Wilberforce University has implemented layoffs, furloughs and at least a 20 percent pay cut for employees, the school’s president told a group of alumni in Atlanta, Georgia on May 17. Officials have renovated and repaired campus buildings and started a dual-enrollment program for nearby high schoolers.“We have been very intentional and disciplined in our attention to charting a sustainable path forward,” Pinkard said in a statement. They’d spent the past decade grappling with declining enrollments and weakening support from state governments.To examine how institutions were positioned to respond to such a crisis, The Hechinger Report created a Financial Fitness Tracker that put the nation’s public institutions and four-year nonprofit colleges and universities through a financial stress test, examining key metrics including enrollment, tuition revenue, public funding and endowment health.Schools faring the worst in these areas — meaning that they are projected to dip under the 20th percentile in a particular category — are marked with warning signs in the tracker. “Of course the state can do something about it, because it’s the state university system,” Schulze said. Affiliated with the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME), it was the first college to be owned and operated by African Americans. Programs that were deemed too small were eliminated entirely, such as the school’s music program.Pines, who was among the 18 let go and will only be teaching part-time this fall, said many faculty viewed the budget problems as a “foreseeable train wreck.”The reductions saved the school nearly $1 million, according to Ryan Smith, the university’s president, who assumed his role in October 2019, after the cuts had been made.

“We join the community of institutions in higher education who are all vulnerable but determined to reimagine higher education in a post-COVID-19 environment.”Still, with too many colleges competing for a shrinking pool of students and the consequences of the coronavirus bearing down, higher education may face tumultuous years ahead, Price warned.“A lot of underendowed, financially fragile institutions are going to have to shut their doors, unfortunately,” he said.Sarah Butrymowicz is senior editor for investigations at The Hechinger Report. Smith projects enrollment growth this fall and believes the school will ultimately be able to increase the number of programs it offers. It participates in the United Negro College Fund. When that happens, it’ll be a challenge to figure out “how do we grow back to where we were?” he said. Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree.... The number of high school students in Ohio has dropped within the last decade, leading to fewer high school graduates, according to state and federal data. It was the first college to be owned and operated by African Americans. The university, which partners with the public Rio Grande Community College, plays an important role for the surrounding counties, which include some of Ohio’s poorest residents.

In March 1863, Daniel A. Payne a bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal church, negotiated to purchase the and buildings, and the University was re-incorporated in July 10, 1863.

The board’s mistakes, the faculty argued, had led to “persistent and severe budget deficits.”Shortly after that no-confidence vote, 18 professors — about a fifth of the full-time faculty — were told they would be let go, according to Rio Grande officials.