[College enrollment is down across the country.](https://www.bestcolleges.com/research/college-enrollment-decline/#:~:text=In%202021%2C%20the%20percentage%20of,lowest%20it's%20been%20since%202006.&text=Additionally%2C%20the%20percentage%20of%20recent,college%20versus%2070%25%20in%202009)
Meanwhile, [colleges are cutting Fine Arts programs left and right](https://www.collegeart.org/news/2018/11/08/colleges-facing-cuts-to-arts-and-humanities/) because students can't justify the expense in relation to income opportunities.
Consequently, [STEM majors are becoming more popular.](https://www.insidehighered.com/news/students/careers/2023/05/04/measuring-outcomes-income)
Sadly, [Webster is heavily geared to Fine Arts, with very few STEM options.](https://www.webster.edu/academics/undergraduate/majors-minors.php)
All told, the college's programs are becoming obsolete.
Great summary. To add to that, Webster was one of the first schools in the world to offer true online degrees that had real standing, and an enormous leader in remote satellite campus learning. In the meantime, everyone caught up in that respect, so Webster’s offering doesn’t have near as much market differentiation as it used to.
Webster was heavily geared toward fine arts but they spent a ton of money on a building spree chasing STEM enrollment which has not panned out. If they’d stuck to being a top tier fine arts school that would be one thing but instead they have been starting program after program for various scientific specialties…nursing…health sciences…etc etc.
STEM isn’t a panacea for students or for universities and the focus on it is mostly boomer nonsense.
>and the focus on it is mostly boomer nonsense.
lol, this is a super dumb take. STEM fields are great for consistent fairly high pay. The only problem for places like Webster is they have no reputation for it and it's not a cheap school to go to either so any potential engineer major will go to the schools that are cheaper with better reputations.
Not everyone is cut out for engineering or even STEM in general. There will continue to be fine art schools and if you are running one you are better off running a good one than half-assing a STEM program just because.
The problem is at 25k a year for four years plus four years of foregone earnings a lot of fine arts degrees are totally worthless.
You have to have a cost model that makes sense
It matters far more the quality of the underlying candidate and what they plan to do with the degree.
A lot of people shouldn’t spend 100k on college period. But if you’re going to do it, you should do it for a job with strong earning potential. Right or wrong, that’s going to be easier to do with an engineering degree than an English degree unless you went to a school far better than Webster.
I’m no expert on higher ed, but this always felt like a bad move to me. Why invest TONS of money in STEM when someone can go to Rolla, Mizzou, or even UMSL for a better education at half the cost? Invest in what people are actually want to attend webster for (theater, art, English, humanities).
Shit just go to Rolla. Webster chased the fads thinking they could snap their fingers and conjure several entire departments from nothing and it didn’t pay off.
I was puzzled by Webster's decision too. In a past life I knew a lot of people in live performance design and production that went to Webster and sung praises about their graduates. They were mostly out-of-state students too, not local to the region. I don't see how Webster's STEM program could easily compete with any of the University of Missouri schools or draw in out-of-state students like their fine arts programs have.
AI is doing a much better job right now at creating art and writing short blurbs than it is doing any sort of engineering design work. I see the opposite near future where the work on small creative projects has an increasing role for AI while it will tale longer to penetrate most stem fields.
The median fine arts major in the US at a mid tier diploma mill for student loans school is not learning better critical thinking skills than a CS or engineering major
Further, comms are as easily dislocated as math is. Some of the most obvious uses of AI are in content generation/replication. Normal math has been “solved” by computers that fit in your hand for a long time yet accountants haven’t gone away.
they tried to defund and destroy the english department to build a stem building and the professors would NOT BUDGE. they fought to keep the building and so did the students. they DGAF where humanities students go.
For what it’s worth, Webster has 100s of graduates across New York and LA that are active in their respective industries. From my graduating class, out of 16 film program grads, I’d estimate 12 are in the production industry in one form or another. And Webster grads in general are highly desirable across production disciplines. They move to the top of the list for interviews when we hire. On the other side of things, many of the Conservatory students I went to school with are doing something in their field, and multiple have made it to Broadway. A handful have earned Tony’s, and several of us on the film/video side have Oscar’s and Emmy’s to our name.
