SPECIAL REPORT
Uncertain Future for Smaller Colleges
An aerial photo of Cazenovia College in Madison County. It will close in May after nearly two centuries in business. Photo courtesy of Cazenovia College.
As Cazenovia College shuts down in the spring, other smaller Upstate New York colleges may follow suit, say experts By Aaron Gifford
W
hile Central New York residents were stunned by Cazenovia College’s announcement that the school will shut down permanently in May, higher education experts say this closure is part of a larger trend impacting institutions across the country. Cazenovia College, in Madison County, has 746 students, down from 990 a decade ago. The acceptance rate exceeds 70%, which means seven out of 10 applicants are accepted. The sticker price is $54,004, though the average net price per student is $18,413. The approximate $4.1 million in the school’s endowment is not nearly enough to pay the current debts.
Locally, the economic impact will be lost jobs, decreased sales tax revenues to local governments and a shrinking customer base for restaurants and shops that have long depended on business from college students and employees. And while this closure also means one less college choice for future high school graduates in the Central New York area, there are signs of eventual problems among many other small private liberal arts colleges within a three-hour drive of Syracuse and Oswego County. Hartwick College in Oneonta, for example, saw its student enrollment decline from 1,555 in 2012 to 1,170 in
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the fall of 2021. The acceptance rate there is 96%, with only 11% of those accepted enrolling at the school and the graduation rate is 57%. The sticker price: $64,769, though the net price is $22,523, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. “The problem is, college is just too damn expensive,” said Robert Zemsky, a professor in the graduate school of education at University of Pennsylvania. Zemsky co-authored “The College Stress Test,” a 2020 book that examines enrollment and financial issues that American colleges are facing. He said schools are adding too many new majors like video game design and adult education programs at a time when there are not enough students to put most colleges at full capacity. Another problem, he said, is that the richest schools keep getting richer, while most schools across the nation are getting smaller and poorer. Zemsky’s University of Pennsylvania, for example, has about a $15
