional. They declared that four times in the late 90s to early 2000s, and advocates say we never really truly fixed that.
Recently, we got put in the state legislature put in place something called the fair school funding formula, which advocates, you know, said was a good start it basis costs of education. Uh you know more fairly on you know the cost of educating kids nowadays the legislature in this last budget cycle which is of course dominated by republicans backed off on that plan and they said we're not going to fully fund it that means that schools are getting there's several billion dollars that they're not gonna be receiving and then of course i'm sure we there's some listeners right now that are probably shouting at the radio there's also the school voucher system there's, also the, school vouchers system the state is also funding school vouches for private schools more than ever before.
More than ever before a massive increase recently more than a billion dollars per year and a lot of that really rankles public schools they've even filed a lawsuit against the state saying it's unconstitutional we need that money for our public schools so it is a very complicated situation right now when we're looking at why this is happening.
Juravich: It's such a layered issue. Yes. This is All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. We're talking about school closures and mergers in Ohio with Conor Morris, reporter and producer for Ideastream Public Media in Cleveland. Are you finding that this is happening to rural school districts too, or is this a city problem?
Morris: It's a great question. And there's not a lot of good data out about it right now. What I can tell you is like, I could throw a rock and hit a school up here in suburban and urban Cleveland that is having funding challenges that is laying off staff or closing programs.
In rural areas, they are much smaller footprints. I've heard in rural Trimble schools where I used to cover down in Athens County, they are doing some cutbacks. It's this seems to be something that's affecting suburban schools and urban schools a lot more, partly because of this demographic cliff issue of fewer folks, fewer young young people being, you know, available.
There's also more choice in those areas as well. Frankly, there are more charter schools. There are more private schools in rural areas. There's really not very many of those in general. So, you know, folks are still sending their kids to the public schools because that's their main option.
Juravich: And there might only be one elementary school, so you can't close it if it's under-enrolled, because it's the only one.
Morris: You're exactly right. Yeah. I mean, it's like, well, you know, some schools over the years, like Marietta, where I'm from, they closed schools, you know, back when I was a kid, you know, in the 90s. So there, that happened, you know, before as some small towns, you know, became smaller, you know, they lost some of their industry or other way or, you know, older aging population, things of that nature. Yourself.
Juravich: I wanted to pivot for a second because it's not just grade schools like K through 12 schools that are having problems some colleges and universities are being impacted last year you reported on the closing of Notre Dame College in South Euclid remind us why that school closed.
Morris: Yeah, it was an interesting mix. They said that they had a lot of debt that they couldn't settle, but mostly they said it was declining enrollments. These small, so it was a small private college in South Euclid in the suburbs of Cleveland. These smaller colleges have really thin margins sometimes and they, if they're not a high dollar, private college that has a huge endowment, they're, if don't have that big endowment to cushion the blow when times change, then their lefts kind of up a creek without a paddle. And that was the case in Notre Dame College's case.
What they were trying to do was kind of do some new things, new programs. They tried to pivot a little bit and have a lot of athletic scholarships to bring kids in. And it actually did bring kids in, but those were athletic scholarships that were mostly full rights to some degree. So kids were going to school and they're getting a good experience, but the college was not really bringing in a lot money because of it.
So These small colleges are in a tough kind of area. Public universities are as well because of this demographic cliff. But yeah, I mean, we're seeing a couple of schools that are looking at mergers potentially. I believe it was, let me look at my notes here. I think Findlay was looking at it. Findlay and Bluffton were looking at consolidating, but they actually recently one of the board said, no, I think we're going to go forward with still being separate for now. Um.
Juravich: I think if I remember correctly, that might have been a sports issue where they didn't know how to combine the sports, yeah.
Morris: It's a complicated, complicated, years long process to talk about merging schools up here in Cleveland, near Cleveland, Ursuline College and Gannon College or Gannon University over in Pennsylvania just inked a deal to combine. So it can happen and it can yield a lot of savings because you can combine programs and things. But but yeah, a lot a tough competition is going on on that front right now.