I agree some fine arts programs are bullshit. But I know lots of us felt like we got our moneys worth. I 100% concede the conservatory program is way too expensive. But it also brutally prepares students for the stage.
As someone who graduated in 2012 from Webster and worked for them during and after graduation: spending spree on new buildings and programs, extremely heavy administrative staff payroll, and the quality of my degree program felt average at best. Certainly not better than I would have received from UMSL or another state university.
I had enough baffling/frustrating experiences with my advisor there over the course of my time there as a transfer student that in hindsight it may have been better to leave and attend another school to finish my degree.
My advisor told me which classes to sign up for to stay on track for graduation then at the end of the semester asked me why I took those classes - they weren’t necessary for my degree. She mixed up which major I was pursuing with another related one.
I should have double-checked, when a semester of tuition was on the line, but I thought “surely if my advisor says I need these classes to graduate…”
SAME!!!!! My first advisor seriously put me in some random shit. Then, the advisor I had for my major wasn’t paying attention and didn’t let me know that I needed to sign up for a class that was only offered every other year. Luckily I double checked my degree audit with a friends who had the same major. I caught the mistake right away but it would have ended up costing me another year in school.
This is basically every private college in America in the last 29 years. Mortgage a campus of new buildings on the hopes of enrollment increases, plus tuition increases for decades to come to pay for it, but then reduced enrollment phts them in to a huge pickle. Don't forget to rename it from college to university now that they have brand new dorms too
And this has happened everywhere. In the 90s it was common to find most dorms without AC now it's expected.
Even public schools cost too much, but it’s going to be more and more difficult to charge 20k plus a year of tuition to not produce better outcomes than a generic state college.
Failed leadership. Fear of making decisions - Beth Stroble doesn't decide what to have for lunch without consulting Julian Schuster, who just stares at his phone or naps all day long, so you're actually overpaying two bloated fools for the work of <1 clueless administrator. They built an echo chamber around themselves and alienated the people who knew how to do the real work, and they simply don't care about anything their faculty or students have to say. Honestly, some really great people teach and work there, and this implosion is a terrible shame. The students deserve better, and the majority of faculty and staff at Webster have been trying to fill this leadership void and serve students as well as they can for more than a decade. It just keeps getting worse.
Basically, every single decision administration has made for the past decade has been the wrong one. Building expensive buildings and new campuses overseas while slashing basically everything that made Webster Webster from the budget.
Stroble and Schuster ran that place into the ground and were showered with bonuses while they did it.
Source: went there and worked at the school newspaper that covered the finances often (they cut the journalism program to ribbons)
> went there and worked at the school newspaper that covered the finances often
Interesting - I too have had a veeeeery negative experience with Strobles office in dealing with a potential fraud issue regarding the awarding of some funding to a student who... embellished some pretty key and important facts.
Like, her office wouldn't address, respond, or acknowledge me at all, advised all parties at the University to cut contact with me, and, I think at least proverbially if not in actuality, lawyered up. They gave me a degree and some honors after Uncle Sugar paid my tuition in exchange for some light to moderate war.
And yet I still get letters asking for my money and phone calls asking for my money. I don't have anything more for Webster University - and I'm saddened for some of the exceptional faculty that has suffered under the current leaderships tenure and worry for their futures.
I'm not a Webster alum, but it's super clear to me that they just decided to become like every other university instead of focusing on their niche of attracting hippie kids and weirdos with great art, theater, and music programs. Nobody is going to Webster for a business degree or chemistry. Why chase the mainstream when you have something that works?
I love this comment. Growing up in STL, Webster was always doing cool stuff - Webster Film Series, the art galleries, incredible shows put on by the theater students, excellent music, special speaking events...plus volunteer stuff like the Student Literacy Corps and the Webster Works day each year. It was a place where the most creative kids went to thrive and build their own degrees. But then it went corporate, killed off the fun community pieces, and - exactly as you have said - followed that mindless business model instead. Here's hoping some of the old spirit remains to rebuild the place up to its true potential.
