Lindenwood University to lay off staff and cut positions

ST. CHARLES — Lindenwood University laid off 12 staff and two faculty members this week as part of an effort to cut 10% of the operating budget, the latest development in a nationwide enrollment crisis for higher education.

Another 40 to 50 open positions at Lindenwood will not be filled, bringing the campus total to about 620 full-time employees, the university’s president John Porter said in an interview Friday afternoon.

Colleges across the U.S. are bracing for enrollment decreases after the government’s botched rollout of the revamped Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA. Just 42% of Missouri’s high school seniors have completed the application, and most haven’t received financial aid offers or decided on a college.

The delay has raised fears that hundreds of thousands of students will forgo freshman year or skip college entirely. Registrations and tuition deposits are down at Lindenwood for the fall semester, Porter said.

“We’re going to plan for what may be a reduction, while pushing hard for positive enrollment for the fall,” Porter said.

Enrollment at Lindenwood has been rebounding after dropping 20% to around 7,500 students in the first year of the pandemic. School officials have attributed much of the decline to the 2020 closure of its Belleville campus and the phasing out of satellite locations.

Then the university eliminated 10 athletic programs this year, affecting 280 student-athletes, who may be motivated to transfer.

Still, finances are “strong and stable,” Porter said, with an endowment of more than $200 million in the 2022-2023 school year and low debt. The university is upgrading a dorm and hiring in certain fields like cybersecurity. They are also cutting utility costs by setting the air conditioning in buildings to 78 degrees and renegotiating contracts with some vendors.

Lindenwood plans an advertising blitz for new students, with a 30-second TV commercial and 23 billboards on the way this summer.

“Although we’re taking down our expenses by 10%, it’s an all-out push to really drive as hard as we can for fall enrollment,” Porter said.

The announced closure of Fontbonne University, in Clayton, in 2025 due to declining enrollment sent shockwaves through the higher education landscape. Nationwide, undergraduate enrollment increased slightly in 2023-2024 to 15.3 million but is still down nearly 1 million students from fall 2019, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.

And the financial aid fiasco could not have come at a worse time, as plummeting birth rates have already resulted in too many colleges and not enough coeds.

Gary Stocker, a St. Louis-based higher education analyst, said many colleges have experienced a dip in tuition deposits because of the financial aid fiasco. Stocker expects to see more budget cuts, layoffs and even closures at other St. Louis-area colleges in the coming months.

“That debacle is now starting to hit home,” Stocker said. “(Lindenwood) is just the first of many walking into a firestorm this fall.”