Juravich: Do you feel like the challenges facing higher education are different than what's happening at K-12 schools? I mean, you mentioned they both are facing, you know, the consequences of declining birth rates. Is it just similar issues?
Morris: Yeah, there is, there's that similar common thread, but also, you know, there there's plenty of differences. You know, these are big institutions that you know have, and schools do of course as well, but like you know i think that there are just some specific issues in terms of like duplication of programs like you in ohio for example.
You could go to go get like an english degree anywhere right and so that's why you hear folks like Vivek Ramaswamy, the republican candidate for governor governor saying we could consolidate these schools because they're duplicating services. It would be a smart taxpayer decision, but this is raising tons of alarm bells from folks who are saying, I love my school. It is an anchor to my community. It has tons of job repercussions. There's tons of people that are employed at my university. So there's a lot of broader implications for regions, not just a neighborhood, when you consider closing down a university or a college.
Juravich: I wanted to pivot back to your reporting on Cleveland and their building closures for a minute. If I'm remembering correctly in your story, one of the high schools that you featured is merging with another school, but that high school was pretty small. It only had like 100 students in it, is that right?
Morris: Yeah, it's a really interesting story. So Collingwood High School is in this like real blue collar industrial part of Cleveland that has seen tons of factories close over the years, lots of population loss. And the school, which was once this like, it's this big, takes up a whole block, this big brick building, beautiful brick building. It used to have like more than a thousand students. It had room for a thousand of students, but on a day-to-day basis, only about a thousand or only about 100 students were coming through the doors, even though they had maybe about 300 students enrolled, there's a lot of issues with chronic absenteeism and other things.
So you've seen this neighborhood decline over the years because of economics, because of white flight, industry leaving. And then you see the school declining because this school used to have this really cool trades program where kids were learning mechanics and how to work on the nearby railroads and things, and that all disappears is you don't have the students to support it. So it's just a little case study almost of what happens to a neighborhood as you lose population, but also as you loose enrollment. It's this vicious cycle that is just really, I'm sure really frustrating for residents that love their community, that live in that neighborhood.
Juravich: Yeah, I mean, you wrote in the piece about that school, you said there's an Olympic-sized swimming pool that hasn't been repaired and not being used. And that just, it made me sad. I was like, oh, what a, yeah.
Morris: Yeah and you know the school district would argue like if we had more kids we could have more teachers who then could be the coaches for these programs we maybe get some grants to fix this stuff up you know whereas the neighborhoods like well you just let our school languish and and so it's this again this vicious cycle and nobody's really winning you know um and meanwhile if I could just throw something in there real quick on the legislature side you know they've We've gotten a lot of heat from school districts that say we you know you are not funding us adequately so we're having to close schools and the legislature says well your enrollment's been declining for a long time like you actually just talked to a legislator who was involved with some of the you know tax reform that was passed recently which will again impact schools bottom lines and he said you know well you're due to cut back because enrollments decline but then schools meanwhile are saying well you've provided all this tax relief for taxpayers that's at our expense so that's going to be a further drain on her funding, so it's. It's a it's a just a big mess
Juravich: Multi-layered big mess, yes. We've been speaking with Connor Morris, reporter and producer for Ideastream Public Media in Cleveland. Thank you for joining us today, Connor.
Morris: Of course, it's such a pleasure, Amy.
Juravich: And coming up, we're going to talk about the school building closures in Columbus. That's when All Sides continues on 89.7 NPR News.
You're listening to All Sides. I'm your host, Amy Juravich. When the school year wrapped up, it also marked the end of the line for several Columbus City school buildings. The district announced plans to close up to eight buildings over the next few years to help plug a budget shortfall. Some of the schools will stay around but be moved into other buildings. Some buildings will close altogether.
