r/college • u/UnscheduledCalendar • Aug 30 '26
Why Syracuse Can’t Attract the Students It Needs to Pay the Bills - The enrollment crisis taking down smaller schools is now hitting bigger, brand-name universities
https://www.wsj.com/us-news/education/syracuse-student-application-enrollment-crisis-budget-ff142896Submissions statement: Syracuse University faces a 1.5% budget shortfall due to declining enrollment, exacerbated by a drop in international students and competition from public universities. The school struggles to attract students despite its national reputation, facing challenges from its location, high tuition, and a changing higher education landscape. Syracuse is considering redefining itself as a regional school while trying to maintain its prestige and competitiveness.
paywall: https://archive.ph/faXCd
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u/jawndell Aug 30 '26
People are also starting to realize it’s better to go to a cheaper state school than a 90k a year university.
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u/-_____------ Aug 30 '26
I think this is especially true for Syracuse. There are 90k a year universities that are very prestigious and difficult to gain admission to which I think people would sometimes be inclined to choose over a state school. Private schools that don’t offer that much more but cost more don’t give a net benefit
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u/Atmosphere_Simple Aug 30 '26
Can't wait till these "brand name" universities have to start lowering their tuition
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u/UnscheduledCalendar Aug 30 '26
Starting to think they can’t without firing scores of people at this point. Like we might need to go back to barracks and group learning
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u/GatEnthusiast Aug 30 '26
There are A LOT of pointless jobs at colleges. Most can fire a lot of people without it causing much in the way of problems
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u/SweetCosmicPope Aug 31 '26
My son's state university has been going through this process. Of course, they're doing shitty stuff like cutting some programs. However, the previous couple of administrations have been very top-heavy and the current one is starting to trim the fat. They had a school president who didn't want to manage the school and opted not to live in the the president's residence, and instead hired a provost at $600k per year to manage the school, while he rented a mansion in another town to live in and schmooze politicians. New president came in and moved into the present's residence and fired the provost.
But then they go and do stupid stuff like approve $30m for the athletics department.
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u/Wareve Aug 30 '26
I think there will be a substantial constriction among a lot of these schools that have built out really Superfluous means of attracting students.
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u/Dyscord2 17d ago
Don't forget...many of these athletics dept still cater to men's sports. The female athletes rarely get the georgeous facilities.
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u/bestjakeisbest Computer Science Major Aug 30 '26
Damn, maybe if they didnt make school too expensive.
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u/hey_oh_its_io Aug 30 '26
Because you’ve never bought hardware or software at scale, or remember how much waste students produce from a host of resources. The electricity to run everything, the digital and physical security measures for any number of research projects.
Everyone thinks the problem is easy until they have to consider it. It’s not just new buildings and lawn maintenance. A university education was fundamentally cheaper before because the resources to educate in a first world country wasn’t that different over the course of a millennia.
Syracuse suffers from a number of different things aside from programs, the city is still in a bit of a state, it’s cold and for its price point people could find themselves somewhere warmer. A few programs also had major faculty shifts from both retirement and people moving to new universities.
People really need to get off the university is job training bandwagon. It’s not trade school, it’s meant to be a challenge of the mind to create smart, adaptive citizens that are up to the challenges of the day. Students are too saddled with debt from routine cuts in state and federal funding since the Reagan administration. The debt is a political advantage to private lenders and is a middle finger to everyone staring up with the upper class.
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u/moxie-maniac Aug 30 '26
My experience was 20 years ago, when I was offered a job in Syracuse, but it seems that the city was more than "in a bit of a state," but for a small city, not at all appealing. I also recall more murders in that one small city than the State of New Hampshire. Yikes!
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u/hey_oh_its_io Aug 30 '26
Yes, Syracuse is a case study on a number of failings from demographic shifts, tax policy, urban planning and renewal. The list is intense and unyielding. Anyone familiar with one of its conditions could identify 3 more handcuffed to it in the same breath. My point was to address that it wasn’t solely an issue of urban proximity. But that a number of factors were in play.
