He does admit that enrollment has gone down a little. . . .
It was COVID, of course. Yes, it was COVID.
Like many schools, we've had lower enrollment since COVID. Some of this is what they call, the academic cliff. 18 years ago during the Great Recession, there were more, there were fewer families having children. So there are just fewer seniors graduating from high school. Part of it is the instability of the the presidential transition over the last couple of years that has been a part of that.
And then the FAFSA debacle last year certainly has hurt the number of students. They say as many as a million fewer students will go to college in America this year as opposed to last year.
Okay. The week he said this, purportedly, 10% of the staff were laid off in the middle of the semester.
There's been chatter coming out of BJU since that the faculty are going to get their pink slips before Thanksgiving, but I have not heard any details yet.
The faculty are catching the idea that 1/3 of them are going to be laid off!
One third!
As of August 2024, there were 267 faculty members listed on the BJU website. So 26-27 layoffs would be 10%. But nearly 90 would be third!
Surely not! Surely this is just fear talking among the faculty, right?
Let's use a different set of numbers.
In the Fall 2022/Spring 2023 school year, BJU reported to the Department of Education that they had 213 faculty members and 499 staff members.
I have the numbers going back to Fall 2008, if you all would like to see that. That's not a biggie.
Since Fall 2017/Spring 2018, BJU has had an average of 479 staff members. If they did lay off 10% in September, they now have 431.
Since Fall 2017/Spring 2018, BJU has had an average of 203 faculty members.
If they lay off 10% of faculty, then they would have 183 faculty left. If they lay off 33%, they would only have 142!
The thing is this: the bloat is clearly in the staff side -- not the faculty side! For every single faculty member, there are 2.36 staff members.
If you cut the faculty, you're not going to have a school left!
And then he contradicts himself.... sorta. At first, he says:
Like many schools, we've had lower enrollment since COVID. Some of this is what they call, the academic cliff. 18 years ago during the Great Recession, there were more, there were fewer families having children. So there are just fewer seniors graduating from high school.
But later he says that it's not so bad for "Christian" families:
Also that drop off in students -- 18 year olds -- is not as significant for Christian families as it is for secular families, so that is going to be a blessing for us with enrollment.
It's going to be a blessing?
So wait. Let's map this out.
Enrollment is lower everywhere because of Covid. Now during COVID they said that they were fine.
But we're going to reach an academic cliff because the Recession 18 years ago caused people to have fewer children.
But Christian families did not really have fewer children.
So our enrollment is eventually not going to be as low as everywhere else someday.
There's a presumption in higher ed that if you want to (or need to) slash and burn your institution, do it while there's an interim at the helm. That way he can light the place on fire with no repercussions.
I went to go see if they had any job posting for a new School of Fine Arts Dean. They don't. But go look at the same search I saw.
Now you can see nearly every department is hiring -- even Music. Here are two depts in the School of Fine Arts that are hiring.
See which organization is the umbrella organization doing the hiring? The one you would expect: BJU, Inc. That's what BJU is legally called now. That's the nonprofit arm. EIN #57-1088101.
That's what you'd expect to see.
But keep going. Look at the Communication Studies department's posting and the Health Sciences posting:
BJU Education Group is the for-profit arm of the Bob Jones University. That's the Press!
Is this a signal of things to come? Is Bob Jones University reorganizing so that either Health Sciences and Communication Studies are going under the Press? Or is it the Graduate schools that are going for profit?
Hi, I'm Josh Crockett, the president at Bob Jones University, and I'm thankful for each of you as alumni and friends of the university.
We're also thankful the Lord has brought us 2734 total students that we have this fall, and each of those students has a story. And so I would encourage you that as alumni and friends to pray for those students pray that God will will take that story and draw them even closer to him and use them for his church.
The spirit on campus has been incredible -- just the energy, the enthusiasm of this freshman class. They have a ceremony at the beginning of the year where they have to affirm a charge, and when they said, "I will," they, they nearly yelled and blew out the little hair I have left off as I was standing up, as I was up on the platform and all of the administrators said, "that's the loudest we've ever had!" just because they were so excited about what the Lord is doing here and to be here at Bob Jones University.