Some lament the loss of storied neighborhood schools with decades of history. Others say that the district has too many old buildings in various states of disrepair, and fewer buildings to take care of is the obvious answer. But no matter what you think about old buildings, Columbus' school district is facing budget cuts and staff layoffs as it tries to plug a $50 million budget hole.
Some are calling this era of education the big shrink. Joining us right now is Dr. Russell Brown, Chief of Strategy and Performance for the Columbus City Schools District. Welcome to All Sides Russell.
Dr. Russell Brown: Good morning. Thank you for having me here today.
Juravich: So the exact number of school buildings that will close has changed like some reporting I saw said eight other lists have nine buildings on it and some are some are closure some are mergers some are contingent on Certain things happening. So I think that's why the numbers a little fluid. Um, am I right about the number being a little fluent? Yeah
Brown: Yes. Well, first and foremost, thank you for having us on this morning. Happy to be here to be able to represent the superintendent and the school system for this conversation. Certainly the number has been fluid. We have been very active in engaging our community in a long-standing dialog about this process. These are community assets. The community has paid for them. We think it's really important for them to be involved in the decisions as we go through this process
Juravich: So let's start with how many buildings the district did close at the end of this past school year. So just like a few weeks ago, which buildings closed?
Brown: So at the end of the school year, we had three of our buildings that closed. Broadley Elementary School, Muller Elementary School and Fairwood Elementary School. These were all older facilities, to your point, costly to maintain, and in neighborhoods where the enrollment has declined over time. In each case, we move those students to newer facilities, modernized facilities, larger. And where we can accommodate the students in a modern learning environment that supports the type of instruction we want to be able to provide.
Juravich: Tell me about the closing of those three elementary schools. How did you communicate it with the parents? Like, what's that process like, you know, to spend the last school year basically saying goodbye to the building?
Brown: Well, it's actually about two years in the works. We started with the process where we engaged the community and some representatives of the community to view the entire landscape of Columbus City Schools and to make some recommendations in terms of potential closures and consolidations. Then the rubber started to hit the road this year. And we involved parents multiple times in that process, not only in discussions about the closure, but also where their students would go, where the new school would be by attendance.
It wasn't something that we just made the decision for them. We actually involved them in a process back and forth where we defined the new boundaries for the schools. I was in each and every one of these schools. I met with families and parents and students and community members. These were difficult conversations.
I remember one family in particular where three generations of the family had attended the same school. And they were actively involved in the school today, all three generations were still actively involved with the school. Schools are an anchor for the community, so it is a real sense of loss when a school closes.
Juravich: The board president, Antoinette Miranda, said recently at a meeting that the district has kicked the can down the road for a long time when it comes to actually closing buildings. Tell me more about why now is the time to finally do this.
Brown: Well, I think there are a couple of drivers. Probably the most important piece is we wanna be able to provide robust offerings to students. We want to be able to have full wraparound services for students. And that's just really hard with small schools because we're effectively spreading our resources like peanut butter across more and more schools. It gets pretty thin after a while.
Whereas if we can have larger groups of students together, it's easier to have a full-time art teacher, full-time music teacher, full-time counselor, full-time social worker. And ideally space for community partners where it's appropriate.
Juravich: So there is pressure right now from the Ohio State House. There's a bill that passed the Senate and it's being considered in the House that would require school districts to close buildings that are significantly underutilized. I think the number they landed on was 60%. So meaning 40% of the building is empty or something like that. What is the Columbus City School District's position on this bill?
Brown: So certainly, we understand the need to consolidate our buildings. And we want to be good stewards of the facilities that we have and really protecting those resources for the future of the community. This is a community that's growing. As you mentioned in the previous interview, expecting a million people here over time. So.
Juravich: Yes, that's what I was saying, like, we're expected to grow by a million people, but we don't necessarily know if that means more kids in the public school district. It's hard to imagine that it won't eventually.