Murder as a relative statistic is a bit flawed. Especially when you compare a small state with a population of 1.5M vs a metro area of about 600k. One of the “safest” states vs a comparatively high poverty area. Murder is broadly an outcome of other illegal activities and is rarely a siloed instance when you take in things like drugs, domestic abuse, etc.
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u/Jon66238 Sep 02 '26
Hate to say it, but when students go to school straight out of high school and keep studying and don’t attempt to get a job until they have a masters, creates their own problems. People need to learn that they just need a bachelors to start. Then get into the workforce and then go back and get a masters. Be over educated with no practical experience is a real problem, but people are not ready for this conversation.
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u/Middle_Violinist_5 Sep 02 '26
In some fields, a masters is advantageous earlier in one's career. Not all, but some.
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u/AdriVoid Aug 30 '26
I mean, its simply the demographic cliff. There are not enough children born in the North East to support all the smaller schools’ infrastructure. Combined with the decline of internationals- it will force many to shut down unless they have a distinct draw, enough prestige to attract students from other parts of the country, or can adapt to regional demands enough to overtake competition. Syracuse location in upstate new york really doesn’t help.
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u/GatEnthusiast Aug 30 '26
They need to stop wasting money on fancy athletics programs. They are quite simply not important. It's literally just entertainment. Some basic-ass intramural sports is all that's needed.
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u/Sara_Renee14 Aug 30 '26
Except athletics is where a majority of schools rake in the money.
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u/terrybuvm Aug 30 '26
Athletics are a money loser for almost all schools. A 2026 US GAO report found that 94% of NCAA D1 programs cost more than the revenue they generated.
https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-26-10864010
u/robbie_the_cat Aug 30 '26
You'd be shocked at how well alumni donations correlate with athletic visibility.
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u/PGell Aug 30 '26
Is it though? I taught at LSU and the football money did not go back into the school, but we sure as hell supported the program. (I believe the football program did give some money back, but it was not a revenue stream as many people would think of it.)
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u/bl1y Grading Papers Is Why I Drink Aug 30 '26
School general funds almost never cover athletics at a big sports school like LSU.
And incidentally, from 2012-2017, the athletics program transferred $36 million to the rest of the university. (The annual transfers continued for some time after that, but I can't easily find the exact data.)
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u/GatEnthusiast Aug 30 '26
I guarantee you that LSU is in the minority of big sports schools then. Most sports programs are nothing but a money sink.
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u/bl1y Grading Papers Is Why I Drink Aug 30 '26
Sports programs are fairly complicated because it's hard to measure stuff like how much money they help the university generate through merchandise and through recruiting students. And then with public universities it gets a lot more complicated because of the benefit to the local economy and tax generation for the state.
Meanwhile, there's the administrative bloat. From 1995 to 2015, Syracuse increased their number of admins by 400%. They have 1 non-faculty employee for every 7 students, and 3 for every 2 faculty.
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u/GatEnthusiast Aug 30 '26
I get that how it is is complicated. I think it should be simplified– no big sports programs AT ALL, just intramural sports for the students to participate in. Otherwise it's just a distraction from what actually matters– education. The very idea that a school's primary or even secondary focus could be a sports program is idiotic and disgusting.
Yeah administrative bloat is a huge problem. That doesn't absolve schools pouring money into or being attached at the hip to sports. I've heard every justification there is and all of them are brain-dead arguments made by people who are obsessed with sports.
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u/bl1y Grading Papers Is Why I Drink Aug 30 '26
I don't know any university where sports is the school's primary focus, or even second. For instance, if you look at Syracuse (where sports run a surplus), their budget is about 5% of the total university budget. That's a lot, but it's far from being close to the school's primary focus.
Syracuse spends about 3x as much on faculty than on athletics. And sure, I'd like that ratio to be higher, but at least there the athletics programs are a net gain.
Student services gets 50% more than athletics. And maybe that seems pretty low, but student services is separate from student academic services, which gets about 25% more than athletics, so the two combined are actually close to triple.
And that's actually just on salaries. When you add in supplies, facilities, operating expenses, etc, faculty are almost 5x athletics, and student/academic services are similarly about 5x.
But, if you genuinely think the only people support college athletics are brain dead obsessives, let me ask how you feel about universities have music and theater departments.
