Here’s the latest academic news: It turns out that letting left-wing protesters run roughshod over your campus is bad for business.
You might recall the protests at the University of Missouri two years ago. Initially about how Black Lives Matter, soon they were about college-worker benefits and everything else under the sun. They lasted for months—there were hunger strikes, the football team launched a boycott, and a professor was caught on video encouraging violence. The chancellor of Mizzou resigned, as did the president of the whole University of Missouri system. Spike Lee made a film about it.
Not all publicity is good publicity, it seems. Last May, Mizzou suffered a staggering enrollment drop of 1,500 students for the current year; the school closed four dorms as a result. That was a year ago, and it turns out things have only gotten worse. “For the school year that ended last week, enrollment at MU was 33,266, down 6.1 percent from the previous year’s record,” reports the Columbia Tribune. “If [interim chancellor Garnett] Stokes’ projection of a 7.4 percent decline is accurate, enrollment in the fall will be about 30,800, the lowest in nine years.” And it looks like future enrollment could dwindle even further: MU is expecting its smallest freshman class in two decades.
The school is cutting $55 million out of its budget to make up for the tuition shortfall and it hopes to close its fiscal gap by increasing the cost of tuition. We’d explain what that’s likely to do to enrollment numbers, but most universities stopped acknowledging, much less teaching, basic economics years ago. Local landlords, however, appear to be more familiar with the basic functioning of markets: The Columbia Tribune reports property managers are offering $1,000 gift cards and major rent reductions to attract tenants from among the shrinking student population.
You’ll remember that the protests were in part about campus worker benefits. Fat lot of good that did: The cuts made necessary by the unrest mean the university will be laying-off 400 employees. Not that it means much. Like most big public universities, MU suffers from administrative bloat: Currently, there are over 13,000 full-time MU employees, or 1 for every 2.4 students next fall. If would-be students continue to stay away in droves, that ratio may get smaller still.