Brown: Yeah, and so certainly you want to maintain the flexibility and the spaces to be able to build new schools in the future We actually we need to build some new schools right now the the issues in some places in the city We have too many seats available and other spaces in the City. We don't have enough
Juravich: Yeah, so give me an example of where's a neighborhood where you're crowded.
Brown: Liberty. Liberty elementary school out on the east side of the city. Far more students live in that neighborhood than can attend that school.
Juravich: Hmm. Okay. Well, but if this bill passes what the Senate is working on, if it passes the House and the governor signs it, it could force your hand to move faster. Do you want to, I mean, you want to make these decisions yourself, right? Are you going to try to move a little faster or with this bill in the works?
Brown: Well, I'm going to go back to part of that bill. Again, some components of that Bill, I think we would agree we need to consolidate. On the other hand, I think, we believe that should be part of the local community's decision making process, how the local committee wishes to use those resources over time, rather than a pressured sale to private companies. So this is moving public assets to the private sector.
And, if you read through the bill... At a discount rate. We would be forced to sell facilities for their educational value rather than the full market value. And then, ironically, if the private entity wishes to sell it back, they can sell it back to us at full market value. So we sell low and would have to buy back high when in the future we might need a new facility.
Juravich: So what you're talking about is a law that was already, that's already on the books, which is that districts must offer facilities to high performing charter schools first, followed by private and then non-high performing charter school before pursuing demolition or a public auction or that kind of thing. But then my understanding is that Senator Jerry Serino who wrote the bill, he wrote it because districts such as Columbus and Cleveland were not actually allowing charter schools to make offers on some of these buildings under that previous legislation. So he was trying to like make it more forceful if I have that right. So are you, so like as an example, those three elementary schools that you closed, do you need to offer them to charter schools at this moment?
Brown: So that is something that I would defer to our legal team. That being said, again, I think that the offer for sale should be dictated by public interest in this and that the public should be involved in that process. And that the current bill that's being proposed does offer different price points for the sale and then if we were to try to repurchase it. And that doesn't seem reasonable nor fair to the community and necessarily in the community's best interest moving forward.
Juravich: This is All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. We're talking about school building closures in Columbus with Dr. Russell Brown, chief of strategy and performance for the Columbus City School District. So looking at the idea of the schools you're closing, so those three elementary schools, Fairwood and Mueller and what was it, Broad? No. So Broadly, Fairwood, and Mueller. Yes, those three buildings. The idea is to save money. So you're clothing the building. So what's being done with the building that you have closed? Like, do you plan to sell it? Is the building worth money? Is the land worth money, tell me about that.
Brown: So the buildings were just closed. We're not fully complete with them at this point in time. We just ceased instruction. The decisions for the final status for the buildings really rely land with the board to make those decisions. I would hope that over time, again, that we would be very thoughtful about the land and the spaces and how we might use them in the future for future students and the community as a whole as we move forward.
Juravich: Okay, so you're thinking like having that piece of land, if the city lets it go, then you can't ever build a future school if you're missing, if you don't have the land.
Brown: Correct. And land is going to become a premium. If you have a million people coming to the city, every piece of property is going become incredibly important. It's going be very difficult to find spaces to build new buildings.
Juravich: What about the idea of any of those buildings be slated for demolition, because the building is old and rundown, and maybe it, you know, rather than like boarding it up, is it, are you gonna, are there any talks about that?
Brown: Certainly, the board has put in place on some of the resolutions for closure and intended demolition. One of the things that was very clear from the community when we were out speaking with people, people don't like having empty buildings sitting in their neighborhood. They don't lighted facilities in their community. So I think folks would much rather have a park or a vacant piece of grass area in their commute where kids could play or do other things rather than a building that isn't being used.
Juravich: I did interview the Columbus Landmarks Foundation. They put one of your buildings, the Fairwood building, on its endangered buildings list because of its historic significance. Is the board taking that into consideration, that Columbus Landmark is worried about that particular building?