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u/GatEnthusiast Aug 30 '26 edited Aug 30 '26
What are you, a professor of gen-ed music appreciation classes or some other required nonsensical liberal arts? Anything that's not meat and potato academics for a real profession should be an afterthought. This isn't complicated.
I am a commuter student trying to become a physician assistant– an actually useful profession. Why should I have to walk 20 minutes to and 20 minutes from where I have my classes every day from where I park? Because the commuter lot is full of construction vehicles and material for building a fancy new sports complex that's taking apparently years to build. I can't afford an apartment nearby so that's on top of a long commute drive. Yes, if it were some fancy music or theater building I would feel similar, though maybe not quite as critically as I do regarding sports. Learning the ability to read sheet music at least made learning to read an electrocardiogram easier for me. I could at least make some arguments for a theater and such. An office for some overpaid sports "coordinator"? Hell no. They can go to hell along with anyone that advocates for that job's existence.
"Grading papers is why I drink." Well I drink because the literal gangsters that are higher ed institutional faculty and their supporters have their priorities absolutely wrong. I have to go through them and participate in their humiliation ritual in order to get the job I want. Ritual that has fuck-all to do with medical/science education. I HAVE to pay their mediocre asses to participate in this humiliation ritual in which I find myself taking an "Introduction to Interior Design" class. They are morally reprehensible in my opinion. A by-product of generations of undeserved decadence. Are you proudly a part of that? If you are a professor, what are you a professor of? I pray it's not something useless.
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u/robbie_the_cat Aug 30 '26
You'd be shocked at how well alumni donations correlate with athletic visibility.
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u/terrybuvm Aug 30 '26
That too is a myth.
https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7072/7/2/19https://people.it.tamu.edu/\~jmeer/Meer_Rosen_Athletics_EER.PDF
What matters there is if the donations go to the university general fund and not just back to the athletic program. And they often don't.
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u/PGell Aug 30 '26
The alumni donate to the football program, not to the education side. We professors don't see that money.
The 36 million is the funding back i mentioned and getting that was a fight.
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u/robbie_the_cat Aug 30 '26
I literally work in institutional advancement (we're the people who ask alumni for money for a living).
Industry wide, alumni donations to D1 schools correlate more strongly with positive press for athletics than any other identifiable factor.
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u/Jon66238 Sep 02 '26
Not really. Most of tuition goes to these athletic programs because they are not self sufficient.
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u/kacheow Aug 31 '26
The Syracuse pitch was always a party/sports school in the northeast with acceptable academics. These days the kids that want that are going south, living in much nicer towns, and paying a hell of a lot less
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u/bl1y Grading Papers Is Why I Drink Aug 30 '26
Overall, Syracuse's athletics program runs a surplus around $10 million. It's not taking money from the rest of the school.
But, you could keep football and men's basketball (the biggest money makers) and ditch women's basketball (the biggest money loser).
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u/Harrythehobbit Aug 30 '26
I literally cannot imagine how it's possible for schools to charge what they do and not turn a profit, much less break even.
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u/MyBrainIsNerf Aug 30 '26
Most colleges aren’t trying to turn a profit. They are non-profit or state run. They provide a service.
For-profit college is a real red-flag.
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u/frausting Aug 31 '26
Sure but how can you charge $50-100k a year per student and not break even? I agree college shouldn’t be run for any serious profit, but if you’re charging more $10k a year, you’re not providing a service at any reasonable value.
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u/boner79 Aug 31 '26
Non-Profit does not mean they don’t make money. It means they can’t return any profits to shareholders, but rather have to reinvest it on themselves, such as executive bonuses and lazy rivers.
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u/Jon66238 Sep 02 '26
Executive bonuses…. That’s some bogus shit there.
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u/boner79 Sep 02 '26
I suggest you check out some private university 990 forms to see the compensation of the top executive officers
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u/robbie_the_cat Aug 30 '26
Education is extremely expensive. Especially when you have to employ legions od administrators in order to ensure compliance with our current level of regulatory mandates.
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u/bl1y Grading Papers Is Why I Drink Aug 30 '26
Education is extremely cheap. Administration is extremely expensive.
