For some, that means upending the liberal arts at the core of their identity as they add and expand programs like computer science, artificial intelligence and health care.
The changes come after a particularly rough set of years for the state's network of private, nonprofit colleges: In the last two years, two institutions, Cardinal Stritch University in Fox Point and Northland College in Ashland, have either closed their doors or announced they'll do so this spring. A third, Holy Family in Manitowoc, closed in 2020.
Of the remaining 21 private institutions, more than half had budget shortfalls at the end of the 2022-23 school year, filings with the IRS show.
Those challenges are driven by many of the factors that challenge higher ed in general: In Wisconsin, there's just a smaller pool of high school students to pull from, as birth rates have consistently dropped over the last 30 years. And the high schoolers that exist are less likely to go to college than their peers a decade ago. In 2015, about 63 percent of high school graduates in Wisconsin went to college; now, it's 51.7 percent.
A bustling job market that is willing to pay a living wage right out of high school isn't particularly helpful to college enrollments in general. (High school graduates in Wisconsin make an average of $33,700 a year.) The sticker shock of tuition at a private college, which can range from $30,000 to $40,000 per year before scholarships, also gives some prospective students pause.
"It's a tough time in higher education. I don't think anybody could dispute that," said Eric Fulcomer, president of the Wisconsin Association of Independent Colleges and Universities. "What you're seeing in the Wisconsin private colleges is comparable to what we're seeing in the Midwest, and it's what's happening at (Universities of Wisconsin). The challenge is, we don't have that backstop of state funding. And so, when our schools get into a situation where things aren't tenable, they end up closing."
Edgewood College President Andrew Manion is looking to grow beyond the traditional, 18- to 22-year-old student, as the number of high school graduates decline: He has diversified the college's programs to include occupational therapy and nursing anesthetics, and Edgewood has made many of its graduate programs accessible online to reach working adults who can't relocate.
Edgewood, Madison's only private nonprofit college, also will change its name this summer to Edgewood University, to better reflect the array of programs it provides.
"Any school that is entirely reliant upon traditional-age, undergraduate students right now is struggling to try to figure out where their future revenue is going to come from," Manion said. "As the number of students declines, the only alternative that those schools would have would be to continue to increase tuition in order to make up for those losses, and that becomes unrealistic for too many students."
NORTHLAND COLLEGE TO CLOSE DESPITE AGGRESSIVE CUTS AND FUNDRAISING
"Northland College has no sustainable path forward,” Northland College Board of Trustees chair Ted Bristol said.
To avoid closing, various private colleges have resorted to staff and programming cuts, as enrollment numbers drop off and budget shortfalls balloon.
Alverno College in Milwaukee cut 14 programs and three dozen staff last year after declaring a financial crisis. In Mequon, another two dozen Concordia University employees were cut last year to reduce costs.
In La Crosse, Viterbo University will eliminate 13 jobs at the end of the school year, less than 12 months after a prior round of cuts that impacted 25 roles. And at St. Norbert, in De Pere, the proposed cuts of about three dozen tenured faculty and 15 programs would eliminate many liberal arts majors, after its board approved a plan to eliminate a projected $7 million budget shortfall.
Cuts have even come at private institutions that look healthy based on IRS filings and audit reports. Marquette University, which ended 2023 with an overall surplus of $57 million, thanks to sizeable donations, is planning a $31 million reduction in spending by 2031, about 7 percent of its operating budget.
FINANCIAL WOES
Private college IRS filings take more than just tuition and expenses into consideration, Fulcomer said. Those filings also include gains or losses in the stock market, whether they're tangible gains or not; donations often given for capital campaigns, instead of operating expenses; and spending that might reflect an institution's investment into starting a program and hiring faculty for it, before it brings in a dime.
Still, far more colleges were in the red for fiscal year 2023, the last year all of the filings were available, than in the previous year. Seventeen colleges reported losses for that year ranging from nearly $88,000 to $13 million. Most ran shortfalls in the $1 million to $7 million range.
The year before, three of the private colleges and universities had shortfalls, with the largest being $3.7 million.