Brown: I think this is a consideration for several of our buildings as we move forward. I do want to go back to the legislation just momentarily. You mentioned 60%, 40% underused. The way that's being defined is really unusual as well. It doesn't take into account any of the educational use of the building. And your prior interview spoke about special education, the growing special education population, about 20% of our students need special education services. Those classrooms, by law, are smaller. And the WAA doesn't take that into account at all.
Juravich: So the building could have fewer students in it on purpose because a special needs classroom might only have five or six students in rather than 28.
Brown: I think the community has heard the superintendent's vision for our academy model across the system, which would not have CTE program or career and technical educational programming just located in one or two buildings, but rather located across the system. Well, those spaces tend to be pretty large and don't accommodate as many students because they're built for the career and Local Education Programming.
Juravich: I think that anyone listening to this right now who has a student in one of the buildings that's on this list for future closures is probably listening very carefully and waiting for me to mention their building, right? So you have some buildings that are still in consideration for closing this coming up school year or the year after that. Are there any that are definite that you can talk about that this school year will be the last one? Como. Como? Elementary? Okay.
Brown: Como Elementary will close at the end of this coming year. We'll begin a boundary process this fall with Como parents and parents and community members of neighboring schools to determine where those new boundaries would be and where Como students would attend by address in the coming year, we expect that the majority of those students will end up at Oakland Park Elementary School, again it's a new modernized facility. In each of these cases we are consistently trying to follow the superintendent's vision to accommodate our students in our newest and most modern facilities.
Juravich: Yeah, there's also the consideration of what's called the Everett Middle School building, but it's where Columbus Gifted Academy is, and then the McGuffey building, which is where Columbus Alternative High School is. Both of those, you're trying to move the school and close the building. Do I have that right? It's hard to separate a school from a building.
Brown: Yeah, I think we would say we're trying to move the programming. Programming, okay.
Juravich: Is that, yeah, it's confusing to say move a school but close a building.
Brown: Yeah, because folks tend to think of school and building as being synonymous. The Everett facility currently houses the gifted programming, and CAUSE has been at the McGuffey facility for quite a while as well. Neither of those are modern facilities, neither of those is ideal. We have looked at a couple options for those.
The CAUCE programming in particular, we plan on moving to downtown high school, It's a modern facility which I think will much better accommodate the cause programming. It's central to the city, it's close to a couple universities, et cetera. Certainly employers, it would make it much easier for those students to access other parts of the community as part of their programming. The gifted program is a little trickier. The programming at the Everett facility is really unique and so trying to find a good fit for it is something that we're spending some time on right now.
Juravich: Okay. And when the cause, which seems you just said you're planning to move it to downtown, is that a two year plan? One year plan. That's a two year plan. Okay. It has to be staged because current way downtown high school houses a lot of CTE programming. Some of that needs to be relocated as part of that Academy model and there's some other moving parts with that as well.
Juravich: So I mentioned this in the previous interview. There's just many layers to school funding, to buildings, and all of that. And meanwhile, you have this pending legislation that the Senate passed, that the House may take up when they come back from their summer recess. What would you say to someone who says, like, yes, the state should force your hand, should force you to move faster, get rid of these old buildings so that you can move forward faster?
Brown: Well, we certainly need to consolidate. There's no doubt about that. We also, frankly, need to have new construction and new construction will facilitate some consolidation as we move forward. But we have to have the flexibility to do that. If we're gonna build a new building, we have have a place to accommodate the students while that new building's being constructed.
So I would hope that as we moved forward, there might be some opportunity to make some modifications to the legislation so that it's more fair and that it might incorporate a little bit more community input and allow for some localized differences. It's sort of a one size fits all.
And I wanna come back to the 60% because I didn't really touch on it quite as well as I would like to. Again, I mentioned that it doesn't take into account how the building's used, how we would use it for educational purposes. They're defining capacity based on occupancy permit, which is a fire department.