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u/Few-Armadillo2791 Aug 30 '26
Just like in hospitals. Admins get a ton of money and yet nurses have to basically quit their jobs if they want a day off.
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u/robbie_the_cat Aug 30 '26
Feel free to try and deliver an education to thousands of students at a time without administration to support the effort.
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u/bl1y Grading Papers Is Why I Drink Aug 30 '26
From 1995 to 2015, Syracuse increased their number of admins by 400%.
Are some admins needed? Yes. Are that many admins needed? No.
An article in the Chronicle of Higher Education suggested that the ideal faculty:admin ratio would be 3:1. When that article was published (2012), the actual ratio was closer to 1:2. (That number is somewhat skewed though because they were looking at tenured and tenure-track professors, and universities have shifted a lot towards contingent and adjunct faculty.)
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u/robbie_the_cat Aug 30 '26
Sounds like you've got the formula for starting a superior IHE and I can't wait to see the admissions brochure.
Off you go now!
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u/bl1y Grading Papers Is Why I Drink Aug 30 '26
I think you mistyped something there. What's this got to do with Inside Higher Ed? And why would they have an admissions brochure?
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u/robbie_the_cat Aug 30 '26
Institution of Higher Education
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u/bl1y Grading Papers Is Why I Drink Aug 30 '26
I've spent close to 20 years in higher ed in one form or another, and I don't know I've ever seen that acronym.
But anyways, it just so happens that my published scholarship is on higher ed reform, and especially cost reforms. Unfortunately, I don't have the capital needed to launch a university.
The biggest thing universities need to come to grips with though is that they're just too big, and bloat begets bloat. If a university expands, it needs new admissions officers, student services, and academic services. And as those departments expand, you need more HR and tech support (and tech support uses HR, and HR uses tech support).
And while this is true everywhere, higher ed is particularly bad. Syracuse, for example, only spends about 1/3 of its budget on its actual product (delivering education to students). And they like to be terribly fractured, so you get stuff like the biology, chemistry, and physics departments all have their own separate people procuring office supplies. (There was a pretty good in depth study on this a while back.)
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u/robbie_the_cat Aug 30 '26
I've spent close to 20 years in higher ed in one form or another, and I don't know I've ever seen that acronym.
Me too. 18 years to be exact. I see that acronym literally all the time. Different habitats, I guess..
The biggest thing universities need to come to grips with though is that they're just too big, and bloat begets bloat.
No argument here, but that doesn't change my point that, in order to educate at the scale of thousands, you need that backstage admin support.
If you disagree, go sell your alternate formula and make your name.
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u/terrybuvm Aug 30 '26
Spoken like a typical sports fan. That's not a compliment. If you want to focus on two programs that ostensibly show positive revenue and ditch the "money losers", you're supporting sports team, not a university program. Take that shit private. I don't doubt that sports generate every, culture, and spirit to the college experience, but they are definitely a diversion of academic focus. Ask one of us professors who tech student athletes. Just the name alone, where "athlete" is the subject noun and "student" an adjective, shows that they are athletes first.
When core educational programs at a university are in trouble, take that shit private.
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u/SirDonaldTrumpKnight Sep 01 '26
Don’t rely on international students and rely on American students. Then you might have some yield loyalty
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u/OkCrew8849 Sep 03 '26
While this doesn't mean Syracuse will be bankrupt and shuttered in five years it does mean they need to get their act together for today's landscape. But there is one obvious first step...
An absolute priority is filling next year's first year class. The admissions staff failed this year. Obviously their projected yield rate was a big whiff. This means they'll have to accept more of their applicants which will impact their acceptance rate and feed a perception they are declining. So be it.
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u/CommonMammoth3734 6d ago
Smaller private schools get hit hardest because they depend on tuition and have little endowment to fall back on. Also fewer high school grads are coming up, so every school is fighting for the same students. Lots of people now do cheap state school or community college first and transfer.
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u/teresajs Aug 30 '26
The decreasing birth rate, recent changes in financial aid, and poor job market will continue to reduce application numbers, especially at more expensive schools.