Albright College seeking a $25 million loan to cover operational costs and planning to add sports
The counterintuitive nature of today's higher education environment
The news that Albright College in Reading, Pa. is seeking a $25 million loan from its endowment because it was running low on “basic operational funds” is not good. Much like Birmingham-Southern College a year ago, Albright appears to be engaged in a slow downward spiral. At the end of the 2023-24 academic year, Albright announced a series of layoffs and program cuts in an effort to close a $20 million deficit. And, in 2023, Forbes rated Albright a B- with a 2.64 GPA. This past year, Forbes downgraded Albright to a C- with a 1.49 GPA.
Albright is not alone in these challenges. Tennessee professor Dr. Robert Kelchen noted earlier this month that as much as 40 percent of private colleges posted a fiscal loss last year. As regular readers know, I lived through something similar one year after I accepted a Dean position at Baldwin Wallace University in Ohio. BW reduced staff and/or cut programs twice in 2024, once in February and once in October. I know, or I think I know, what the dedicated Albright employees are experiencing. And, it is not fun.
In addition to seeking the loan, Albright is trying to grow new academic programs in response to student interest and workforce demands. The initial linked article above from Spotlight PA cites cybersecurity, vocal performance, and music production as programs that meet that criteria.
Of course, Albright is also planning to increase sports offerings, adding STUNT next spring, men’s wrestling next winter, and women’s wrestling in winter 2026. Because sports, particularly bigger roster sports, have the potential to bring students to campus, they are often viewed favorably in times like these.
Student-athletes at Division III schools pay tuition and while all sports have operational costs, I am guessing that Albright is banking on the margins associated with these sports being significant enough to warrant their additions. Except when Spotlight PA asked about that, the school deflected:
Dr. James Troha, president of Juniata College in Pennsylvania told my friend Dr. Karen Weaver on her podcast earlier this month, “About 38 percent of our students are participating in a Division III sport so it's a big part of what we have here and so I feel that it's a bit of an obligation for me to understand that dynamic and that paradigm to the best of my ability … and I think this is where I think the rubber hits the road right now for a lot of us in in leadership positions. How do we leverage the sports teams that we have to drive enrollment at a time when demographics are working against us?”
Enrollment and demographics continue to be the boogeymen of private colleges, particularly in the upper midwest and northeast. A recent essay in the Chronicle of Higher Education from Jeffrey Selingo noted a working paper from the Philadelphia Fed looks at how many schools might close in the coming years as a result of these demographics. Selingo writes, “If the worst-case predictions of an abrupt drop come to pass, an additional 80 colleges could be forced to shut down each year — which is almost double the average rate.”
Indeed, Albright’s enrollment trends the past few years speak to this potential worst case scenario. According to the school’s EADA filing for 2019-20, the last year before the pandemic, Albright had 1,701 undergraduate students and 397 unduplicated athletes, 23.3 percent of its student body. In its 2022-23 filing, Albright had 1,205 students, a 30% decline, and 443 athletes, 36.8% of its student body.
In other words, Albright enrolled 542 fewer non-athletes in 2022-23 than in 2019-20. That represents a decrease of more than 40 percent.
Because Albright’s percentage of athletes did not reach my arbitrary 44 percent threshold, it flew somewhat under the radar this past November when I wrote about the intersection of Division III 44 percenters and schools that grew athlete percentages by greater than 10 percent. Thirty-three schools fit into the center of that diagram.
These are, to be sure, best practice strategies for universities struggling financially: reduce headcount, both administrative and faculty; eliminate low-enrolled programs; grow programs to solve workforce needs; enroll more students, even if it means adding athletic teams. Former university president Robin Capehart outlines a seven-step strategy ($) to use sports as a vehicle to grow enrollment. His number one strategy, however, is “enhance, don’t build.”
His advice? “A sports enrollment strategy should be used to shore up, enhance or expand a college’s existing enrollment base and not be used to merely keep the institution off life support.”