Juravich: So what the fire department says is how many humans can go in the building.
Brown: It's safely exit the building, which takes nothing into consideration in terms of education and who's being served in the building and the purpose of it. That just doesn't make sense to me.
Juravich: So you're saying the district should be allowed to determine what a well-utilized building looks like to them?
Brown: Um or come up with a nice ruler that sort of acknowledges the educational use other states have done it I I spent some time working on marijuana and they've have it in law how an educational use for a building is defined Okay
Juravich: Well, that's interesting. Obviously, many layers to this will continue the conversation, but I appreciate your time. We've been speaking with Dr. Russell Brown, Chief of Strategy and Performance for Columbus City School District, about building closures. Thank you for joining us on All Sides today.
Brown: Thank you for having me.
Juravich: And coming up, we're going to shift our focus to higher education, discover why some say there is actually no epidemic of college closure. That is When All Sides Continues on 89.7 NPR News.
You're listening to All Sides. I'm your host, Amy Juravich. From grade schools to college, we're talking about school closures this hour. And we're now gonna look at higher education. Fewer high school graduates have led to the shuttering of colleges and economic decline for college towns across the nation. While the New York Times is reporting an epidemic of college closures, our next guest says a closer look at the data tells a different story. Joining us now is Ethan Ris, Associate Professor of Higher Education Administration at the University of Nevada, Reno. Welcome to All Sides, Ethan.
Ethan Ris: Thanks so much for having me.
Juravich: So, earlier this year, Hampshire College in Massachusetts announced its closure. Here in Ohio, in northwest Ohio, Lourdes College, Lourdes University shut its doors at the close of this academic year. So, I know two colleges and two schools are not an epidemic, but what does the data actually tell you on college closures?
Ris: Yeah, absolutely. So first of all, let me just say, it's really sad when a college closes and nobody's happy about it, especially not the students who are currently enrolled, but also not the employees there, obviously, definitely not the alumni. It's no fun to say, oh, the college I went to is actually gone.
But as sad as all of that is, there really is no epidemic of college closures as many many journalists and consultants would have you believe. So if we actually dig into the numbers it turns out over the last six years only 49 degree granting non-profit colleges and universities have closed. 49 is a not insignificant number but when you compare it and recognize that there's 3200 plus such institutions in the U.S. As of 2020 when when those closures start it's a pretty small number.
It looks like an annual mortality rate of 0.02%. So, you know, and when you compare that to similar things like the number of small businesses or nonprofit organizations that close, it's really small. So it turns out that although these are big stories and although it's not great for the folks involved, the year-to-year numbers are something like seven per year of these schools are closing.
Juravich: Right, and a point two percent does not, you write in here, a point two percent, does not sound like an epidemic to me. That's what you wrote in your piece for Slate. And I would have to agree with that. Doesn't sound like a epidemic. I mean, it's under one percent. So what does it mean when a paper like the New York Times calls it an epidemic? What does that do to people's worries about small colleges?
Ris: Yeah, I think it's actually really harmful and it's understandable, it gets clicks. I know why the editors there who write the headlines wanna proclaim this epidemic and lots of other people who are sort of eager to see the downfall of higher education trumpet these sorts of stories. Or I should say consultants who wanna profit off of fear within the higher education sector.
But it does definitely undermine public trust in higher ed, especially for families and for students who aren't particularly savvy about college going. Maybe they're the first in the family to go to college. They're afraid of, you know, potential tuition bills and the cost of student debt. And when they hear that, oh, all of these colleges are closing, I genuinely think it might drive some of them away and say, this is a risky enterprise.
Juravich: In the article you wrote for Slate, you write that the schools, the colleges that are closing fit a specific type. How so? Like what's the type? Does it mean it's tiny? Yes, absolutely.