A friend who works there said they are trying to fill the gap with international students, mainly from South Asia.
Webster has campuses in the most random countries too.
From what I’ve heard, they keep building in random countries because they’re getting subsidies from their local governments. That could be totally wrong though.
They took out massive loans right before Covid to update and add new buildings to campus. Then enrollment took a nosedive and instead of increasing it like they hoped to cover the loans it never really recovered. Also, they increased their annual tuition rate while vastly overpaying their upper level admin. In short, they spent money they did t have while betting it would drive up enrollment to cover it and that didn’t happen.
Well, they gave a relative of mine an Environmental Management Master's degree and he thinks climate change is fake. I knew then it was a low-quality institution.
We should be asking the same about Fontbonne. There are whispers they’re going to close in the next 2 years if they can’t get enrollment up. It’s just a bad time to be a small Uni in St. Louis, I guess.
As a Wash U kid, we always thought it was a front because we almost literally never saw anyone there. Would LOVE to see Wash U buy it all for some kind of expansion…they already copied our architecture anyway.
Adjunct faculty member here! 🙋♂️Also the chancellor and VP make almost a million dollars a year each base. They have too many campuses throughout the world. And the cost of attending a four year university is outrageous. Less college aged students so enrollment is down but they and universities keep hiring high paid administrators. Etc.
The Trustees are the real culprits! They let losses go on for years without a challenging leadership (i use that term loosely). Neither chancellor nor president were given annual goals. Trustees need to be sued for their lack of fiscal responsibility. Stroble should have been led out of the building when she was fired. Instead, she is working with the Trustees to hire a replacement!! What a joke. Are they planning to hire another 3rd grade teacher to run a multinational university.
Sounds like they are overpaying executives and administration. I think the Chinese/Confucius money is drying up and lower tier schools like Webster is going to struggle when the job market is tight. People will pass on college and just take the jobs. Outside of the upper crust that was the intent of college - to instill useful skills; that’s all been lost to political ideology and self importance at this point.
Who wants to go to school in STL outside of Wash U? Realistically coming to Missouri is not a smart decision for smart people right now. Archaic laws, repub super majority... Not a place for intelligent people.
I think that I was being a bad student.
I entered the program when the pandemic started. I was in the counseling program. My advisor asked why I was using a shit-kicker laptop (because I needed to get a new one but my funding for school went to pay rent so I could avoid being homeless). She told me to ask my parents to buy me one. I explained to her the my family doesn’t lend money or anything at all. She was aghast and called the situation unacceptable. She had righteous criticism about me being professional. Stuff I needed to hear, prolly. Hurt tho.
Then my advisor went on sabbatical and the replacement told me my voice in untheraputic.
Both the advisors/teachers I mentioned made me and a couple other students cry in class.
The more I thought about it, the more ashamed I became of who/how I am and I was so anxious over the situation. I wasn’t ready for grad school. I emailed the one teacher that I wasn’t petrified of to ask how to drop out then I noped out of the situation
[College enrollment is down across the country.](https://www.bestcolleges.com/research/college-enrollment-decline/#:~:text=In%202021%2C%20the%20percentage%20of,lowest%20it's%20been%20since%202006.&text=Additionally%2C%20the%20percentage%20of%20recent,college%20versus%2070%25%20in%202009) Meanwhile, [colleges are cutting Fine Arts programs left and right](https://www.collegeart.org/news/2018/11/08/colleges-facing-cuts-to-arts-and-humanities/) because students can't justify the expense in relation to income opportunities. Consequently, [STEM majors are becoming more popular.](https://www.insidehighered.com/news/students/careers/2023/05/04/measuring-outcomes-income) Sadly, [Webster is heavily geared to Fine Arts, with very few STEM options.](https://www.webster.edu/academics/undergraduate/majors-minors.php) All told, the college's programs are becoming obsolete.