Edgewood fared on the better side when considering losses in 2023, with a shortfall of $565,720. Of colleges in the red, Green Bay-based Bellin College had the smallest loss, at $87,881.
Only four private nonprofit colleges weathered 2023 with a positive balance in their bank accounts, including three Milwaukee -based institutions — the Medical College of Wisconsin, Marquette University and Milwaukee School of Engineering — and Ripon College.
A handful of publicly available audits for fiscal year 2024 show mixed results. While nearly all of them saw increases in their assets, five didn't earn enough revenue to cover their operating expenses while five others brought in more money than they spent.
ST. NORBERT, A CATHOLIC COLLEGE, MAY NIX THEOLOGY IN LATEST ROUND OF BUDGET CUTS
On college leaders' chopping block are a wide array of humanities majors — notably, the Green Bay area Catholic college's theology and religious studies majors.
Nevertheless, in the last two years, auditors only raised the closure alarm at one private college: Northland College, which launched a last-ditch fundraising rally last spring.
The college wanted to raise $12 million to stave off closure but only brought in $1 million. It was enough to stay open another year, but enrollment dropped by nearly half, to 270 students, after the college's offerings were cut down to nine programs. In February, Northland announced that this year will be its last.
It's "devastating" to these communities when the local private college closes, Fulcomer said.
"It's a natural part of the situation we find ourselves in, so schools are working really hard to avoid that," he said.
UP AGAINST HEADWINDS
While public and private schools face many of the same challenges, there's a handful of aspects that disproportionately affect smaller private colleges.
Wisconsin's private colleges have smaller enrollments to begin with, with 52,000 students spread across 22 institutions, compared to the UW system's 164,000 enrolled at 13. That means fewer students sharing the costs. And when smaller institutions lose students, those losses are more pronounced because tuition makes up a larger portion of budgets than at larger schools.
There are also fewer streams of income available to private colleges than public universities and two-year technical colleges: They don't get state funding, outside of scholarships given directly to students.
For every dollar in scholarships the state gives students, Fulcomer said, the institution often is giving $24 in discounted tuition and institutional scholarships.
But the sticker shock prospective students get from seeing price tags in the tens of thousands per year could be a deterrent, even if a financial aid package dials that cost back for them, said UW-Madison professor Nicholas Hillman, who studies college-going and access.
"So a student looking at where to go to college, they see a nonprofit charging $20,000, $30,000 in tuition a year, and they think, 'Oh, my, might as well, you know, go to the public, because their tuitions are staying low,'" Hillman said.
PIVOTING TO IN-DEMAND FIELDS
Edgewood is giving Beloit College, traditionally a liberal arts college, a step up into nursing through a new partnership. Marian University in Fond du Lac has started a construction management bachelor's degree after requests from a local company, Fulcomer said.
Viterbo University is adding a data analytics minor and a master's degree in nursing. Carthage in Kenosha has a new healthcare administration program. Milwaukee School of Engineering is offering minors in machine learning and artificial intelligence. Concordia University is launching a pharmacy program.
"Our institutions are looking at the market — they're deciding to add academic programs that will bring students to the institution and to meet the workforce needs," Fulcomer said.
The shift to more industry-based needs is happening elsewhere in Wisconsin's higher education landscape, too. UW system created many new nursing, engineering and artificial intelligence programs as part of a workforce development plan; many of the technical colleges have set their sights on expanding technology and healthcare programs.
Cuts to some of the liberal arts programs, though, worry students and alumni of private colleges. At St. Norbert College, a Catholic institution, its theology, French, history and art education departments are among those on the chopping block. At Alverno College, it was English, environmental science and media design, along with other science-based majors.
At Edgewood, Manion had to contend with eliminating seven tenured faculty after arriving in 2020, but then turned to figuring out where the college could grow, he said.
"When I arrived, the main issue was not about what else can we cut, but what areas can we grow into so that we can get more revenue?" he said. "It's always about balancing revenue and expenditures, and you can only cut so much.
©2025 The Wisconsin State Journal (Madison, Wis.). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
