Post by lancerroadwarrior on Mar 29, 2021 19:39:53 GMT
The last class: Becker College closing at the end of current school year
WORCESTER - Nicholas Lord and Joseph Ressler, both freshman at Becker College, woke up Monday to emails announcing the permanent closing of the school.
Becker College, with origins in the region dating to the late 1700s, will close at the end of the academic year.
The school last month made it clear that its future was in doubt, owing to financial struggles caused in large part by the pandemic.
On Monday, Christine L. Cassidy, chairwoman of the Board of Trustees, confirmed what students - and neighbors of its campuses in Worcester and Leicester - had hoped to avoid.
In a post on the Becker College website, she wrote: "It is with deep regret that I share the news that on March 28, the Board of Trustees voted to permanently close Becker College at the end of the current academic year. The College will provide academic, support and transitional services to students through August 31, 2021. Following an orderly transition, classes will not resume in the Fall."
Two oversight panels, the state Department of Higher Education and the New England Commission of Higher Education, recently revealed the school's weak financial standing, saying there was little confidence that the school could last beyond the next academic year. The panels encouraged a contingency closing plan.
In Monday’s message, Cassidy said the school has arranged with several local universities to accept Becker students who will now have to transfer, and is helping current faculty and staff find new jobs as well. It is also refunding tuition deposits that students have already made for next year.
More:5 things you should know about the closing of Becker College in Worcester and Leicester
The four-year school, with about 1,700 students, is a key figure in the neighborhoods of both campuses. Merchants and community officials have said the loss of Becker will leave a void.
Becker College, once Becker Junior College, was shaped from a series of mergers and expansions, dating to the 1784 founding of Leicester Academy.
Many smaller colleges have struggled with a declining pool of college-age students and increasing higher education costs. Atlantic Union College in Lancaster closed in 2019. COVID-19 has worsened the situation.
“Ultimately, the impacts of COVID-19 turned what was a very challenging situation into an unsustainable situation,’’ said Becker President Nancy Crimmin.
The college earlier this year had hopes of partnering with an affiliate organization, but that deal fell through. Cassidy said school leadership in general “pushed ourselves to develop scenarios in which Becker remained open for another year and beyond.”
“However, those scenarios included more debt, selling assets, and further cutting operations,” she said. “Guided by the advice of our auditors and other expert consultants, we concluded that this would be irresponsible and unsustainable over time.”
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On Monday morning, students at Becker’s Worcester campus were resigned to the college’s fate, particularly after inklings of the school’s potential closure had been floating around even before this semester, they said.
“I’d heard it from students in past years they’d been thinking about closing for a couple years,” said Brandon Deluso, a sophomore at the college. “This wasn’t a big shock to me.”
“We saw it coming a little bit – I wasn’t too surprised,” said senior Anthony Papetti. “There’ve been rumors for years about the closing.”
Now that they’ve become reality, however, students said they weren’t sure yet where they will go after this semester. Deluso said the list of potential transfer institutions Becker has made available look at least promising – “some of the schools are ones I was already considering transferring to,” he said.
Clark University, for example, located just a few miles from Becker, announced on Monday it’s establishing the Becker School of Design & Technology, which will house the college’s Interactive Media Design and associated programs, and continue to employ the administrators and faculty who run them currently.
In addition, for next year at least, Clark plans to operate the school at Becker's Worcester campus.
“We proudly welcome Becker students to Clark University, and we’re thrilled to not only continue these signature Becker programs, which are already among some of the best in the world, but also to expand them and broaden their scope,” said the university’s president, David Fithian.
Assumption Univesity, Worcester State University and Fitchburg State University are among the schools working closely with Becker to accommodate students who seek to transfer.
Isabella Cloward, a freshman majoring in animal care at Becker, said she wasn’t worried too much about finding a new school to go to.
“I’m still looking for options – I’m trying to keep open about it,” she said.
But she felt worse for some of her fellow students who may have a harder time, “especially for some students in some specific majors” that may not be common at other colleges.
“I’m staying optimistic” about the situation, Cloward said. “I know other people are talking it worse than I am.”
She and other students felt the college could have been a little more forthcoming about the closure, however.
“They kind of left us in the dark a little bit,” Deluso said.
The rest of the semester, meanwhile, will continue as planned, according to the college, including the graduation planned for May 8. Papetti said despite the disappointment around Becker’s end, he and his fellow seniors can at least claim to be the final students at the college to get their degree.
“It’s kind of cool, a little bit,” he said. “We’re the last class.”
Read full letter from Becker College board:
Last night, the Board of Trustees voted to permanently close Becker College at the end of the current academic year. The College will provide academic, support and transitional services to students through August 31, 2021. Following an orderly transition, classes will not resume in the Fall. As already stated, graduation is currently set for Saturday, May 8, 2021.
Closure of the College was a very painful decision for all of us. As Trustees we are duty bound, not as day-to-day managers, but as overseers of the mission and the financial condition of the College. Many of us are also alumni, which makes this duty even more meaningful. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, we were keeping a watchful eye on the trends indicating a vulnerability among small colleges, including the declining number of college age students, the heightened level of student subsidy and the increased competition for a smaller pool of students. We supported President Crimmin and her team on measures to address these matters.
As enrollment fell in 2018 and 2019, the college began austerity measures to cut spending and balance the budget. Contracts with major vendors were renegotiated, funds raised, assets sold, departments consolidated and two leased buildings in downtown Worcester were vacated. There was also a reduction in staff and rollbacks in compensation, among other actions.
In 2020, the COVID-19 crisis quickly accelerated the need to take more aggressive actions necessary to maintain a reasonable and responsible balance sheet, and to operate the college in a fiscally responsible manner. The need for some of these measures were noted in President Crimmin’s message to the community in August 2020. In addition to a greater investment in technology – remote learning comes at a cost – there was an unanticipated and significant drop in the number of students who, due to the uncertainty surrounding the pandemic, chose not to live on campus, never registered, took a leave of absence, or dropped out. This loss of revenue had a dramatic impact on the ability of the College to continue to maintain financial day-to-day college operations.
Concurrent with these measures, we also sought various strategic opportunities including mergers or affiliations with other organizations to help us gain our financial footing. We had hoped that an alliance would be transformational, while generating revenue and assisting in optimizing the College’s resources. When this affiliation did not happen earlier this year, the continuing pandemic and its obvious impact on the College’s financial condition caused a sudden and significant shift in our position.
The Greater Worcester region has been a wonderful home to Becker College. This has proven out in the outreach from so many over the past few weeks, providing words of encouragement. Closing the College is not the path we wanted to pursue. It is sad at every level. We have sufficient resources to complete this academic year, but not beyond that in a way that is fiscally responsible and in the best interest of students. We have worked diligently to prepare appropriate academic pathways to allow students to transfer to several new institutions without worrying about things such as deadlines and admissions fees.
The College has made arrangements with several area universities to provide admission to Becker students; those details are available on the Becker microsite. We are committed to doing everything possible to ensure that our students, faculty, and staff have access to the best opportunities moving forward and finish this term in a strong and positive way.
Sincerely,
Christine Cassidy, Chair
On behalf of the Board of Trustees of Becker College: John Budd, Scott Conti, Rebecca Crocker, Daniel DelMastro, Jeff Goodsill, Cheryl Lapriore, Frances Polito, Dr. Gregory Pogue, Eurayshia Williams Reed, Edward Wilson
