Antioch College Open

Lack of student recruitment,faculty retention a ‘Catch-22’

By Lauren Heaton

So maybe it isn’t approval from the Ohio Board of Regents (OBR) that’s holding up the show at Antioch College. According to Andrzej Bloch, acting president of the college, if the OBR were to this month approve the college’s ability to grant degrees beyond the current date of December 2008, recruiting for next year’s class would still be stalled. And it isn’t exactly the money either, $2 million of which was delivered on schedule last month, he said, with another $4.6 million on the way in December. Nor is it the status of financial exigency, an unenviable but functional state Bloch said many academic institutions operate under for years.

So what is preventing the college from rebuilding after the university trustees reversed their decision to close last month and agreed to maintain operations at the college? “It’s a Catch-22 — if we are to retain students, they need to know how many faculty are going to be here; and in order for faculty to stay, they need to know that there will be students here,” Rodgers said.

According to Bloch, the university has determined that the college doesn’t yet have a financially viable plan of its own that will convince the university it can attract enough students to sustain operations there, he said in an interview on Monday. That is the job of the three committees for curriculum, budget and facilities, whose members are scheduled to be finalized at this week’s meeting of AdCil (the college’s shared governance body). The college community has heard the university’s plan and the alumni’s plan, and now it is time for the college to design its own plan to sustain itself, which Bloch hopes will be completed in first draft form in January.

Though the faculty already redesigned the curriculum three years ago, it must do so again to attract students with an even slimmer number of teachers and fewer resources than before, he said. Some programs and some faculty may need to be cut, Bloch said, but how many faculty members and from which departments will depend on the curriculum committee’s academic plan for the next few years.

The budget and facilities committees must plan a budget with the resources pledged by alumni and the current and anticipated tuition that allocates resources to immediate and long-term renovation of the facilities most in need of maintenance, Bloch said.

Many college community members were unsettled by a letter Bloch sent out to faculty last week notifying them that their jobs may be cut and that recruitment of a new class could not begin until the OBR and the school’s North Central accreditation body approved a new plan allowing the college to grant degrees beyond December 2008, the date the college told the OBR in June that it would stop granting degrees.

“But if we can’t recruit, what’s the point in staying open?” faculty member Scott Warren said on Tuesday.

Faculty member Beverly Rodgers had similar concerns about the need to retain existing students and recruit new students to ensure faculty jobs, which would in turn, attract more students.

“It’s a Catch-22 — if we are to retain students, they need to know how many faculty are going to be here; and in order for faculty to stay, they need to know that there will be students here,” Rodgers said.

OBR not obstacle
The process for regaining degree-granting authority could be completed in a matter of weeks, Bloch said, which would allow the college to enroll transfer students who choose to come to Antioch in the fall 2008. According to Shane DeGarmo, who represents OBR’s institutional authorization department, the OBR have not revoked the college’s certificate of authorization to grant degrees, and in fact it has never revoked a certificate from a school in Ohio.

“We would have concerns if adequate resources don’t exist to serve students at the college, but to the best of my knowledge, the college is stable,” DeGarmo said. “If it was the school’s decision to teach out [discontinue teaching], that’s their decision, but it’s not something that’s mandated by OBR.”

The North Central Association of Colleges and Schools accrediting body also said Antioch University’s accreditation (appraised for all the university campuses together) is currently in fine standing, according to NCA president Steven Crow, who has been monitoring Antioch’s financial difficulties for over 20 years. He said the NCA had scheduled a routine financial assessment of the university in July 2009 before the college closure was announced, and that the agency had taken “no official action” as a result of the closure announcement.

“They’ve missed every enrollment target for years with the college, and they’re still not anywhere close to having an auditor say that this is a continuing problem,” Crow said. “There is no one on the outside, other than Antioch’s own internal governance structure, that is deciding to close.”

However, even with authorization from OBR, according to Bloch, the university will not authorize recruiting a new class until it is convinced that the college has the resources to guarantee to see them through to graduation in four years.

But the college does have a sustainable plan, Warren said, which was presented by the Antioch College Alumni Association to the trustees at their October meeting. It is an “impressive” plan, he said, created in consultation with college faculty, students and staff to address in detail the fundraising, budgetary, recruitment and academic needs of the college.

“It’s all there, I don’t see any need to reinvent the wheel,” Warren said.

But according to Bloch, there is a misperception that the university adopted the alumni board’s plan exactly as presented, Bloch said. “That is not true,” he said. The university and the college must proceed according to a plan the two groups will now draft together, and that includes a deliberate step-by-step approach to making sure the college can fulfill any promises it makes to both faculty salaries and graduating admitted students, he said.

Right now, according to the university, the college is not financially stable enough to guarantee that a student entering as a first year could stay at Antioch for four years and graduate, Bloch said. Therefore, recruiting for a new class next year would be impossible, he said, adding that now is already too late to start recruiting a new class because recruitment runs on an 18-month cycle, and students around the country are already making decisions about college for the fall of 2008.

The college can, however, because of last month’s decision to maintain operations, accept transfer students (traditionally a strong suit for Antioch) and potentially those who would be willing to sign a waiver to their rights to graduate in four years from Antioch College, Bloch said. And while the college will graduate its senior class in April 2008, Bloch did not expect enrollment next year to drop significantly because the college will hopefully retain most of its current first, second and third year students and be able to admit enough new students to maintain much of its current operations.

Also as part of the initial steps forward, the college will begin searching for a director of admissions to admit qualified transfer students and eventually work with the alumni association for general recruitment. Bloch said he hopes to hire someone by early January.

Alumni board member Steve Schwerner understands that the university may not allow the college to begin recruiting high school students yet, but he is still hopeful that university leaders will show they are working together with the college as they said they would and request from the OBR permission to grant degrees through 2012, if not this year then certainly by the springtime.

“We hope they say by next spring it’s okay to start recruiting new students — we’re hoping they say that in two weeks, and we’ll keep pushing for that,” he sad.

Beyond this step-by-step process, nothing is guaranteed for Antioch College’s future, Bloch said. But he is hopeful that if the faculty, the students, the staff and supporters remain committed, the college has a chance to pull through.

“I could not come to work every day thinking otherwise,” he said.

Contact: lheaton@ysnews.com