Ris: Yeah, they're tiny. So of those 49 that I mentioned, only five of them had more than 2,000 students. And of the 49, nine of them had fewer than 200 students. These are incredibly small. So of those 49, I pulled the list and there's four out of those over the last six years that have closed in Ohio.
You mentioned Lourdes University, that had less than 1,000 student. Urbana University had 1,200 students. Chatfield College in St. Martin, Ohio had 152 students when it closed. So these are really small places. They're all also private institutions. They are nonprofits, but they are privately controlled, many of them religiously affiliated. So they're sort of church-based schools. They're very small. They tend to be concentrated in a few parts of the country, especially the upper Midwest and New England as well. Those are the real zones where you're seeing these closures happen.
What's really notable is that over the last six years, zero public institutions have closed public four-year colleges and universities, zero across the entire country. And this coincides with the COVID pandemic. You know, we've lived through that. It was a terrible time for colleges and universities. And still the numbers of deaths of these schools is really low.
Juravich: So, I mean, despite the 49 that have closed in the last five or six years, some would argue with you and say, well, I want to go to a small school. I like that small school feel. That's why I picked that school. But you would say, only 0.2% close. There's plenty others to pick from. So I'm sure there's still other small colleges out there.
Ris: Absolutely. There are hundreds of what we classify as liberal arts colleges, small liberal arts colleges with enrollments under 3000. I don't have the exact number, but there's hundreds of them. So yes, a few of these are closing. And I think the communities that are probably most affected are the religious communities that had a stake in these small colleges and wanted the kids from their families or their congregations to go to them.
In Ohio, that includes Mennonite communities. In other places, other small denominational sects. So I think it hits them particularly hard, but in terms of the student who just simply wants a small college environment, I think this is a drop in the bucket and there's still lots of choice.
Juravich: And you study higher education and you have a test for schools that you call the "have I heard of it" test. Can you explain this?
Ris: Yeah, absolutely. So it's sort of a party trick I like to do. And I can tell you a little about most colleges and universities in the United States enough to have a five-minute cocktail party conversation. But these schools that are on the list that have closed recently generally don't pass that test.
And so obviously I'm not an Ohioan and I don't know the landscape particularly well, but, you know, I could easily named 30 colleges and universities in Ohio and and Chatfield College in St. Martin was never one of those. So, you know, that doesn't mean it's not important. It doesn't mean that it didn't have a lot of meaning to its students and its alumni and its staff and faculty and community. But these are not exactly name brand schools.
Juravich: This is All Sides on 89.7 NPR News, and we're talking about whether or not there is an epidemic of college closures with Ethan Ris, associate professor of higher education administration at the University of Nevada, Reno. So let's talk more about this narrative of an epidemic of school closings, because it's not just, I didn't mean to blame the New York Times, I mean, it's in many publications everywhere. What is pushing the narrative? Is it simply clicks, or is there something behind the narrative.
Ris: I think there's a couple of things. One is definitely the clicks. You know, epidemics are scary and we definitely gravitate towards things that are scary. We like watching, or I don't know if we like it, but we're drawn to bad news a lot better, a lot more than we were drawn to good news.
But I also really suspect that there's this undercurrent that a lot of this is being pushed by consultants. Consultants who say that they have secret data or secret formulas or secret strategies to help colleges and universities avoid this epidemic. And so they put out reports and they put up their own news stories and press releases, a lot of which get picked up by media, both local media and national media, who cite these things.
There's one study that really made the rounds and was cited in a lot of the journalism that I've seen by a group called the Huron Consulting Group, and they said, you know, something like 800 colleges and universities are imminently at risk of closure because of some special sauce that they've figured out for predicting these things. And my guess is that somebody there, their marketing team, reached out to all 800 of schools and said, hey, you're on our list. How about we give you a sales pitch on how we can help? And they also, you know, they promulgated that through press releases and so forth, and it did get picked up in the media. So I think there's definitely an element here that sees dollar signs and this sort of fear mongering may drive some of the schools that certainly are in financially precarious situations, but drive them towards consultants that they probably don't need.
