A University Suspended Its Undergraduate Programs. The Campus Still Has Options.

A small, faith-based university in rural Indiana suspended all undergraduate programs this week. Employees face layoff. Staff haven’t been paid in weeks. The university is pinning its survival on the sale of intellectual property and a vague "strategic partnership" with undisclosed terms.

The situation illustrates something important about the crisis in American higher education: the campus is almost always worth more than the college.

What everyone sees: a small university in a rural community, enrollment declining, unable to make payroll. Another casualty.

What I see: a 34-acre campus with five residence halls (two brand new), a science building, a 1,000-seat arena, classrooms, and a library. A campus that has been the anchor of a small town for over a century. And within commuting distance, a major auto manufacturer with thousands of employees, hundreds of millions in fresh investment, and a workforce training gap they’re already partnering with state universities to fill.

The gap between what this campus has and what the surrounding county needs is not money. It’s not technology. It’s imagination.

There are programs that could launch on that campus within months using existing WIOA workforce funding, existing employer partnerships, and the skills of the people who just lost their jobs. There are residence halls built in recent years that could house workforce trainees this fall.

The question isn’t whether this university can survive as a traditional college. The question is what that campus can become if someone is willing to ask a bigger question than “how do we get back to where we were?”

A small town shouldn’t lose its anchor without someone at least trying.

jeff@transformlearning.ai

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