Money woes close a small Michigan college. It’s not alone

Rollan Mattson didn’t expect to make history when he lined up for Siena Heights University’s commencement on Saturday.

But about three hours in, the 22-year-old nursing major walked across the school’s fieldhouse stage with a rare distinction: He was the final graduate of the 107-year-old private Catholic university, which is closing its doors for good.

Siena Heights, founded by the Adrian Dominican Sisters in 1919, is the latest in a wave of smaller private and faith-based colleges to close in Michigan amid declining enrollment and financial strain.

When he learned of Siena Heights’ pending closure heading into his senior year, Mattson said his first thought was, “Oh hell, am I going to graduate?”

The June 2025 closure announcement led staffers to try to find other jobs in a scramble, Mattson said, telling Bridge Michigan the university’s nursing department was reduced to three faculty members by the end of the semester, down from at least seven.

But Mattson persevered. On Saturday, after 440 fellow graduates crossed the stage before him, Mattson heard his name called and received his diploma for a Bachelor of Science degree in nursing.

“The school is still technically there, even if it is closed,” he said after the ceremony. “I think it will take a month or two for it to set in.”

Hundreds of family members and friends packed the Siena Heights Fieldhouse in Adrian for the graduation ceremony, which doubled as a farewell marking the end of an era for faculty, students and alumni.

In a moment of levity, actor and comedian Bill Murray delivered a surprise commencement speech, saying he’d be ready to “rumble” with students in the parking lot as a new member of the “family” — his sister is a member of the Adrian Dominican Sisters, and both received honorary degrees on Saturday.

“You don’t need a building to be who you already have become or who you will become,” Murray told the graduates.

‘You cannot recruit students who were never born’

Siena Heights is the latest in a series of small, private and faith-based Michigan colleges to close their doors or significantly scale back operations, including Finlandia University in Hancock, Marygrove College in Detroit and Concordia University in Ann Arbor.

Officials have described a perfect storm of factors, including steep enrollment declines, increased operational costs, competition with trade schools and resulting financial strain that larger universities are better positioned to weather because of public funding and endowments.

“It’s unfortunate that it seems to be the small, private institutions that have a faith-based affiliation that have been impacted, whereas if you’re a state school or a state institution, you have different funding pools to pull from than a small, private institution,” Cheri Betz, president of Siena Heights, told Bridge Michigan.

The university announced last June that it would close at the end of this academic year, following years of financial strain and declining enrollment.

In 2018, there were a total of 2,216 students enrolled at the university for the fall semester. By the fall of 2021, there were 1,782 students enrolled at the university, down from a reported high of 2,707 in 2015.

The cost of tuition alone for the 2025-26 academic year was $30,500, up from $28,500 for the 2023-24 academic year. At Eastern Michigan University, about an hour northeast of Siena Heights, tuition averaged $17,754 this year. Tuition at Michigan Technological University, the state’s most expensive public college, was $22,084.

Betz also pointed to the lower birth rates in Michigan that have shrunk the pool of 18-year-olds seeking a college education, a trend that heavily impacts small private institutions like Siena Heights.

“The common pressure in higher education today is the fact that there are fewer people … who are entering and going to postsecondary education,” she said. “You cannot recruit students who were never born.”

As part of its “honorable closing” plan, Siena Heights added a “J-term,” or an accelerated academic session, between the fall and spring semesters for students to take additional classes so they could graduate before closure.

The school also worked with younger students to help them line up transfers to other colleges.

“I wouldn’t say that it necessarily impacted my education, because I was a senior,” said Mattson, the last graduate. “I would say it impacted the younger groups because their education was pivoted to trying to transfer them out.”

Fewer students, fewer options

The wave of small, private college closures is not limited to Michigan. As the national birth rate continues to decline, multiple schools have closed in neighboring states like Illinois, Wisconsin, Ohio and Indiana.

Michigan’s population growth has lagged, and the state is graduating about 8,000 fewer high schoolers than it did 15 years ago.

Finlandia University, affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church, shut down in 2023, arranging teach-out agreements so students could transfer. The 126-year-old university had experienced financial challenges for more than a decade, Timothy Pinnow, then-president of the university, previously told Bridge.

“When you have those things that happen and you have increasing expenses, then you have to find the money to keep going somewhere and many times that involves increasing your debt load,” he said.

Finlandia enrolled 628 full-time students in fall 2012; by 2020, that number had fallen to 478, a 24 percent decline.

Marygrove College, a private, Catholic institution, ended its undergraduate degree programs in 2017 and its graduate programs in 2019 after struggling financially since the mid-2000s.

“The educational landscape changed drastically in the state of Michigan as elsewhere in the nation,” the college said in a statement. “The high school population dwindled such that all colleges and universities were competing for the same smaller number of students.”

Concordia University in Ann Arbor, affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church, has scaled back most academic offerings amid enrollment challenges, leaving uncertainty about the long-term future of programs and facilities.

Only three academic programs will be offered at its Ann Arbor campus: a Doctor of Occupational Therapy, a Doctor of Physical Therapy and a Master of Science in Physician Assistant Studies.

The university will also offer eight education degree programs online, including a Bachelor of Arts in Lower and Upper Elementary Education, a Bachelor of Arts in Secondary Education – Mathematics and a Master of Science in Curriculum & Instruction with Teacher Certification in Secondary Education.

Siena Heights announced its closure last summer, with officials saying they had assessed the university’s finances, operational challenges and long-term sustainability and determined it was “no longer feasible” to stay open.

“The spirit of Siena Heights will continue long after the institution itself closes its doors because it lives in every graduate, faculty member and staff person who has been on campus – whether in-person or online,” said then-President Douglas B. Palmer, who departed the school in September.

After he crossed the stage Saturday at Siena Heights, Mattson said it had not really hit him yet that his alma mater was closing.

Next fall, “when all of the kids are leaving to go to college again, and when you see the place still empty, it will set in more,” he said.

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This story was originally published by Bridge Michigan and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.