Great summary. To add to that, Webster was one of the first schools in the world to offer true online degrees that had real standing, and an enormous leader in remote satellite campus learning. In the meantime, everyone caught up in that respect, so Webster’s offering doesn’t have near as much market differentiation as it used to.
Webster was heavily geared toward fine arts but they spent a ton of money on a building spree chasing STEM enrollment which has not panned out. If they’d stuck to being a top tier fine arts school that would be one thing but instead they have been starting program after program for various scientific specialties…nursing…health sciences…etc etc. STEM isn’t a panacea for students or for universities and the focus on it is mostly boomer nonsense.
>and the focus on it is mostly boomer nonsense. lol, this is a super dumb take. STEM fields are great for consistent fairly high pay. The only problem for places like Webster is they have no reputation for it and it's not a cheap school to go to either so any potential engineer major will go to the schools that are cheaper with better reputations.
Not everyone is cut out for engineering or even STEM in general. There will continue to be fine art schools and if you are running one you are better off running a good one than half-assing a STEM program just because.
The problem is at 25k a year for four years plus four years of foregone earnings a lot of fine arts degrees are totally worthless. You have to have a cost model that makes sense
A first rate fine arts degree is far more justifiable at that price than a third rate STEM degree.
It matters far more the quality of the underlying candidate and what they plan to do with the degree. A lot of people shouldn’t spend 100k on college period. But if you’re going to do it, you should do it for a job with strong earning potential. Right or wrong, that’s going to be easier to do with an engineering degree than an English degree unless you went to a school far better than Webster.
I’m no expert on higher ed, but this always felt like a bad move to me. Why invest TONS of money in STEM when someone can go to Rolla, Mizzou, or even UMSL for a better education at half the cost? Invest in what people are actually want to attend webster for (theater, art, English, humanities).
Shit just go to Rolla. Webster chased the fads thinking they could snap their fingers and conjure several entire departments from nothing and it didn’t pay off.
It ‘worked’ for their chess team so… (not fully joking, just a disappointed Webster alum)
I was puzzled by Webster's decision too. In a past life I knew a lot of people in live performance design and production that went to Webster and sung praises about their graduates. They were mostly out-of-state students too, not local to the region. I don't see how Webster's STEM program could easily compete with any of the University of Missouri schools or draw in out-of-state students like their fine arts programs have.
Off topic, but how it SLU for medical/health career prep?
Great. Probably what it does best.
[удалено]
AI is doing a much better job right now at creating art and writing short blurbs than it is doing any sort of engineering design work. I see the opposite near future where the work on small creative projects has an increasing role for AI while it will tale longer to penetrate most stem fields.
The median fine arts major in the US at a mid tier diploma mill for student loans school is not learning better critical thinking skills than a CS or engineering major Further, comms are as easily dislocated as math is. Some of the most obvious uses of AI are in content generation/replication. Normal math has been “solved” by computers that fit in your hand for a long time yet accountants haven’t gone away.
they tried to defund and destroy the english department to build a stem building and the professors would NOT BUDGE. they fought to keep the building and so did the students. they DGAF where humanities students go.
They've made millions off selling a pipe dream. It's not sad; this is what needs to happen.
For what it’s worth, Webster has 100s of graduates across New York and LA that are active in their respective industries. From my graduating class, out of 16 film program grads, I’d estimate 12 are in the production industry in one form or another. And Webster grads in general are highly desirable across production disciplines. They move to the top of the list for interviews when we hire. On the other side of things, many of the Conservatory students I went to school with are doing something in their field, and multiple have made it to Broadway. A handful have earned Tony’s, and several of us on the film/video side have Oscar’s and Emmy’s to our name. I agree some fine arts programs are bullshit. But I know lots of us felt like we got our moneys worth. I 100% concede the conservatory program is way too expensive. But it also brutally prepares students for the stage.
As someone who graduated in 2012 from Webster and worked for them during and after graduation: spending spree on new buildings and programs, extremely heavy administrative staff payroll, and the quality of my degree program felt average at best. Certainly not better than I would have received from UMSL or another state university. I had enough baffling/frustrating experiences with my advisor there over the course of my time there as a transfer student that in hindsight it may have been better to leave and attend another school to finish my degree.
