The people who study higher education have identified four factors that question an institution\u2019s viability<\/a>: enrollment, costs, changing attitudes toward tertiary schooling, and AI.\u00a0<\/p>\n Obviously, enrollment is the big one: a school exists for students; and if the students aren\u2019t filling the seats, there won\u2019t 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\u2014and that includes Catholic higher education\u2014doesn\u2019t 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\u2019t in English 101 this month.<\/p>\n 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\u2014in 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.<\/p>\n A lot of schools have grown fat and lazy\u2026in the decade the U.S. Government got into the student loan business. Tweet This<\/a><\/p>\n And, let\u2019s 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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n Catholics also got used to running schools on the cheap, thinking that education doesn\u2019t cost and faculty don\u2019t need to be paid. When clerical and religious faculty were replaced by laity, salary costs had to go up. I can\u2019t pay RIT tuition on a priestly stipend!<\/p>\n Finally, young people are beginning to ask whether college is a worthwhile investment given the dicey job market many face post-graduation. And let\u2019s face the truth for Catholic colleges and universities: are they Catholic enough to be worth the price? The Catholic family that doesn\u2019t really think religion to be an important element of higher education will probably ignore the mission dimension.\u00a0 But young Catholics serious about their faith\u2014and that is an important market niche\u2014can 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.<\/p>\n 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?<\/p>\n One website named 240 colleges and universities whose financial variables are such that they might be on the chopping block in the next decade<\/a>. 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<\/a>, it is just shy of 200.\u00a0 Are we potentially facing a grim reaping of a quarter of Catholic higher education?<\/p>\n I hope not. But I have to ask about the writing on the wall.<\/p>\n Catholic colleges were just one part of the great Catholic infrastructure that an earlier generation of \u201cbrick and mortar\u201d Catholic leaders (including bishops like Spellman, Cushing, and Cody) built. It\u2019s 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n That Catholic leaders\u2014including bishops\u2014call this great culling \u201crenewal\u201d 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\u2014including our colleges and universities.<\/p>\n John M. Grondelski (Ph.D., Fordham) is a former associate dean of the School of Theology, Seton Hall University, South Orange, New Jersey. All views expressed herein are his own.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I dropped my youngest son off August 22 as a freshman at Rochester Institute of Technology. I couldn\u2019t…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":353387,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[9,24,63,134,136,135],"class_list":["post-353386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-staten-island","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-staten-island","tag-staten-island-headlines","tag-staten-island-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=353386"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353386\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/353387"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=353386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=353386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=353386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/John-M.-GRONDELSKI-2022.jpg\")
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