We had an amazing evangelistic service with evangelist Brent Sivinsty, son of Jerry Sivinsty. One night particularly, he got very vulnerable and transparent and shared his heart with the students. And I heard of of guys who had their Bibles open -- we're encouraging them to bring paper Bibles and journals that we've given them to Chapel and to services and the the faculty members said -- there are teardrops just splashing on his journal as the Holy Spirit was working in his heart through those messages.
We've had amazing Chapel Services, and so our 648 new undergrad, grad, and online students are adjusting well, and they're in the full swing of this new semester.
Today I want to share some difficult, for those of us who are part of the University family, heartbreaking news. It feels almost like a funeral whenever we lose some of our team here at BJU. And so we just wanted you to know that we had to make some very difficult but necessary decisions at the start of the week to right size our workforce by about 10%.
Maybe you say, "Well, how did we get here?" And there are multiple factors.
One of the factors is the ratio of faculty-staff to students. If you look at some of our sister schools, you'll see 16 to 1, 15 to 1. At BJU, you are at 12 to 1. And again, we, we love having as big of a team as possible to serve our students. And yet we we have to remain financially sustainable. And the way we've done that is by leaning more and more on BJU Press. Without the Press royalties, our income would have plummeted the last eight years.
Like many schools, we've had lower enrollment since COVID. Some of this is what they call, the academic cliff. 18 years ago during the Great Recession, there were more, there were fewer families having children. So there are just fewer seniors graduating from high school. Part of it is the instability of the the presidential transition over the last couple of years that has been a part of that.
And then the FAFSA debacle last year certainly has hurt the number of students. They say as many as a million fewer students will go to college in America this year as opposed to last year.
We've also heavily discounted our tuition because we want to make Bob Jones' education affordable to as many people as possible. But, of course, that hurts our, our income line.
And so while our income has been decreasing, our expenses have been increasing. Salaries have gone up by 31% since 2019 because we want to to pay our faculty-staff a livable wage, especially with inflation. Healthcare costs have skyrocketed. The number of support services for our students has increased. Again since COVID, there's so many more, just spiritual and emotional battles they're facing. And then we've added new intercollegiate sports.
You say, "So, so how have we been able to do that -- increasing all of that while the the income has been decreasing?" And a lot of that has been BJU Press. Over the past five years, BJU Press has contributed $100 million gross -- $75 million net -- to BJU to help us balance our budget.
Now, if you're a pessimist and you see the glass is half empty, you could say, "oh, how did we? You know, we we received $100 million, and we're still having to layoff some of our beloved faculty-staff!" But the other way to look at that is, if we're able to right size our workforce, as we are doing, now we can start using those 10s of millions of dollars a year coming from BJU Press to start building an endowment for the future, to to create the sustainability that we need with whatever economic headwinds come our way.
Also that allows us to start investing more in our infrastructure. If instead of having to use those dollars just for operations, just to keep our nose above water, now we're able to use that money to invest again in making our campus sustainable.
So the good news is in God's providence 50 years ago. BJU started BJU Press and invested a lot. And now that investment is coming back to serve us even the past couple of years, basically helping with almost a third of our operating expenses.
Most colleges do not have this amazing resource, so as difficult and necessary as these cuts are to balance the budget without those Press dollars, if we can have a balanced budget, that's going to be millions of dollars to help sustain us into our next 100 years if the Lord tarries.
A second piece of good news is that BJU Press continues to have record sales, year over year.
A third piece of good news: BJA is having record enrollment, and we're hoping like many states, including my own of Indiana, that South Carolina is going to get a voucher system. And so the almost $7,000,000 that BJU pays for our faculty-staff to have tuition benefit for their students could be reduced significantly if we get vouchers in South Carolina, again helping our bottom line.
Also that drop off in students -- 18 year olds -- is not as significant for Christian families as it is for secular families, so that is going to be a blessing for us with enrollment.