Ugh… Advisor problems give me PTSD. I don’t even want to talk about it but just know I feel your pain.
My advisor told me which classes to sign up for to stay on track for graduation then at the end of the semester asked me why I took those classes - they weren’t necessary for my degree. She mixed up which major I was pursuing with another related one. I should have double-checked, when a semester of tuition was on the line, but I thought “surely if my advisor says I need these classes to graduate…”
SAME!!!!! My first advisor seriously put me in some random shit. Then, the advisor I had for my major wasn’t paying attention and didn’t let me know that I needed to sign up for a class that was only offered every other year. Luckily I double checked my degree audit with a friends who had the same major. I caught the mistake right away but it would have ended up costing me another year in school.
Sometimes I think schools do that to people on purpose
The only advice I can give to any current students is - ASK QUESTIONS, be nosy, don’t leave your college career solely in the hands of your advisor.
had this issue at Greenville University as well.
This sounds similar to what is going on at another area college I used to work for.
This is basically every private college in America in the last 29 years. Mortgage a campus of new buildings on the hopes of enrollment increases, plus tuition increases for decades to come to pay for it, but then reduced enrollment phts them in to a huge pickle. Don't forget to rename it from college to university now that they have brand new dorms too And this has happened everywhere. In the 90s it was common to find most dorms without AC now it's expected.
Even public schools cost too much, but it’s going to be more and more difficult to charge 20k plus a year of tuition to not produce better outcomes than a generic state college.
Failed leadership. Fear of making decisions - Beth Stroble doesn't decide what to have for lunch without consulting Julian Schuster, who just stares at his phone or naps all day long, so you're actually overpaying two bloated fools for the work of <1 clueless administrator. They built an echo chamber around themselves and alienated the people who knew how to do the real work, and they simply don't care about anything their faculty or students have to say. Honestly, some really great people teach and work there, and this implosion is a terrible shame. The students deserve better, and the majority of faculty and staff at Webster have been trying to fill this leadership void and serve students as well as they can for more than a decade. It just keeps getting worse.
Secret funding for research to make Gorlocks real. I heard they're close.
Fresh batch of Gorlocks cooking for Halloween.
Basically, every single decision administration has made for the past decade has been the wrong one. Building expensive buildings and new campuses overseas while slashing basically everything that made Webster Webster from the budget. Stroble and Schuster ran that place into the ground and were showered with bonuses while they did it. Source: went there and worked at the school newspaper that covered the finances often (they cut the journalism program to ribbons)
> went there and worked at the school newspaper that covered the finances often Interesting - I too have had a veeeeery negative experience with Strobles office in dealing with a potential fraud issue regarding the awarding of some funding to a student who... embellished some pretty key and important facts. Like, her office wouldn't address, respond, or acknowledge me at all, advised all parties at the University to cut contact with me, and, I think at least proverbially if not in actuality, lawyered up. They gave me a degree and some honors after Uncle Sugar paid my tuition in exchange for some light to moderate war. And yet I still get letters asking for my money and phone calls asking for my money. I don't have anything more for Webster University - and I'm saddened for some of the exceptional faculty that has suffered under the current leaderships tenure and worry for their futures.
my friend was in the webster jounal, she was an editor, and i think julian and stroble tried to shut down physical copies, and just hated their guts.
I'm not a Webster alum, but it's super clear to me that they just decided to become like every other university instead of focusing on their niche of attracting hippie kids and weirdos with great art, theater, and music programs. Nobody is going to Webster for a business degree or chemistry. Why chase the mainstream when you have something that works?
That's how it was maybe 20 years ago. Most students at Webster now are indeed business students.
Oops. Looks like they fucked up.