Juravich: I mean, you're not from Ohio, but here in Ohio, we love our small colleges and universities. We have a lot of them. And recently, yeah, recently, a candidate for governor Vivek Ramaswamy is running for governor here as a Republican. And he brought up the idea of consolidating some of the colleges and universities in Ohio. He said there's too many. They duplicate programs, they duplicate services. And he argued that there could be a consolidation idea in the future. What are your thoughts on that? Because he created a lot of buzz. Because as soon as you say that in Ohio, everyone immediately thinks he wants to close their school, right? Because he didn't name names. But yeah, what do you think of the mergers and the duplicated services?
Ris: Yes, I'd love that and I'll need to go find his statements on that because believe it or not, I wrote an entire book recently on this very topic on people complaining about duplication and having too many colleges and too much effort going in and poor returns on investment. But the kicker is that all of this happened 100 years ago.
So it's a historical book about higher education reformers in the first half of the 20th century, and they were saying all of these things, that there were too many colleges, some had to shut down, some had to merge, all of the above. And so we're still hearing that refrain, very much so. What is unique now, that probably wasn't the case a hundred years ago, is that it is overwhelmingly coming from the political right, folks like Mr. Ramaswamy.
There is a narrative there that higher education is, you know, is a failure or is an enemy to the people as the Ohioan J.D. Vance famously said, describing professors as the enemy and colleges in higher education itself as enemies. So we're seeing a lot of that, but what we find out historically from the efforts a hundred years ago, which definitely did not work, and the current efforts or the current doomsaying at least is the colleges and universities are really resilient and they do have lots of avenues that they can pursue to stay alive and to stay afloat.
And that includes small private universities and even more so public universities, which are the ones I assume Mr. Ramaswamy is talking about thinking about consolidating those. And there have been a few states, most famously in Vermont and Pennsylvania, where the state public higher education commissions have overseen the mergers of multiple independent schools. But in those cases, individual campuses didn't close. They just consolidated administrative capacities. The students stayed where they were. They stayed in the same degree programs. It was simply instead of having two presidents, they now had one president and they were able to achieve some administrative efficiencies that way. But that is not the same thing as shutting down, you know, entire schools.
Juravich: We only have two minutes left, and I have many more questions, so we're gonna have to have you back.
Ris: Well, I'd love to.
Juravich: Yeah, tell me about the interest in trade schools, because instead of going to college, there's been an increased interest in going to like a two-year program where you learn to do a trade. Do you see that increasing rather than small colleges and universities increasing?
Ris: I think it definitely is, but I don't think it's at the expense of the small colleges of the four years. This is a situation where everybody can win as the pie grows bigger. I do think large numbers of students, many more than we've seen in the past, are interested in post-secondary education.
And sometimes that means going to a traditional four-year school. Sometimes that means a community college. Sometimes it means a trade school. But it's not a zero-sum dog-eat-dog world. The main thing that people who wave their arms around things like the quote unquote demographic cliff forget is that it's not just 18 and 19 year olds who go to college. Older people can go to colleges as well. And when you see a lot of the gravitation towards trade schools or community colleges, most of those new students are actually over age 25. So that's really where the growth is.
Juravich: We have been talking about whether or not there's an epidemic of college closures with Ethan Ris, associate professor of higher education administration at the University of Nevada, Reno. Thank you so much for your time today, Ethan. I appreciate it.
Ris: Thank you, it was a pleasure to be here.
Juravich: And you're listening to All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. I'm Amy Juravich. I want to say thanks to the All Sides staff, producers Marcus Charleston and Erin Esmott Rabinowitz. Student producers Iza Huck, Colin Simpson and Brianna Fortunet. Our student producer from Denison University is Ellen Hansen. Board operation by Chris Johnston and Trey Hayes and video production by the Ohio Channel. This has been All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. Thanks for joining us.