Fifth Factor: Greenville is one of the fastest growing cities in the US. We have an amazing downtown, just minutes from our campus. It's very attractive to students and families. Our Main Street is one of the most, 10 most popular in the country, and we have a great working relationship with the Mayor. I've, I've met with him this summer, and we've been able to be texting back and forth on ideas for how the City of Greenville can serve BJU.
A sixth blessing is that we have 10s of thousands of amazing alumni like you all over the country and around the world who are praying for us, who are supporting us, who, I believe as you see stability and strength moving forward, will continue to recommend and send students to BJU.
A seventh blessing is that we are debt free. And whenever you face a financial difficulty being debt free is an amazing place to be.
Eight, we have several valuable assets. Some of those are income producing that are continuing to help us.
A ninth piece of good news is that our leadership is committed to maintaining a solid cash position. This is why we are making these very tough decisions, these hard cuts, but necessary cuts because we want to be in a great position.
And then tenth, we have donors who give very generously to BJU, many who have put us in their estate wills. Some, like a graduate who I met with in the Dominican Republic this summer, who said I want to set up a scholarship to send as many students as possible from the Dominican Republic to BJU. And I appreciate his commitment to do that.
So as difficult as this right sizing is, our desire is now to pivot to growth. And I'm looking forward to telling you more about that growth plan at Homecoming and laying that out. But the desire is for you to know that when I think about the direction of BJU that BJU's been going a great direction and we don't want to go backwards. We want to continue going in that direction. We have struggled financially to keep our our financial spending under control. And so by right sizing what we want to do is now have both our direction and our stewardship going the right direction so that we can all be in this together, as we row together the same direction unified in our alumni, our faculty, our board, our administration, our staff together for the mission of BJU.
I'm looking forward to what God will do, not just this year, but in the next 100 years of Bob Jones University.
There is a hell of a lot going on in Agile Space on Story Splitting. On the internet and I hear it in interviews and conversations. It’s as if the only solution to smaller batches is to split ad infinitum.
Now don’t get me wrong, big batches are not good. They hurt feedback mechanisms, create silos and delay delivery of value.
And there is the point, delivery of value. Getting value to the…
Right sizing hasn’t often been applied to public education. In the GDP formula, increasing G increases GDP, and growth is good. Taxpayers are the only ones with the incentive to put on the brakes. And why would they? Lawyers have created a cottage industry suing school districts with taxing complaints, but these are small numbers compared with school revenues. Parents top priority after child safety is education, and parents make major life decisions based on schools.
So why right size a school?
Right sizing needs to be a priority for at least two reasons. First, right sizing requires schools to clarify goals. Second, right sizing means maximizing productivity. Traditional schools do neither well.
1. Most schools have a deceivingly singular-sounding goal – usually including “increasing student achievement.” But what does that mean? Local school investments are rarely aligned to the goal, and even a casual walk-through a school makes it clear that schools are usually built for the adults in them more than increasing student achievement.
School leaders in fact target a long list of goals for students: college, career, salary, creativity, logic, literacy, culture, socialization, values, mental health, sports, community. This hodgepodge of goals drives most curricular, programmatic and personnel decisions. Ever-changing goals means ever-changing priorities. Priorities shift based on the complaints of the loudest interest groups.
The first step in right sizing is agreeing on a goal. This doesn’t happen well at the local level. Listening national leaders is even more vacuous.
2. Productivity defines the right size of any organization. How does a community know if its schools’ employees are productive? In the private sector, employees target key performance indicators, usually tied to revenue. Traditional public schools rely on often-contradictory proxy metrics to measure productivity. Currently, some of the most popular ones include ratios related to college entrance test scores, staffing efficiencies, satisfaction survey rates, advanced course enrollment rates and costs per pupil. These goals often contradict. Increasing the number of students in advanced courses sounds great; but what if this results in increasing failure rates for those students? Productivity in public schools is highly-politicized because goals are unclear. Even the most well meaning locally elected officials usually have no idea what success looks like other than for their child. Knowing target ratios that include costs is even more foreign.
Creating the most effective and efficient school possible is the goal. Making right sizing a priority means making measurable improvements in schools.