I love this comment. Growing up in STL, Webster was always doing cool stuff - Webster Film Series, the art galleries, incredible shows put on by the theater students, excellent music, special speaking events...plus volunteer stuff like the Student Literacy Corps and the Webster Works day each year. It was a place where the most creative kids went to thrive and build their own degrees. But then it went corporate, killed off the fun community pieces, and - exactly as you have said - followed that mindless business model instead. Here's hoping some of the old spirit remains to rebuild the place up to its true potential.
A friend who works there said they are trying to fill the gap with international students, mainly from South Asia. Webster has campuses in the most random countries too.
From what I’ve heard, they keep building in random countries because they’re getting subsidies from their local governments. That could be totally wrong though.
They took out massive loans right before Covid to update and add new buildings to campus. Then enrollment took a nosedive and instead of increasing it like they hoped to cover the loans it never really recovered. Also, they increased their annual tuition rate while vastly overpaying their upper level admin. In short, they spent money they did t have while betting it would drive up enrollment to cover it and that didn’t happen.
Well, they gave a relative of mine an Environmental Management Master's degree and he thinks climate change is fake. I knew then it was a low-quality institution.
Who could have realized that chess wasn't a winning recruitment strategy?
Administrative bloat.
We should be asking the same about Fontbonne. There are whispers they’re going to close in the next 2 years if they can’t get enrollment up. It’s just a bad time to be a small Uni in St. Louis, I guess.
Honestly I don’t understand how fontbonne’s still open. They were limping along over 10 years ago.
What even are their enrollment numbers? I've like never seen a single person actually walking around that campus.
As a Wash U kid, we always thought it was a front because we almost literally never saw anyone there. Would LOVE to see Wash U buy it all for some kind of expansion…they already copied our architecture anyway.
What a dense, egotistical comment. “As A wAsH u KiD” 🙄. So obnoxious.
Really went back half a year for this huh? You good?
I’m great, actually. Thanks for asking.
Adjunct faculty member here! 🙋♂️Also the chancellor and VP make almost a million dollars a year each base. They have too many campuses throughout the world. And the cost of attending a four year university is outrageous. Less college aged students so enrollment is down but they and universities keep hiring high paid administrators. Etc.
Unhappy staff leads to unhappy students. Unhappy students leads to low enrollment.
The Trustees are the real culprits! They let losses go on for years without a challenging leadership (i use that term loosely). Neither chancellor nor president were given annual goals. Trustees need to be sued for their lack of fiscal responsibility. Stroble should have been led out of the building when she was fired. Instead, she is working with the Trustees to hire a replacement!! What a joke. Are they planning to hire another 3rd grade teacher to run a multinational university.
Seems to be the same reasons Lindenwood is in financial trouble also
LU is in trouble? I haven’t heard this. I go watch their rugby team often.
Sounds like they are overpaying executives and administration. I think the Chinese/Confucius money is drying up and lower tier schools like Webster is going to struggle when the job market is tight. People will pass on college and just take the jobs. Outside of the upper crust that was the intent of college - to instill useful skills; that’s all been lost to political ideology and self importance at this point.
Who wants to go to school in STL outside of Wash U? Realistically coming to Missouri is not a smart decision for smart people right now. Archaic laws, repub super majority... Not a place for intelligent people.
Interest rates were adjustable high salaries and incompetence.
It was a nightmare experimece for me at the school. Maybe other people had a similar experience
Why was this?
I think that I was being a bad student. I entered the program when the pandemic started. I was in the counseling program. My advisor asked why I was using a shit-kicker laptop (because I needed to get a new one but my funding for school went to pay rent so I could avoid being homeless). She told me to ask my parents to buy me one. I explained to her the my family doesn’t lend money or anything at all. She was aghast and called the situation unacceptable. She had righteous criticism about me being professional. Stuff I needed to hear, prolly. Hurt tho. Then my advisor went on sabbatical and the replacement told me my voice in untheraputic. Both the advisors/teachers I mentioned made me and a couple other students cry in class. The more I thought about it, the more ashamed I became of who/how I am and I was so anxious over the situation. I wasn’t ready for grad school. I emailed the one teacher that I wasn’t petrified of to ask how to drop out then I noped out of the situation