Don’t let Saint Rose fail
The College of Saint Rose blends seamlessly into Albany’s Pine Hills neighborhood. That’s one reason that the heartbreaking cuts announced by the college last week aren’t just worrying for the school and its 3,800 students. They’re concerning, too, for what they portend for the vitality of a neighborhood in the heart of the city.
The reductions, which follow $8 million in recent administrative cuts, are certainly painful. Saint Rose will eliminate 16 undergraduate, six graduate and three certificate programs. Notably, the cuts will end most programs in art and music, two areas for which the college has been highly regarded regionally.
Financial problems are not new for Saint Rose. The college also made significant and controversial reductions in 2015.
Long-term demographic changes are affecting all institutions of higher learning, including a regional decline in the number of college-age students. That problem has been exacerbated
by a pandemic that forced Saint Rose to refund room-and-board costs and led some of its out-of-state students to stay home.
“With the onset of COVID -19, the higher education sector is in a period of real transformation," said Marcia White, the school’s interim president. “Saint Rose has decided to be proactive.”
It is easy to imagine, however, that each round of cuts might make Saint Rose less attractive to prospective students, thus forcing new rounds of cuts. What steps might help the college survive, or even thrive?
That is not a question only for Saint Rose faculty and administrators. It would behoove state and local policymakers to weigh what role they might play to help save this fine institution.
Saint Rose is too important to Albany for public officials to ignore its plight. Without the college, the city would be left with a 48-acre void in the heart of the Pine Hills, slowing the pulse of a key neighborhood in the state’s capital city.
No, direct public support of the sort that public universities receive is not an option; Saint Rose is a private institution founded a century ago by the Sisters of Saint Joseph of Carondelet. Nor can policymakers buffer Saint Rose entirely from market forces.
Yet there are steps New York could take, including more funding for the state’s Tuition Assistance Program, that would help make all of higher education, including Saint Rose, a more affordable and realistic option for prospective students.
Moreover, the trends that are hurting Saint Rose are affecting other small colleges statewide. Saying those colleges are important to their communities is stating the obvious. State economic development programs cannot ignore the risk that a decline in the academic sector presents to the state’s progress.
If we allow colleges such as Saint Rose to wither, the neighborhoods and communities tied to the schools will also fade. That’s why this challenge is not one for the college alone.