Helena Marten
News Editor
Colleges are businesses. Private institutions operate openly as non-profits but they must sustain enough profit to break even. As economic systems are sensitive to various external factors, colleges are constantly forced to adapt and shift. There are then considerations: is the College’s current budgeting strategy the best way to handle diminishing funds from an administrative level, and what financial transparency is available to students?
The administration of a private college must consider its budget in the contexts of efficiency and student retention. The vitality of a college depends financially on a sustained student population and attendance. Without efficiency on the margins of student services, a college can similarly experience financial struggles. Therefore, college administrations must decipher the best way to achieve stability. Small private colleges especially face this choice as they work with relatively lower budgets and an ethos of providing personable staff-student experiences.
The temptation arises to furlough long-time staff whose positions alleviate large sums of money while seemingly not affecting students. Last week, the College resorted to a similar budget-cutting action with the layoffs of 22 staff members. President McCall has officially stated the majority of these lay-offs were non-student facing staff while recognizing they may have still held relationships with the student body. As such, Wooster Facilities Management and Planning lost three staff members including Carmi Schafrath, Sussan Brown, and Scott Saurbrei which is 13.6% of the total laid off employees. The loss of these employees will put more pressure on facilities as the department is strongly connected to the dorm renovations and the Green Belt project.
“There are people who are — who had positions, that by any normal kind of or objective analysis, were not student facing positions. There were students in my office saying how sad it was that they left, because they had done something for them at some point in their time here,” said McCall, in an interview with the Voice. “It is true that the majority, I wouldn’t say a strong majority, but the majority are on the non-student-facing side,” she concluded.
The issue with this choice is the reduction of personal student experiences, which causes students to feel rejected and unsupported by the College. Expressing concern over the layoffs, Jameson Clapham ’28 said, “I am deeply disappointed by what is happening. I chose to come to Wooster because I believed the school would offer a wide range of resources and, just as importantly, that my voice would be heard. Given the recent events, it feels as though that voice is being taken away, and that is deeply concerning to me.”
President McCall responded to a question from the Voice staff regarding the financial process behind the layoffs. Vice President for Finance and Business, David Jones, “came into place, he reviewed everything. He hired new leaders on his team. He gave long term planning expertise,” said McCall. As stated in a previous Voice interview with David Jones by Helen Oriatti-Bruns, there was a stated $3.5 million deficit for 2025. As of 2025, “there was a 20% decrease in average enrollment in fiscal years 2015 through 2023.” This is the most recent data available to the Voice.
In a discussion with a professor who has relevant knowledge, the College’s recent shift toward outsourcing resources was mentioned as a key contributor to the increasing deficit. Outsourcing resources can include contracting food/dining and janitorial staff, and can bridge into more student service staff such as counselors. This consequentially allows the school to manage fewer internal employees and services, and instead pay external companies to manage the service being provided to the school. Outsourcing these services may allow for administrative ease, but it also eliminates internal positions and raises external service expenditures. Therefore, the reduction of the deficit must be found elsewhere. This reasoning may have led to the decision to conduct staff layoffs. Due to the lack of financial transparency from the administration, the question remains: Do these financial decisions serve the community of the College or the ease of presidential affairs?
What are the economic consequences of this disruption of the community and personable student experience? A significant economic consequence is a drop in admissions and student retention. As loss of students increases, so do financial losses, which can contribute to a cycle of deficit and layoffs, harming the long-term viability of an academic institution.
In consideration of the College being a business, students are the consumers. Students at the College of Wooster are currently agreeing to pay $329,360 over the course of four years, given they receive no financial aid. Therefore, as consumers, students have the right and desire to inquire about the products and services they are receiving in exchange for this sum. Typically, in the structure of a corporation, the administration may withhold information from the consumers so long as it does not affect the product. For example, if a large company like Nike fires their vice president of marketing affairs, the consumer feels no direct impact. The friction that arises from the business of higher education is that these firings and changes directly impact consumer (or student sentiment) as well as the product (or educational experience) they are receiving.
The College of Wooster is a non-profit institution, and therefore tax returns filed by the institution are public records. In a review of the most recent public 990 financial forms from the fiscal year of 2023, some of the financial details of the school become more transparent. The College of Wooster’s endowment is estimated to be approximately $500 million . It was reported that President McCall made $262,797 in base salary and $34,705 in additional income for this fiscal year. Though, to be noted, she entered the school partially through the school year. Using this document, the estimated savings in the firing of a Vice President for Student Affairs role can be loosely placed around $267,926. These numbers are not exact, and are only estimations based upon these 2023 values. McCall said that they considered these financial choices “in terms of fixed and variable costs.” The College of Wooster evaluated what staff members and other costs of operations were necessarily fixed (such as professors) and chose other staff and programs that may be considered variable and able to be consolidated. It has been officially stated that performance played no role in the decisions. President McCall’s example was, “We might be able to succeed as a college without a president. We do not succeed as a college without the steam room operating, right? That’s an example of a fixed cost, a fixed salary versus a variable one.” McCall also stated that, “we didn’t just reduce personnel. We’re also kind of reshaping where some people report.” This does provide some clarity while furthering the issue of how this may impact the student experience.
Without access to comprehensive information, the Voice is unable to make fully-informed assumptions or analysis of this financial situation. While the concern of reducing staff as opposed to other measures can be made, without transparency, it is not possible to make an informed separate analysis.
